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Creative Nonfiction: What It Is and How to Write It

Sean Glatch  |  March 31, 2024  |  8 Comments

What is creative nonfiction? Despite its slightly enigmatic name, no literary genre has grown quite as quickly as creative nonfiction in recent decades. Literary nonfiction is now well-established as a powerful means of storytelling, and bookstores now reserve large amounts of space for nonfiction, when it often used to occupy a single bookshelf.

Like any literary genre, creative nonfiction has a long history; also like other genres, defining contemporary CNF for the modern writer can be nuanced. If you’re interested in writing true-to-life stories but you’re not sure where to begin, let’s start by dissecting the creative nonfiction genre and what it means to write a modern literary essay.

What Creative Nonfiction Is

Creative nonfiction employs the creative writing techniques of literature, such as poetry and fiction, to retell a true story.

How do we define creative nonfiction? What makes it “creative,” as opposed to just “factual writing”? These are great questions to ask when entering the genre, and they require answers which could become literary essays themselves.

In short, creative nonfiction (CNF) is a form of storytelling that employs the creative writing techniques of literature, such as poetry and fiction, to retell a true story. Creative nonfiction writers don’t just share pithy anecdotes, they use craft and technique to situate the reader into their own personal lives. Fictional elements, such as character development and narrative arcs, are employed to create a cohesive story, but so are poetic elements like conceit and juxtaposition.

The CNF genre is wildly experimental, and contemporary nonfiction writers are pushing the bounds of literature by finding new ways to tell their stories. While a CNF writer might retell a personal narrative, they might also focus their gaze on history, politics, or they might use creative writing elements to write an expository essay. There are very few limits to what creative nonfiction can be, which is what makes defining the genre so difficult—but writing it so exciting.

Different Forms of Creative Nonfiction

From the autobiographies of Mark Twain and Benvenuto Cellini, to the more experimental styles of modern writers like Karl Ove Knausgård, creative nonfiction has a long history and takes a wide variety of forms. Common iterations of the creative nonfiction genre include the following:

Also known as biography or autobiography, the memoir form is probably the most recognizable form of creative nonfiction. Memoirs are collections of memories, either surrounding a single narrative thread or multiple interrelated ideas. The memoir is usually published as a book or extended piece of fiction, and many memoirs take years to write and perfect. Memoirs often take on a similar writing style as the personal essay does, though it must be personable and interesting enough to encourage the reader through the entire book.

Personal Essay

Personal essays are stories about personal experiences told using literary techniques.

When someone hears the word “essay,” they instinctively think about those five paragraph book essays everyone wrote in high school. In creative nonfiction, the personal essay is much more vibrant and dynamic. Personal essays are stories about personal experiences, and while some personal essays can be standalone stories about a single event, many essays braid true stories with extended metaphors and other narratives.

Personal essays are often intimate, emotionally charged spaces. Consider the opening two paragraphs from Beth Ann Fennelly’s personal essay “ I Survived the Blizzard of ’79. ”

We didn’t question. Or complain. It wouldn’t have occurred to us, and it wouldn’t have helped. I was eight. Julie was ten.

We didn’t know yet that this blizzard would earn itself a moniker that would be silk-screened on T-shirts. We would own such a shirt, which extended its tenure in our house as a rag for polishing silver.

The word “essay” comes from the French “essayer,” which means “to try” or “attempt.” The personal essay is more than just an autobiographical narrative—it’s an attempt to tell your own history with literary techniques.

Lyric Essay

The lyric essay contains similar subject matter as the personal essay, but is much more experimental in form.

The lyric essay contains similar subject matter as the personal essay, with one key distinction: lyric essays are much more experimental in form. Poetry and creative nonfiction merge in the lyric essay, challenging the conventional prose format of paragraphs and linear sentences.

The lyric essay stands out for its unique writing style and sentence structure. Consider these lines from “ Life Code ” by J. A. Knight:

The dream goes like this: blue room of water. God light from above. Child’s fist, foot, curve, face, the arc of an eye, the symmetry of circles… and then an opening of this body—which surprised her—a movement so clean and assured and then the push towards the light like a frog or a fish.

What we get is language driven by emotion, choosing an internal logic rather than a universally accepted one.

Lyric essays are amazing spaces to break barriers in language. For example, the lyricist might write a few paragraphs about their story, then examine a key emotion in the form of a villanelle or a ghazal . They might decide to write their entire essay in a string of couplets or a series of sonnets, then interrupt those stanzas with moments of insight or analysis. In the lyric essay, language dictates form. The successful lyricist lets the words arrange themselves in whatever format best tells the story, allowing for experimental new forms of storytelling.

Literary Journalism

Much more ambiguously defined is the idea of literary journalism. The idea is simple: report on real life events using literary conventions and styles. But how do you do this effectively, in a way that the audience pays attention and takes the story seriously?

You can best find examples of literary journalism in more “prestigious” news journals, such as The New Yorker , The Atlantic , Salon , and occasionally The New York Times . Think pieces about real world events, as well as expository journalism, might use braiding and extended metaphors to make readers feel more connected to the story. Other forms of nonfiction, such as the academic essay or more technical writing, might also fall under literary journalism, provided those pieces still use the elements of creative nonfiction.

Consider this recently published article from The Atlantic : The Uncanny Tale of Shimmel Zohar by Lawrence Weschler. It employs a style that’s breezy yet personable—including its opening line.

So I first heard about Shimmel Zohar from Gravity Goldberg—yeah, I know, but she insists it’s her real name (explaining that her father was a physicist)—who is the director of public programs and visitor experience at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, in San Francisco.

How to Write Creative Nonfiction: Common Elements and Techniques

What separates a general news update from a well-written piece of literary journalism? What’s the difference between essay writing in high school and the personal essay? When nonfiction writers put out creative work, they are most successful when they utilize the following elements.

Just like fiction, nonfiction relies on effective narration. Telling the story with an effective plot, writing from a certain point of view, and using the narrative to flesh out the story’s big idea are all key craft elements. How you structure your story can have a huge impact on how the reader perceives the work, as well as the insights you draw from the story itself.

Consider the first lines of the story “ To the Miami University Payroll Lady ” by Frenci Nguyen:

You might not remember me, but I’m the dark-haired, Texas-born, Asian-American graduate student who visited the Payroll Office the other day to complete direct deposit and tax forms.

Because the story is written in second person, with the reader experiencing the story as the payroll lady, the story’s narration feels much more personal and important, forcing the reader to evaluate their own personal biases and beliefs.

Observation

Telling the story involves more than just simple plot elements, it also involves situating the reader in the key details. Setting the scene requires attention to all five senses, and interpersonal dialogue is much more effective when the narrator observes changes in vocal pitch, certain facial expressions, and movements in body language. Essentially, let the reader experience the tiny details – we access each other best through minutiae.

