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What Is Creative Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction combines factual accuracy with storytelling techniques. It aims to inform and entertain readers by making factual information vivid and engaging. Some key characteristics include using vivid language and emotions to arrive at the truth, and stimulating the reader's imagination. Common forms include autobiographies, biographies, memoirs, literary journalism, blogs, critiques, essays, and travelogues. The goal is to present real events and people in an interesting, narrative style.

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Shai Reen
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116 views

What Is Creative Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction combines factual accuracy with storytelling techniques. It aims to inform and entertain readers by making factual information vivid and engaging. Some key characteristics include using vivid language and emotions to arrive at the truth, and stimulating the reader's imagination. Common forms include autobiographies, biographies, memoirs, literary journalism, blogs, critiques, essays, and travelogues. The goal is to present real events and people in an interesting, narrative style.

Uploaded by

Shai Reen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1 Introduction to Creative Nonfiction

The Distinction Between Fiction and Nonfiction

What is Creative Nonfiction?


 It was used to be called personal journalism or literary journalism or new journalism or parajournalism.
 According to Theodore A. Rees Cheney, “Creative nonfiction requires the skill of a story teller and the research
ability of the reporter” (1991)
 This type of writing begins with the facts, elaborates on the facts, interprets them, and more importantly,
presents them in an interesting and engaging way. In other words, it is a “more imaginative approach to
reporting”.
 Creative nonfiction is a nonfiction prose which utilizes the techniques and strategies of a fiction. It combines the
authority of literature and authority of fact (Gutkind 1997).

Why Creative Nonfiction?


 Research findings. Nonfiction’s purpose is not to entertain but to inform, to teach, to lecture
 Conventional thought. We learn best when we are at the same time entertained, when there is joy in pleasure in
the learning; the strongest, most lasting memories are those imbedded in emotion
 Insight. Creative nonfiction writers inform their readers better by making the reading experience vivid and
enjoyable.

Types of Creative Nonfiction


Characteristics of Creative Nonfiction
1. Creative Nonfiction uses vivid language.

Example:
From the doorway of Room 542 the man in the bed seems deeply tanned. Blue eyes and close
cropped white hair give him the appearance of vigor and good health. But I know that his skin is not brown
from the sun it is rusted, rather, in the last stage of containing the vile repose within. And the blue eyes are
frosted. Looking inward like the windows of a snowbound cottage. This man is blind this man is also legless – the
right leg missing from midthigh down, the left from just below the knee. It gives him the look of a bonsai, roots
and branches pruned into the
dwarfed facsimile of a great tree.
– Dr. Richard Seltzer in “The
Discuss Thrower
2. Creative nonfiction uses
emotions to arrive at the truth.

Example:
When the police, responding
to her call, arrived at her East Harlem
tenement, she was hysterical: “The
dog ate my baby.” The baby girl had
been four days old, twelve hours
“home” from the hospital. Home was
two rooms and a kitchen on the sixth
floor, furnished with a rug, a folding
chair, and nothing else, no bed, no
crib.
“Is the baby dead?” asked an
officer. “Yes.” The mother said, “I saw
the baby’s insides.” Her dog, a German shepherd, had not been fed for five days. She explained: “I left the
baby on the floor with the dog to protect it.” She had bought the dog in July for protection from human
menaces.
-George Will in his Washington Post column “On Her Own in the City”
2 Introduction to Creative Nonfiction

3. Creative nonfiction stimulates the reader’s imagination.

Example:
New York City is a city for eccentrics and a center for odd bits of information. New Yorkers blink twenty-
eight times a minute, but forty when tense. Most popcorn chewers at Yankee Stadium stop chewing
momentarily just before the pith. Gum chewers on Macy’s escalators stop chewing momentarily before they
get off – to concentrate on the last step. Coins, paper clips, ballpoint pens, and little girls’ pocketbooks are
found by workmen when they clean the sea lion’s pool at the Bronx Zoo.
-Gay Talese in the opening of the article “New York”

4. Creative nonfiction uses rhetorical strategies

Examples are:
 Narration or storytelling  Illustration and exemplification
 Description  Analysis
 Definition  Cause and effect
 Comparison and contrast  Argumentation and persuasion
 Classification

Forms and Types of Creative Nonfiction

1. Autobiography – a written account of the life of a person written by that person


2. Biography – a detailed description or account of a person’s life
3. Memoir - Focuses on an event or series of events that evoke a change of view or feelings in an entertaining
way. It helps the audience to understand one single person, the author.
4. Literary Journalism - Uses the techniques of journalism such as interviews and reviews in order to look outside of
the straightforward, objective world that journalism creates. It uses literary practices to capture the
scene/setting of the assignment or the persona of the person being interviewed.
5. Blog – a web log: a website containing short articles called posts that are changed regularly. Some blogs are
written by one person containing his/her own opinion, interests and experiences, while others are written by
many different people.
6. Vlog (Video Log) - a personal website or social media account where a person regularly posts short videos.
7. Critique – a critical discussion or review that describes, summarizes, analyzes, and` evaluates the strengths and
weaknesses of a work. It is written in paragraph form.
 Peer critique – or peer review, the practice of writers to review and provide constructive criticism of
each other’s works.
 Movie Review – reviewing/commenting on a movie
8. Essay – Short piece written on ONE subject
 Expository - tightly structured; impersonal/formal style; presents or explains information
 Persuasive - develops arguments; tries to convince readers to adopt a certain perspective
 Personal narrative – a narrative essay about a true story of something that happened to someone,
usually told to illustrate an insight; is based on autobiographical events.
9. Reflective or reflection essay - a form of writing that examines and observes the progress and meaning of a
writer’s individual experiences like a journal about the thoughts on a certain topic.
10. Testimonio – literally, a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. In literature, it is an oral or written
autobiographical narrative referred to as “testimonial literature.” The term “testimonio” refers to a kind of writing
which comes from Latin America dealing with experiences of human rights abuse.
11. Travelogue - a story of the experiences encountered by someone while touring a place for the pleasure of
travel.
12. Food Writing - Focuses on communicating information about food. It lets readers experience the relationship of
food to man, to agriculture, nature, climate, nation-building, culture, tradition, and even religion.

Prepared by:

SHIREEN D. LACUESTA
Teacher II

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