Some books about writing tell you what good writing looks like. This one shows you how to make it — and what it feels like to make it well.

A Guide Written the Way It Teaches

Narrative Nature Writing: A Guide to Award-Winning Craft is itself a work of narrative nonfiction. Across twenty-six carefully crafted pages, Kathryn Aalto does not simply instruct — she demonstrates, reflects, and accompanies. Her own first-person voice moves through the guide the way a trusted teacher moves through a workshop: with warmth, with precision, with the hard-won authority of someone who has spent thirty years at the desk and in the field, writing and teaching in equal measure. This is a guidebook you will read as well as use — one that models, in its own prose, the standards it asks of the writer.

Eight Pillars. Nearly Forty Exercises. One Coherent Practice.

The guide is structured around eight essential pillars of narrative nonfiction craft: Narrative Presence, Narrative Arc, Character, Dialogue and Monologue, Language, Voice, Setting and Sense of Place, and Resonance. Each pillar is explored through craft discussion — the kind of close, exacting attention to writerly choices that transforms competent prose into essential writing — and then grounded in nearly forty original exercises designed to be used in the field, at the desk, and in the revision process.

The exercises range from twenty-minute sensory inventories conducted in a single place to ambitious integration pieces that ask the writer to bring all eight pillars to bear at once. They are not abstract prompts. They are precise, practical, and demanding — tested and refined across thousands of student drafts, workshop sessions, and one-to-one mentoring conversations over three decades of teaching on both sides of the Atlantic.

Theory and Practice, Inseparable

This is not a guide that separates craft theory from creative practice. The two are woven together throughout, because Kathryn Aalto’s teaching has always been founded on a single conviction: that understanding why a technique works and feeling it work in your own writing are not separate acts. They happen together, on the page, in the act of attention. The discussion of resonance is itself resonant. The section on language is itself carefully made. The guide practices what it preaches, and asks the same of its readers.

Proven Results

The eight pillars and their exercises are not untested ideas. They are the foundation of the The Narrative Life and Kathryn Aalto’s writing programs, where students from across the world have studied narrative nonfiction in courses spanning memoir, nature writing, person essay, nature poetry and ecopoetics, and book proposal writing. Students who have worked with these pillars have won the £10,000 Nature Chronicles Prize, and Bradt New Travel Writer Award, and have been shortlisted for other awards.  Students have signed book contracts with distinguished publishers including Timber Press, university presses, and more. Many more have developed writing practices that have fundamentally changed their relationship with the natural world, with the page, and with themselves.

Who This Guide Is For

Whether you are keeping a nature journal for the first time, deepening an established writing practice, or preparing a manuscript for submission, Narrative Nature Writing: A Guide to Award-Winning Craft will sharpen your attention, strengthen your craft, and give you the tools to write the living world as it deserves to be written — with precision, with feeling, and with lasting resonance. It is for anyone who believes that how we write about nature shapes how we see it, and that how we see it shapes how we treat it.

Kathryn Aalto is a New York Times bestselling author, garden historian, and the founder of The Narrative Life. She has taught narrative nonfiction for over thirty years and has spoken at more than 200 venues across the UK, the United States, and Canada including Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum and the New York Public Library. She is the author of Writing Wild and The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh, and holds Master’s degrees in both Creative Nonfiction and Garden History.

This guide is priced at £25 — a resource you will return to for years. It is the distillation of thirty years of teaching, writing, and paying close attention to the natural world, offered here in twenty-six pages you can carry into the field, prop open at the desk, or return to whenever your writing needs direction. Good craft instruction is one of the best investments a writer can make. This is yours to keep.

What is this guidebook and who is it for? Narrative Nature Writing: A Guide to Award-Winning Craft is a twenty-six page guide to writing the natural world with depth, precision, and lasting power. It is written for anyone who wants to write about nature — whether you are keeping a journal for the first time, developing an established writing practice, or preparing a manuscript for submission. No prior writing experience is required. What is required is curiosity, a willingness to go outside, and a desire to pay closer attention.

How is this guide different from other writing books? Most writing guides separate craft theory from creative practice. This one does not. The guide is itself written as narrative nonfiction — with Kathryn Aalto’s own first-person voice moving through it — so it models the standards it teaches. It is a book you will read as well as use. It is also grounded in thirty years of actual teaching: every exercise has been tested across hundreds of student drafts and refined through one-to-one mentoring conversations on both sides of the Atlantic.

How many exercises does it contain? Nearly forty original writing exercises, distributed across eight pillars of craft. They range from short, focused field exercises of twenty minutes to longer integration pieces of 350 to 400 words. Some are best done outdoors. Others work equally well at the desk. All of them are designed to produce writing you will want to keep.

Can I use this guide alongside a course? Yes — and it was partly designed with that in mind. The guide serves as both a standalone resource and a companion to the Kathryn Aalto Writing School’s Narrative Nature Writing courses, Levels 1 and 2. If you are considering enrolling in a course, this guide is an excellent way to begin.

What format is it in and how do I receive it? The guide is a beautifully designed PDF, available as an immediate digital download upon purchase. It is formatted for both screen reading and printing — so you can keep it on your device or print it and take it into the field.

Is this guide suitable for beginners? Yes. The guide meets writers wherever they are. The craft discussion is rigorous enough to challenge an experienced writer, and the exercises are open enough to be genuinely generative for someone just beginning. Kathryn Aalto has spent thirty years teaching writers at every stage of their practice, and this guide carries that experience on every page.

Can I share this guide with others? The guide is licensed for personal use and copyrighted to Kathryn Aalto and under trademark of The Narrative Life. it may not be reproduced or distributed, in whole or in part, without permission. If you are a teacher or educator interested in using it with a class or writing group, please get in touch at kathryn@kathrynaalto.com to discuss licensing options.

I have a question not answered here. How do I get in touch? Write to us at kathryn@kathrynaalto.com and we will get back to you as soon as we can.