The story “ In Transit ” by Erica Plouffe Lazure is a perfect example of storytelling through observation. Every detail of this flash piece is carefully noted to tell a story without direct action, using observations about group behavior to find hope in a crisis. We get observation when the narrator notes the following:

Here at the St. Thomas airport in mid-March, we feel the urgency of the transition, the awareness of how we position our bodies, where we place our luggage, how we consider for the first time the numbers of people whose belongings are placed on the same steel table, the same conveyor belt, the same glowing radioactive scan, whose IDs are touched by the same gloved hand[.]

What’s especially powerful about this story is that it is written in a single sentence, allowing the reader to be just as overwhelmed by observation and context as the narrator is.

We’ve used this word a lot, but what is braiding? Braiding is a technique most often used in creative nonfiction where the writer intertwines multiple narratives, or “threads.” Not all essays use braiding, but the longer a story is, the more it benefits the writer to intertwine their story with an extended metaphor or another idea to draw insight from.

“ The Crush ” by Zsofia McMullin demonstrates braiding wonderfully. Some paragraphs are written in first person, while others are written in second person.

The following example from “The Crush” demonstrates braiding:

Your hair is still wet when you slip into the booth across from me and throw your wallet and glasses and phone on the table, and I marvel at how everything about you is streamlined, compact, organized. I am always overflowing — flesh and wants and a purse stuffed with snacks and toy soldiers and tissues.

The author threads these narratives together by having both people interact in a diner, yet the reader still perceives a distance between the two threads because of the separation of “I” and “you” pronouns. When these threads meet, briefly, we know they will never meet again.

Speaking of insight, creative nonfiction writers must draw novel conclusions from the stories they write. When the narrator pauses in the story to delve into their emotions, explain complex ideas, or draw strength and meaning from tough situations, they’re finding insight in the essay.

Often, creative writers experience insight as they write it, drawing conclusions they hadn’t yet considered as they tell their story, which makes creative nonfiction much more genuine and raw.

The story “ Me Llamo Theresa ” by Theresa Okokun does a fantastic job of finding insight. The story is about the history of our own names and the generations that stand before them, and as the writer explores her disconnect with her own name, she recognizes a similar disconnect in her mother, as well as the need to connect with her name because of her father.

The narrator offers insight when she remarks:

I began to experience a particular type of identity crisis that so many immigrants and children of immigrants go through — where we are called one name at school or at work, but another name at home, and in our hearts.

How to Write Creative Nonfiction: the 5 R’s

CNF pioneer Lee Gutkind developed a very system called the “5 R’s” of creative nonfiction writing. Together, the 5 R’s form a general framework for any creative writing project. They are:

• Write about r eal life: Creative nonfiction tackles real people, events, and places—things that actually happened or are happening.
• Conduct extensive r esearch: Learn as much as you can about your subject matter, to deepen and enrich your ability to relay the subject matter. (Are you writing about your tenth birthday? What were the newspaper headlines that day?)
• (W) r ite a narrative: Use storytelling elements originally from fiction, such as Freytag’s Pyramid , to structure your CNF piece’s narrative as a story with literary impact rather than just a recounting.
• Include personal r eflection: Share your unique voice and perspective on the narrative you are retelling.
• Learn by r eading: The best way to learn to write creative nonfiction well is to read it being written well. Read as much CNF as you can, and observe closely how the author’s choices impact you as a reader.

You can read more about the 5 R’s in this helpful summary article .

How to Write Creative Nonfiction: Give it a Try!

Whatever form you choose, whatever story you tell, and whatever techniques you write with, the more important aspect of creative nonfiction is this: be honest. That may seem redundant, but often, writers mistakenly create narratives that aren’t true, or they use details and symbols that didn’t exist in the story. Trust us – real life is best read when it’s honest, and readers can tell when details in the story feel fabricated or inflated. Write with honesty, and the right words will follow!

Ready to start writing your creative nonfiction piece? If you need extra guidance or want to write alongside our community, take a look at the upcoming nonfiction classes at Writers.com. Now, go and write the next bestselling memoir!

Sean Glatch

Thank you so much for including these samples from Hippocampus Magazine essays/contributors; it was so wonderful to see these pieces reflected on from the craft perspective! – Donna from Hippocampus

Absolutely, Donna! I’m a longtime fan of Hippocampus and am always astounded by the writing you publish. We’re always happy to showcase stunning work 🙂

I like how it is written about him”…When he’s not writing, which is often, he thinks he should be writing.”

[…] Source: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/a-complete-guide-to-writing-creative-nonfiction#5-creative-nonfiction-writing-promptshttps://writers.com/what-is-creative-nonfiction […]

So impressive

Thank you. I’ve been researching a number of figures from the 1800’s and have come across a large number of ‘biographies’ of figures. These include quoted conversations which I knew to be figments of the author and yet some works are lauded as ‘histories’.

excellent guidelines inspiring me to write CNF thank you

[…] writing a “Spring” scene today. I’ve mentioned before that my memoir is a work of creative non-fiction. Since much of the story takes place 2-5 decades ago, I don’t remember a lot of the […]

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Creative Nonfiction: An Overview

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The Creative Nonfiction (CNF) genre can be rather elusive. It is focused on story, meaning it has a narrative plot with an inciting moment, rising action, climax and denoument, just like fiction. However, nonfiction only works if the story is based in truth, an accurate retelling of the author’s life experiences. The pieces can vary greatly in length, just as fiction can; anything from a book-length autobiography to a 500-word food blog post can fall within the genre.

Additionally, the genre borrows some aspects, in terms of voice, from poetry; poets generally look for truth and write about the realities they see. While there are many exceptions to this, such as the persona poem, the nonfiction genre depends on the writer’s ability to render their voice in a realistic fashion, just as poetry so often does. Writer Richard Terrill, in comparing the two forms, writes that the voice in creative nonfiction aims “to engage the empathy” of the reader; that, much like a poet, the writer uses “personal candor” to draw the reader in.

Creative Nonfiction encompasses many different forms of prose. As an emerging form, CNF is closely entwined with fiction. Many fiction writers make the cross-over to nonfiction occasionally, if only to write essays on the craft of fiction. This can be done fairly easily, since the ability to write good prose—beautiful description, realistic characters, musical sentences—is required in both genres.

So what, then, makes the literary nonfiction genre unique?

The first key element of nonfiction—perhaps the most crucial thing— is that the genre relies on the author’s ability to retell events that actually happened. The talented CNF writer will certainly use imagination and craft to relay what has happened and tell a story, but the story must be true. You may have heard the idiom that “truth is stranger than fiction;” this is an essential part of the genre. Events—coincidences, love stories, stories of loss—that may be expected or feel clichéd in fiction can be respected when they occur in real life .

A writer of Creative Nonfiction should always be on the lookout for material that can yield an essay; the world at-large is their subject matter. Additionally, because Creative Nonfiction is focused on reality, it relies on research to render events as accurately as possible. While it’s certainly true that fiction writers also research their subjects (especially in the case of historical fiction), CNF writers must be scrupulous in their attention to detail. Their work is somewhat akin to that of a journalist, and in fact, some journalism can fall under the umbrella of CNF as well. Writer Christopher Cokinos claims, “done correctly, lived well, delivered elegantly, such research uncovers not only facts of the world, but reveals and shapes the world of the writer” (93). In addition to traditional research methods, such as interviewing subjects or conducting database searches, he relays Kate Bernheimer’s claim that “A lifetime of reading is research:” any lived experience, even one that is read, can become material for the writer.

