![]() Race, gender, class, and personal history will inform what you say, even if nature is supposed to be free of such concerns-in fact, particularly because it is supposed to be free of them. It’s not possible to write about nature without including a lot of information about yourself. He just puts two men in a club in Whitehall and you learn what you need from what they say. You don’t catch him explaining the history and workings of the British security services. I’m not complaining about this mode, but in writing about nature, I try to be more like John Le Carré. Here’s an example: after a character in The Dogs of War discovers platinum deposits there follows a lengthy disquisition on the international platinum market, and shortly after this, a history of catalytic converters. ![]() ![]() I adore the way Forsyth breaks the narratives of his thrillers in order to dump data on the reader. But these are the things I really do tell myself when I write about nature, and today I decided I’d confess them all.Īvoid the Frederick Forsyth explanatory mode. There are as many ways to write about the natural world as there are kinds of beetles. A not-too-serious and also quite serious list that is entirely non-prescriptive, and is absolutely not a set of instructions. ![]()
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