The other key element, the thing present in all successful nonfiction, is reflection. A person could have lived the most interesting life and had experiences completely unique to them, but without context—without reflection on how this life of experiences affected the writer—the reader is left with the feeling that the writer hasn’t learned anything, that the writer hasn’t grown. We need to see how the writer has grown because a large part of nonfiction’s appeal is the lessons it offers us, the models for ways of living: that the writer can survive a difficult or strange experience and learn from it. Sean Ironman writes that while “[r]eflection, or the second ‘I,’ is taught in every nonfiction course” (43), writers often find it incredibly hard to actually include reflection in their work. He expresses his frustration that “Students are stuck on the idea—an idea that’s not entirely wrong—that readers need to think” (43), that reflecting in their work would over-explain the ideas to the reader. Not so. Instead, reflection offers “the crucial scene of the writer writing the memoir” (44), of the present-day writer who is looking back on and retelling the past. In a moment of reflection, the author steps out of the story to show a different kind of scene, in which they are sitting at their computer or with their notebook in some quiet place, looking at where they are now, versus where they were then; thinking critically about what they’ve learned. This should ideally happen in small moments, maybe single sentences, interspersed throughout the piece. Without reflection, you have a collection of scenes open for interpretation—though they might add up to nothing.

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49 Introduction to Creative Non-Fiction

Dr. Karen Palmer

Introduction to Creative Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction has existed for as long as poetry, fiction, and drama have, but only in the last forty years or so has the term become common as a label for creative, factual prose. The length is not  a factor in characterizing this genre: Such prose can take the form of an essay or a book. For this chapter’s discussion, we will focus on the essay , since not only will this shorter version of the form allow us to examine multiple examples for a better understanding of the genre, but also, you may have written creative nonfiction essays yourself. Looking carefully at the strategies exhibited by some successful essay writers will give us new ideas for achieving goals in our own writing.

Currently, creative non-fiction is the most popular literary genre. While generations past defined literature as poetry, drama, and fiction, creative nonfiction has increasingly gained popularity and recognition in the literary world.

Creative nonfiction stories depict real-life events, places, people, and experiences, but do so in a way that is immersive, so readers feel emotionally invested in the writing in a way they probably are not as invested in, say, a textbook or a more formal autobiography. While “nonfiction” (without the creative designation) tells true stories as well, there is less emphasis upon and space for creativity. If regular nonfiction were a person, it might say “just the facts, ma’am.” Creative nonfiction, on the other hand, might ask “and what color were her eyes as the moonlight reflected off the ocean into them, and what childhood memories did that moment dredge up?”

The best creative nonfiction tells a true story in an artistic — or literary — way. This means that the story has certain elements, such as descriptive imagery, setting, plot, conflict, characters, metaphors, and other literary devices. Usually, a work of creative nonfiction is narrated in first-person, though sometimes it can be written in third-person. It can be lyric and personal or representing important moments in history. They also might be more objective and scholarly, like many pieces of investigative journalism.

Key Takeaways

Creative Nonfiction Characteristics

• True stories
• Prose (usually, though sometimes poetry)
• Uses literary devices/is more creative and artistically-oriented than “regular” nonfiction
• Often told in first person
• The narrator is often the author or a persona of the author, but not always

When reading a work of creative nonfiction, it is important to remember the story is true. This means the author does not have as much artistic freedom as a fiction writer or poet might, because they cannot invent events which did not happen. It is worthwhile, then, to pay attention to the literary devices and other artistic choices the narrator makes. Readers should consider: what choices were made here about what to include and what to omit? Are there repeating images or themes? How might the historical context influence this work?

First, let’s do what we can to more clearly define the creative nonfiction essay. What is the difference between this kind of essay and an academic essay? Although written in prose form ( prose is writing not visually broken into distinct lines as poetry is), the creative nonfiction essay often strives for a poetic effect , employing a kind of compressed, distilled language so that most words carry more meaning than their simple denotation (or literal meaning). Generally, this kind of essay is not heavy with researched information or formal argument; its priority, instead, is to generate a powerful emotional and aesthetic effect ( aesthetic referring to artistic and/or beautiful qualities).

In this video, Evan Puschak discusses the evolution of the essay with the advent of technology and gives some really interesting insight into the importance of essays.

How YouTube Changed The Essay | Evan Puschak | TEDxLafayetteCollege

Four Types of Essay

A narrative essay recounts a sequence of related events.  Narrative essays are usually autobiographical. Events are chosen because they suggest or illustrate some universal truth or insight about life. In other words, the author has discovered in his/her own experiences evidence for generalizations about themselves or society.

Argumentative/Persuasive:

An argumentative essay strives to persuade readers. It usually deals with controversial ideas, creating arguments and gathering evidence to support a particular point of view. The author anticipates and answers opposing arguments in order to persuade the reader to adopt the author’s perspective.

In this video, the instructor gives an overview of the narrative and argumentative essays from the writer’s perspective. Looking at the essay from the author’s perspective can provide an interesting insight into reading an essay.

Descriptive:

A descriptive essay depicts sensory observations in words. They evoke reader’s imagination and address complex issues by appealing to the senses instead of the intellect. While a narrative essay will certainly employ description, the primary difference between the two is that a descriptive essay focuses only on appealing to the senses, whereas a narrative essay uses description to tell a story.

Expository:

An expository essay attempt to explain a topic, making it clear to readers. In an expository essay, the author organizes and provides information. Examples of this type of essay include the definition essay and the process analysis (how-to).

In this videos, the instructor gives an overview of the descriptive and expository essays from the writer’s perspective. Looking at the essay from the author’s perspective can provide an interesting insight into reading an essay.

Choosing a Topic & Reading the Essay: Steps 1 & 2

Your first step in writing a paper about an essay is to choose an essay and read it carefully. Essays confront readers directly with an idea, a problem, an illuminating experience, an important definition, or some flaw/virtue in the social system. Usually short, an essay embodies the writer’s personal viewpoint and speaks with the voice of a real person about the real word. Essays might also explore & clarify ideas by arguing for or against a position.

When reading an essay, ask yourself, “what is the central argument or idea?” Does the essay attack or justify something, or remind readers of something about their inner lives?

In this video, I do a close reading of the essay “ The Grapes of Mrs. Wrath .” As in any type of literature, you want to read first for enjoyment and understanding. Then, go back and do a close reading with a pen in hand, jotting down notes and looking for the ways in which the author gets his/her point across to the reader.

Virginia Woolf’s 1942 “The Death of the Moth” is an illuminating example of an argumentative essay. While the essay does not present a stated argument and proceed to offer evidence in the same way conventional academic argument would, it does strive to persuade . Consider this piece carefully and see if you can detect the theme that Woolf is developing.

“The Death of the Moth”

Here are some important items to consider when reading an essay.

1. The Thesis:

What is the point of the piece of writing? This should be your central concern. Once you know what the author’s main idea is, you can look at what techniques the author uses to get that point across successfully.

The title of Woolf’s essay, “The Death of the Moth,” offers us, from the start, the knowledge of the work’s theme of death. What impression does the essay, as a whole, convey? The writer acknowledges that watching even such a small creature as the moth struggle against death, she sympathizes with the moth and not with the “power of such magnitude” that carries on outside the window—that of time and inevitable change, for this power is ultimately her own “enemy” as well. In her last line, “O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am,” what lesson has she internalized regarding herself , a human being who at first observed the autumn day with no immediate sense of her own mortality?

2. Structure & detail:

• opening lines capture attention
• endings offer forceful assertions that focus the matter preceding them
• body converts abstract ideas into concrete details

While this piece is not a poem, what aspects of it are poetic ? Consider the imagery employed to suggest the season of death, for all of nature. The writer describes her experience sitting at her desk next to the window, observing the signs of autumn: the plow “scoring the field” where the crop (or “share”) has already been harvested. Although the scene begins in morning—characterized by energetic exertions of nature, including the rooks, rising and settling into the trees again and again with a great deal of noise, “as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience”—the day shifts, as the essay progresses, to afternoon, the birds having left the trees of this field for some other place. Like the moth, the day and the year are waning. The energy that each began with is now diminishing, as is the case for all living things.

The writer is impressed with the moth’s valiant struggle against its impending death because she is also aware of its inevitable doom: “[T] here was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him.” As is common in poetry, Woolf’s diction not only suggests her attitude toward the subject, but also exhibits a lyrical quality that enhances the work’s  effect: She introduces words whose meanings are associated with youth and energy, as well as sounding strong with the “vigorous” consonants of “g,” “c,” “z,” and “t”—words such as “vigour,” “clamour,” and “zest.” Yet, the author counters this positive tone with other words that suggest, both in meaning and in their softer sounds, the vulnerability of living things: “thin,” “frail,” “diminutive,” and “futile.” In a third category of diction, with words of compliment—”extraordinary” and “uncomplainingly”—

Woolf acknowledges the moth’s admirable fight. In addition to indicating the moth’s heroism, the very length of these words seems to model the moth’s attempts to drag out its last moments of life.

3. Style and Tone

• Style: writing skills that contribute to the effect of any piece of literature
• Tone: attitude conveyed by the language a writer chooses

Woolf’s choice of tone for an essay on this topic is, perhaps, what distinguishes it from the many other literary works on the subject. The attitude is not one of tragedy, horror, or indignation, as we might expect. Rather, through imagery and diction, Woolf generates a tone of wistfulness . By carefully crafting the reader’s experience of the moth’s death, through the author’s own first person point of view, she reminds us of our own human struggle against death, which is both heroic and inevitable.

Step 2: Personal Response

For Further Reading

Believe it or not, people actually add essays to their reading lists! Here are a few folks talking about their favorite essay collections. 🙂

https://youtu.be/ta68Bj7n0o4

Attributions

• Content created by Dr. Karen Palmer. Licensed under CC BY NC SA .
• Content adapted from “Creative Nonfiction, the 4th Genre” from Writing and Literature , licensed under CC BY SA .
• Content adapted from “ What is Creative Non-Fiction ” licensed CC BY NC .

The Worry Free Writer Copyright © 2020 by Dr. Karen Palmer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Creative Nonfiction: A Movement, Not a Moment

This may come as a surprise, but I don’t know who actually coined the term creative nonfiction. As far as I know, nobody knows. I have been using it for a long time, though, as have others, and although the term came into vogue relatively recently (about the time I started this journal, 13 years ago), the kind of writing it describes has a long history. George Orwell’s famous essay, “Shooting an Elephant,” is textbook creative nonfiction, combining personal experience with high-quality literary-writing techniques. Ernest Hemingway’s paean to bullfighting, “Death in the Afternoon,” falls under the creative nonfiction umbrella as does Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff” and Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes.”

For a time, this kind of writing gained popularity as “New Journalism” due in large part to Wolfe, who published a book of that title in 1973 which declared that this style of writing “would wipe out the novel as literature’s main event.” Gay Talese described New Journalism in the introduction to his landmark collection, “Fame and Obscurity”: “Though often reading like fiction, it is not fiction. It is, or should be, as reliable as the most reliable reportage, although it seeks a larger truth [my italics] than is possible through a mere compilation of verifiable facts, the use of direct quotation and the adherence to the rigid organizational style of the older form.”

This is perhaps creative nonfiction’s greatest asset: It offers flexibility and freedom while adhering to the basic tenets of nonfiction writing and/or reporting. In creative nonfiction, writers can be poetic and journalistic simultaneously. Creative nonfiction writers are encouraged to utilize literary techniques in their prose—from scene to dialogue to description to point of view—and be cinematic at the same time. Creative nonfiction writers write about themselves and others, capturing real people and real life in ways that can and have changed the world. What is most important and enjoyable about creative nonfiction is that it not only allows but also encourages the writer to become a part of the story or essay being written. The personal involvement creates a special magic that alleviates the suffering and anxiety of the writing experience; it provides many outlets for satisfaction and self discovery, flexibility and freedom.

Since the early 1990s, there has been an explosion of creative nonfiction in the publishing and academic worlds. Many of our best magazines—The New Yorker, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, Esquire—publish more creative nonfiction than fiction and poetry combined. Every year, more universities offer Master of Fine Arts degrees in creative nonfiction. Newspapers are publishing an increasing amount of creative nonfiction, not only as features but in the news and Op-Ed pages, as well.

This wasn’t always the case. When I started teaching in the English department at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1970s, the concept of an “artful” or “new” nonfiction was considered, to say the least, unlikely. My colleagues snickered when I proposed teaching a “creative” nonfiction course, while the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences proclaimed that nonfiction writing in general—forget the use of the word creative—was, at best, a craft, not too different from plumbing. As the chairman of our department put it one day in a faculty meeting while we were debating the legitimacy of the course: “After all, gentlemen”—the fact that many of his colleagues were women often slipped his mind—“we’re interested in literature here, not writing.” That remark and the subsequent debate had been precipitated by a contingent of students from the school newspaper who marched on the chairman’s office and politely requested more nonfiction writing courses “of the creative kind.”

One colleague, aghast at the prospect of this “new thing” (creative nonfiction), carried a dozen of his favorite books to the meeting— poetry, fiction and nonfiction—gave a belabored mini-review of each and then, pointing a finger at the editor of the paper and pounding a fist, stated: “After you read all these books and understand what they mean, I will consider voting for a course called creative nonfiction. Otherwise, I don’t want to be bothered.” Luckily, most of my colleagues didn’t want to be bothered fighting the school newspaper, so the course was approved—and I became one of the first people, if not the first, to teach creative nonfiction at the university level, anywhere. That was in 1973.

Twenty years later, I started the journal Creative Nonfiction to provide a literary outlet for those journalists who aspired to experiment with combining fact and narrative. I wrote an editorial statement, put out a call for manuscripts and waited for the essays to pour in. Which they did: Many dozens of nonfiction pieces arrived at our mailbox over the first few weeks, more and more as the word spread, and we filled our first few issues.

And this was as I had expected. I had been confident that there were great creative nonfiction writers everywhere waiting for the opportunity to liberate themselves—all they needed was a venue. But I soon began to realize, as I spread the essays out on the floor in my office, as I tended to do when selecting and choreographing an issue, that most of the best essays were written not by journalists but by poets and novelists.

In fact, writers crossing genres seems to be another significant hallmark of the creative nonfiction genre and a reason for its popularity. Many of the writers whose works have appeared in the pages of Creative Nonfiction over the years first made their marks in other genres.

All this flexibility—writers crossing genres, applying tools from poetry and fiction to true stories—has made some people, writers of creative nonfiction included, uncomfortable. I travel often and give talks to groups of students and other aspiring writers. Invariably, people in the audience ask questions about what writers can or can’t do, stylistically and in content, while writing creative nonfiction. The questioners are unrelenting: “How can you be certain that the dialogue you are remembering and recreating from an incident that occurred months ago is accurate?” “How can you look through the eyes of your characters if you are not inside their heads?”

I always answer as best I can. I try to explain that such questions have a lot to do with a writer’s ethical and moral boundaries and, most important, how hard writers are willing to work to achieve accuracy and credibility in their narratives. Making up a story or elaborating extemporaneously on a situation that did, in fact, occur can be interesting but unnecessary. Truth is often more compelling to contemplate than fiction. But the questions and the confusion about what a writer can or cannot do often persist—for too long.

The Creative Nonfiction Police

Once, at a college in Texas, I finally threw up my hands in frustration and said, “Listen, I can’t answer all of these questions with rules and regulations. I am not,” I announced, pausing rather theatrically, “the creative nonfiction police!”

There was a woman in the audience—someone I had noticed earlier during my reading. She was in the front row: hard to miss— older than most of the undergraduates, blond, attractive, in her late 30s maybe. She had the alert yet composed look of a nurse, a person only semi-relaxed, always ready to act or react. She had taken her shoes off and propped her feet on the stage; I remember how her toes wiggled as she laughed at the essay I had been reading.

But when I announced, dramatically, “I am not the creative nonfiction police,” although many people chuckled, this woman suddenly jumped to her feet, whipped out a badge and pointed in my direction. “Well I am,” she announced. “Someone has to be. And you are under arrest.”

Then she scooped up her shoes and stormed barefooted from the room. The Q-and-A ended soon after, and I rushed into the hallway to find the woman with the badge. I had many questions, beginning with “Who the hell are you? Why do you have a badge? And how did you know what I was going to say when I didn’t have any idea?” I had never used the term creative nonfiction police before that moment. But she was gone. My host said the woman was a stranger. We asked around, students and colleagues. No one knew her. She was a mystery to everyone, especially me.

The bigger mystery, however, then and now, is the debate that triggered my symbolic arrest: the set of parameters that govern or define creative nonfiction and the questions writers must consider while laboring in or struggling with what we call the literature of reality.

I meant what I said to that audience: I am not the creative nonfiction police. But I have been called “the Godfather behind creative nonfiction,” and I have been doing this for a long time—more than a dozen published books, 30 years of teaching and then editing this groundbreaking journal. And so, while I won’t lay down the law, I will define some of the essential elements of creative nonfiction. The

Basic public education once covered the three R’s: Reading, ’Riting and ’Rithmatic. I find it’s helpful to think of the basic tenets of creative nonfiction (especially immersion journalism) in terms of the five R’s.

The first R is the “real life” aspect of the writing experience. As a writing teacher, I design assignments that have a real life, or immersion, aspect: I force my students out into their communities for an hour, a day or even a week so that they see and understand that the foundation of good writing is personal experience. I’ve sent my students to police stations, bagel shops, golf courses; together, my classes have gone on excursions and participated in public-service projects—all in an attempt to experience or to recreate from experience real life.

Which is not to say that all creative nonfiction has to involve the writer’s immersion into the experiences of others; some writers (and students) may utilize their own personal experience. In one introductory course I taught, a young man working his way through school as a salesperson wrote about selling shoes, while another student who served as a volunteer in a hospice captured a dramatic moment of death, grief and family relief.

Not only were these essays—and many others my students have written over the years—based on real life, but they also contained personal messages from writer to reader, which gave them extra meaning. “An essay is when I write what I think about something,” students will often say to me. Which is true, to a certain extent—and also the source of the meaning of the second R: “reflection.” In creative nonfiction, unlike in traditional journalism, a writer’s feelings and responses about a subject are permitted and encouraged. But essays can’t just be personal opinion; writers have to reach out to readers in a number of different and compelling ways.

This reaching out is essential if a writer hopes to find an audience. Creative Nonfiction receives approximately 200 unsolicited essays a month, sent in by writers seeking publication. The vast majority of these submissions are rejected, and one common reason is an overwhelming egocentrism: In other words, writers write too much about themselves and what they think without seeking a universal focus so that readers are properly and firmly engaged. Essays that are so personal that they omit the reader are essays that will never see the light of print. The overall objective of a writer should be to make the reader tune in— not out.

Another main reason Creative Nonfiction and many other journals and magazines reject essays is a lack of attention to another essential element of the creative nonfiction genre, which is to gather and present information, to teach readers about a person, place, idea or situation, combining the creativity of the artistic experience with the essential third R in the formula: “research.”

Even the most personal essay is usually full of substantive detail about a subject that affects or concerns a writer. Read the books and essays of the most renowned nonfiction writers in this century, and you will find writers engaged in a quest for information and discovery. From Orwell to Hemingway to John McPhee and Joan Didion, books and essays written by these writers are invariably about a subject other than themselves, although the narrator will be intimately included in the story. What’s more, the subject—whatever it is—has been carefully researched and described or explained in such a way as to make a lasting impression on readers.

Personal experience, research and spontaneous intellectual discourse—an airing and exploration of ideas—are equally vital elements in creative nonfiction. Annie Dillard, another prominent creative nonfiction writer, takes great pains to achieve this balance in her work. In her first book, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” which won the Pulitzer Prize, and in her other books and essays, Dillard repeatedly overwhelms her readers with factual information: minutely detailed descriptions of insects, botany and biology, history and anthropology, blended with her own feelings about life.

One of my favorite Dillard essays, “Schedules,” focuses on the importance of writers working on a regular schedule rather than writing only intermittently. In this essay, she discusses, among many other subjects, Hasidism, chess, baseball, warblers, pine trees, June bugs, writers’ studios and potted plants—as well as her own schedule and writing habits and those of Wallace Stevens and Jack London.

What I am saying is that the genre of creative nonfiction is open to anyone with a curious mind and a sense of self. The research phase actually launches and anchors the creative effort. Whether it is a book or essay I am planning, I always begin my quest in the library (or, increasingly, online) for three reasons. First, I need to familiarize myself with the subject. If I don’t know much about it, I want to make myself knowledgeable enough to ask intelligent questions when I begin interviewing people. If I can’t display at least a minimal understanding of the subject about which I want to write, I will lose the confidence and support of the people who must provide me access to the experience.

Second, I want to assess my competition. What other essays, books and articles have been written about this subject? Who are the experts, the pioneers, the most controversial figures? I want to find a new angle—not write a story similar to one that has already been written. And finally, how can I reflect on and evaluate a person, subject or place unless I know all of the contrasting points of view? Reflection may permit a certain amount of speculation, but only when based on a solid foundation of knowledge.

This brings me to the fourth R: “reading.” Writers must read not only the research material unearthed in the library but also the work of the masters of their profession. I have heard some very fine writers claim that they don’t read too much any more or that they don’t read for long periods, especially during the time they are laboring on a lengthy writing project. But almost all writers have read the best writers in their field and are able to converse in great detail about their stylistic approaches and the intellectual content of their work, much as any good visual artist is able to discuss the work of Picasso, Van Gogh, Michelangelo and Warhol.

Finally, there’s the fifth R: the “’riting,” the most artistic and romantic aspect of the whole experience. The first four R’s relate to the nonfiction part of creative nonfiction; this last R is the phase where writers get to create. This often happens in two phases: Usually there is an inspirational explosion at the beginning, a time when writers allow instinct and feeling to guide their fingers as they create paragraphs, pages and even entire chapters or complete essays. This is what art of any form is all about: the passion of the moment and the magic of the muse. I am not saying this always happens; it doesn’t. Writing is a difficult labor in which a daily grind or struggle (ideally with a regular schedule, as Annie Dillard concludes) is inevitable. But this first part of the experience— for most writers, most of the time—is rather loose and spontaneous and, therefore, more creative and fun. The second part of the writing experience—the craft part, which comes into play after your basic essay is written—is equally important and a hundred times more difficult.

The Building Blocks of Creative Nonfiction: Scene, Dialogue, Intimate Detail and Other Essentials

The craft part means the construction of the essay (or chapter or even book):how the research, reflection and real life experience are arranged to make a story meaningful and important to readers.

The primary way this is accomplished in creative nonfiction is through the use of scene. In fact, one of the most obvious distinguishing factors between traditional journalism and creative nonfiction—or simply between ordinary prose and good, evocative writing—is the use of vignettes, episodes and other slices of reality. The uninspired writer will tell the reader about a subject, place or personality, but the creative nonfiction writer will show that subject, place or personality in action.

There’s an easy way to see how essential scene is to building a story; I like to call it “The Yellow Test.” Take a yellow highlighter or magic marker and leaf through your favorite magazine—Vanity Fair, Esquire, The New Yorker or Creative Nonfiction—or return to a favorite chapter in a book by an author like Annie Dillard or John McPhee. Highlight the scenes, the passages—large or small—where things happen. Then return to the beginning and review your handiwork. Chances are, anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of each essay or chapter will be yellow. (This test works equally well with other forms of creative writing: Plays are obviously constructed of scenes, as are novels and short stories and films. Even most poems are very scenic.)

But what makes a scene? First and foremost, a scene contains action. Something happens. I jump on my motorcycle and go helter-skelter around the country; suddenly, in the middle of July in Yellowstone National Park, I am confronted with 20 inches of snow. Action needn’t be wild, sexy and death-defying, however. There’s also action in the classroom: A student asks a question, which requires an answer, which necessitates a dialogue, which is a marvelously effective tool to trigger or record action.

Dialogue, another important element of creative nonfiction, means people saying things to one another, expressing themselves. It is a valuable element of scene. Collecting dialogue is one of the reasons writers immerse themselves at a police station, bagel shop or zoo. It lets them discover what people have to say spontaneously—not just in response to a reporter’s questions.

Another technique that helps writers create scene may be described as “intimate and specific detail.” This is a lesson that writers of all genres need to know: The secret to making prose (or, for that matter, poetry) memorable—and, therefore, vital and important—is to catalogue with specificity the details that are most intimate. By intimate, I mean ideas and images that readers won’t easily imagine—ideas and images you observed that symbolize a memorable truth about the characters or the situations about which you are writing. Intimate means recording and noting details that the reader might not know or even imagine without your particular inside insight. Sometimes intimate detail can be so specific and special that it becomes unforgettable in the reader’s mind.

A very famous “intimate” detail appears in a classic creative nonfiction profile, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” written by Gay Talese in 1966 and published in Esquire. In this profile, Talese leads readers on a whirlwind cross-country tour, revealing Sinatra and his entourage interacting with one another and with the rest of the world, and demonstrating how Sinatra’s world and the world inhabited by everyone else often collide. The scenes are action-oriented; they contain dialogue and evocative description, including a moment when Talese spotted a gray-haired lady with a tiny satchel in the shadows of the Sinatra entourage and put her in the story. She was, it turned out, the guardian of Sinatra’s collection of toupees. This tiny detail—Sinatra’s wig lady—made such an impression when I first read the essay that even now, years later, any time I see Sinatra on television or in rerun movies, or spot his photo in a magazine, I find myself searching the background for the gray-haired lady with the satchel.

The gray-haired lady was a detail that readers wouldn’t have known about if Talese hadn’t shown it to them, and her constant presence there in the shadows—hovering to service or replace Sinatra’s toupee— offered important insight into Sinatra’s character. And although we can’t achieve such symbolism each time we capture an incident, writers who want their words to be remembered beyond the dates on which their stories are published or broadcast will seek to discover the special observations that symbolize the intimacy they have attained with their subjects.

Of course, all of these vividly told scenes have to be organized according to some larger plan to make a complete story. We call this plan, or structure, the frame of the story. The frame represents a way of ordering or controlling a writer’s narrative so that the elements of his book, article or essay are presented in an interesting and orderly fashion with an interlaced integrity from beginning to end.

The most basic frame is a simple beginning-to-end chronology. For example, “Hoop Dreams,” a dramatic documentary (which is classic creative nonfiction in a different medium) begins with two African American teenage basketball stars living in a ghetto and sharing a dream of stardom in the NBA, and dramatically tracks both of their careers over the next six years.

Other frames are very complicated; in the movie, “Pulp Fiction,” Quentin Tarantino skillfully tangles and manipulates time. For a variety of reasons, writers often choose not to frame their stories in a strictly chronological sequence. My book “One Children’s Place” begins in the operating room at a children’s hospital. It introduces a surgeon, whose name is Marc Rowe; his severely handicapped patient, Danielle; and her mother, Debbie, who has dedicated her every waking moment to Danielle. Two years of her life have been spent inside the walls of this building with parents and children from all around the world whose lives are too endangered to leave the confines of the hospital. As Danielle’s surgery goes forward, the reader tours the hospital in a very intimate way, observing in the emergency room; participating in helicopter rescue missions as part of the emergency trauma team; and attending ethics meetings, well-baby clinics, child abuse examinations— every conceivable activity that happens at a typical high-acuity children’s hospital—so that readers will learn from the inside out how such an institution and the people it serves and supports function on an hour-by-hour basis. We even learn about Marc Rowe’s guilty conscience for having slighted his own wife and children over the years so that he can care for other families.

The book ends when Danielle is released from the hospital. It took me two years to research and write this book, returning day and night to the hospital in order to understand the hospital and the people who made it special, but the story in which it is framed begins and ends in a few months.

A Code for Creative Nonfiction Writers

Finally, harder to define than the elements of craft are all the ethical and moral issues writers of creative nonfiction have to consider—the kinds of questions audiences ask me about whenever I speak about the creative nonfiction genre, the kinds of questions that lead me to proclaim that I am not, and do not want to be, the creative nonfiction police.

But I will recommend a code for creative nonfiction writers—a kind of checklist. The word checklist is carefully chosen; there are no rules, laws or specific prescriptions dictating what you can or can’t do as a creative nonfiction writer. The gospel according to Lee Gutkind doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. It’s more a question of doing the right thing, following the Golden Rule: Treat others with courtesy and respect. First, strive for the truth. Be certain that everything you write is as accurate and honest as you can make it. I don’t mean that everyone who has shared the experience you are writing about should agree that your account is true. As I said, everyone has his or her own very precious and private and shifting truth. But be certain your narrative is as true to your memory as possible.

Second, recognize the important distinction between recollected conversation and fabricated dialogue. Don’t make anything up, and don’t tell your readers what you think your characters are thinking during the time about which you are writing. If you want to know how or what people are or were thinking, then ask them. Don’t assume or guess.

Third, don’t round corners—or compress situations or characters— unnecessarily. Not that it’s absolutely wrong to round corners or compress characters or incidents, but if you do experiment with these techniques, make certain you have a good reason. Making literary decisions based on good narrative principles is often legitimate—you are, after all, writers. But stop to consider the people about whom you are writing. Unleash your venom on the guilty parties; punish them as they deserve. But also ask yourself: Who are the innocent victims? How have you protected them? Adults can file suit against you, but are you violating the privacy or endangering the emotional stability of children? Are you being fair to the aged or infirm?

Fourth, one way to protect the characters in your book, article or essay is to allow them to defend themselves—or at least to read what you have written about them. Few writers do this, because they are afraid of litigation or ashamed or embarrassed about the intimacies they have revealed. But sharing your narrative with the people about whom you are writing doesn’t mean that you have to change what you say about them; rather, it only means that you are being responsible to your characters and their stories. I understand why you would not want to share your narrative; it could be dangerous. It could ruin your friendship, your marriage, your future. But by the same token, this is the kind of responsible action you might appreciate if the shoe were on the other foot. I have, on occasion, shared parts of books with the characters I have written about with positive results. First, my characters corrected my mistakes. But, more important, when you come face to face with a character, you are able to communicate on a different and deeper level. When you show them what you think and feel, when they read what you have written, they may get angry—an action in itself that is interesting to observe and even to write about.

Or they may feel obliged to provide their side of the situation— a side that you have been hesitant to listen to or interpret. With the text in the middle, as a filter, it is possible to discuss personal history as a story somewhat disconnected from the reality you are universally experiencing. It provides a way to communicate as an exercise in writing—it filters and distances the debate. Moreover, it defines and cements your own character. The people about whom you have written may not like what you have said—and may, in fact, despise you for saying it—but they can only respect and admire the forthright way in which you have approached them. No laws govern the scope of good taste and personal integrity.

The creative nonfiction writer must rely on his or her own conscience and sensitivity to others, and display a higher morality and a healthy respect for fairness and justice. We all harbor resentments, hatreds and prejudices, but being writers doesn’t give us special dispensation to behave in ways that are unbecoming to ourselves and hurtful to others. This rationale sounds so simple—yet, it is so difficult. The moral and ethical responsibility of the creative nonfiction writer is to practice the golden rule and to be as fair and truthful as possible—to write both for art’s sake and for humanity’s sake. In other words, we police ourselves.

By saying this, I do not feel that I am being overly simplistic. As writers we intend to make a difference, to affect someone’s life over and above our own. To say something that matters—this is why we write, after all. That’s the bottom line: to impact society, to put a personal stamp on history, to plant the seed of change. Art and literature are our legacies to other generations. We will be forgotten, most of us writers, but our books and essays, our stories and poems will always, somewhere, have a life.

Wherever you personally draw lines in your writing, remember the basic rules of good citizenship: Do not recreate incidents and characters who never existed; do not write to do harm to innocent victims; do not forget your own story but, while considering your struggle and the heights of your achievements, think repeatedly about how your story will affect your reader. Over and above the creation of a seamless narrative, you are seeking to touch and affect someone else’s life—which is the goal creative nonfiction writers share with novelists and poets. We all want to connect with another human being— or as many people as possible—in such a way that they will remember us and share our legacy with others.

Someday, I hope to connect with the woman with the badge and the bare feet, face-to-face. I have never forgotten her. She has, in some strange way, become my conscience, standing over me as I write, forcing me to ask the questions about my work that I have recommended to you. I hope we all feel her shadow over our shoulders each time we sit down, face the keyboard and begin to write.

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7 Techniques That Will Bring Your Creative Nonfiction to Life by Cecilia Shutter

Posted by Guest Post | Mar 2, 2021 | Blog , WRITING - MEMBERS ONLY , Writing Nonfiction | 0

The artfulness of creative nonfiction (also referred to as literary or narrative nonfiction), lies in the use of literary techniques, typically associated with novels, plays, and poetry, to bring a true story to life — so that it can be enjoyed for the finesse of the language and the craft of storytelling as well as what they stand to learn. Whether you’re writing a memoir, a lyric essay, or a piece of literary journalism, here are seven techniques that you can use to lift your creative nonfiction right up off the page.

“Show don’t tell”

When writing nonfiction , it can be tempting to state things plainly so that your reader can follow the facts, but this may fall flat for someone who’s hoping to get lost in what they’re reading. One way to avoid this is to heed the adage usually applied to writing fiction: ‘Show don’t tell”.

Rather than telling the reader that things are a certain way, try to convey setting and story through vivid sensory details and descriptions of actions or reactions. This is also an effective tool for characterization in that you can build a strong impression of a character by describing their thoughts and actions. Readers enjoy interpreting and so allowing them to do a little bit of the work will make your writing much more compelling and enjoyable than just having everything spelled out for them.

There’s probably a particular theme or significant idea that’s central to your work. While this can present itself literally at various points in the action or description, you may wish to allude to it in a more symbolic way by employing a recurring motif. This could be a particular image, word, or turn of phrase. Whether the representation is literal or highly abstract or literal, it’s imperative that it occurs repeatedly and will be picked up by the reader. A motif can add an overall depth and cohesion to your work, and give your reader something to look out for that’s extremely satisfying to spot.

In Media Res

As a writer , it’s up to you to decide how exactly you’re going to structure your narrative. The way in which events unfold can affect your reader’s interest, the flow of the story, and the atmosphere of the work. One way of doing things is to begin in media res — which is fancy-talk for ‘right in the middle of the action’. Starting your piece of creative nonfiction in media res immediately hooks the reader’s attention; then, you can take your time building up the backstory and gradually reveal the lead up to that climactic moment where you kicked things off.

Choosing the right moment at which to begin hinges entirely on which scene is most relevant to the conflict at the heart of the book. An in media res structure does not give you free reign to start from any dramatic point in your story, but rather to craft an interesting starting point that enhances the subsequent exposition, perhaps making it more tense and urgent.

This figurative device is perhaps one of the hallmarks of creative writing and images of Juliet as the sun might spring to mind when you hear the word metaphor. Much like the explanatory power of an analogy, which can be found in both fiction and nonfiction, the likening of two things through metaphor helps to highlight certain qualities or details that are particularly important in that moment. Metaphors can be broader than just one isolated comparison between two things in a specific line or paragraph; you might like to make use of an extended metaphor, which runs throughout a piece of work, to bring further understanding and tangibility to a complex idea.

Polyvocality

Polyvocality is a technique in which more than one ‘voice’ is used in a single work. This usually takes the form of a story told from the viewpoints of several different people — broadening interest for your reader and allowing you to approach the same idea in multiple ways — but this is not the only approach.

Polyvocality also allows an author to make use of distinctly different dialects or registers of the language; for example, switching between colloquial American English and academic English. This is known as code-switching. Code-switching does not necessitate that the various ‘voices’ be of different people, but rather that they differ in linguistic quality. This might convey a transition from the public to the private sphere for one single character, or may highlight the relevant sociopolitical considerations surrounding this speaker’s linguistic choices.

Rather than merely stating and accepting a fact or decision, you might want to draw out the consideration of other options, or big questions, by rhetorically expressing doubt as to what the right answer may be. The use of aporia, whether on behalf of a character or in the form of authorial musings, enables you to emphasize the intricacy of a question or problem and elicit thought from your reader. By stirring up the questions that surround your chosen topic, you are inviting the reader to play a more active role in engaging with the subject matter at hand. In the case of a memoir, or any work of nonfiction with a key character, aporia can also be effective in drawing readers into the dilemma or turmoil that this character is experiencing, eliciting a sympathetic response.

Adnomination

Sounds are an incredibly effective way in which to draw your reader’s focus to a particular phrase, thereby emphasizing its meaning. By employing adnomination, the repetition of words that come from the same root, you can create such a powerful sound effect. While this is one that should certainly be used sparingly, it can be extremely evocative and add rhythm and musicality to your writing.

From a marketing perspective as well, phrases that make use of adnomination, and clear sound effects in general, tend to be quite memorable, so they often work well as taglines or quotables — perfect for spreading the word about your work, or simply earning your piece of creative nonfiction a place in your reader’s memory.

And that’s it! Once you’ve nailed down the research for your work of creative nonfiction, armed with these tips, you’ll be ready to start writing a masterpiece!

Author Bio:

Cecilia is a writer with Reedsy , a marketplace that connects self-publishing authors with the world’s best editors, designers, and marketers.

If you like this blog post, you’ll love our Author Toolkit on writing nonfiction books . It includes checklists, templates, worksheets and more. Check it out!

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A Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction

by Melissa Donovan | Mar 4, 2021 | Creative Writing | 12 comments

Try your hand at writing creative nonfiction.

Here at Writing Forward, we’re primarily interested in three types of creative writing: poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

With poetry and fiction, there are techniques and best practices that we can use to inform and shape our writing, but there aren’t many rules beyond the standards of style, grammar, and good writing . We can let our imaginations run wild; everything from nonsense to outrageous fantasy is fair game for bringing our ideas to life when we’re writing fiction and poetry.

However, when writing creative nonfiction, there are some guidelines that we need to follow. These guidelines aren’t set in stone; however, if you violate them, you might find yourself in trouble with your readers as well as the critics.

What is Creative Nonfiction?

Telling True Stories (aff link).

What sets creative nonfiction apart from fiction or poetry?

For starters, creative nonfiction is factual. A memoir is not just any story; it’s a true story. A biography is the real account of someone’s life. There is no room in creative nonfiction for fabrication or manipulation of the facts.

So what makes creative nonfiction writing different from something like textbook writing or technical writing? What makes it creative?

Nonfiction writing that isn’t considered creative usually has business or academic applications. Such writing isn’t designed for entertainment or enjoyment. Its sole purpose is to convey information, usually in a dry, straightforward manner.

Creative nonfiction, on the other hand, pays credence to the craft of writing, often through literary devices and storytelling techniques, which make the prose aesthetically pleasing and bring layers of meaning to the context. It’s pleasurable to read.

According to Wikipedia:

Creative nonfiction (also known as literary or narrative nonfiction) is a genre of writing truth which uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as technical writing or journalism, which is also rooted in accurate fact, but is not primarily written in service to its craft.

Like other forms of nonfiction, creative nonfiction relies on research, facts, and credibility. While opinions may be interjected, and often the work depends on the author’s own memories (as is the case with memoirs and autobiographies), the material must be verifiable and accurately reported.

Creative Nonfiction Genres and Forms

There are many forms and genres within creative nonfiction:

• Autobiography and biography
• Personal essays
• Literary journalism
• Any topical material, such as food or travel writing, self-development, art, or history, can be creatively written with a literary angle

Let’s look more closely at a few of these nonfiction forms and genres:

Memoirs: A memoir is a long-form (book-length) written work. It is a firsthand, personal account that focuses on a specific experience or situation. One might write a memoir about serving in the military or struggling with loss. Memoirs are not life stories, but they do examine life through a particular lens. For example, a memoir about being a writer might begin in childhood, when the author first learned to write. However, the focus of the book would be on writing, so other aspects of the author’s life would be left out, for the most part.

Biographies and autobiographies: A biography is the true story of someone’s life. If an author composes their own biography, then it’s called an autobiography. These works tend to cover the entirety of a person’s life, albeit selectively.

Literary journalism: Journalism sticks with the facts while exploring the who, what, where, when, why, and how of a particular person, topic, or event. Biographies, for example, are a genre of literary journalism, which is a form of nonfiction writing. Traditional journalism is a method of information collection and organization. Literary journalism also conveys facts and information, but it honors the craft of writing by incorporating storytelling techniques and literary devices. Opinions are supposed to be absent in traditional journalism, but they are often found in literary journalism, which can be written in long or short formats.

Personal essays are a short form of creative nonfiction that can cover a wide range of styles, from writing about one’s experiences to expressing one’s personal opinions. They can address any topic imaginable. Personal essays can be found in many places, from magazines and literary journals to blogs and newspapers. They are often a short form of memoir writing.

Speeches  can cover a range of genres, from political to motivational to educational. A tributary speech honors someone whereas a roast ridicules them (in good humor). Unlike most other forms of writing, speeches are written to be performed rather than read.

Journaling: A common, accessible, and often personal form of creative nonfiction writing is journaling. A journal can also contain fiction and poetry, but most journals would be considered nonfiction. Some common types of written journals are diaries, gratitude journals, and career journals (or logs), but this is just a small sampling of journaling options.

Writing Creative Nonfiction (aff link).

Any topic or subject matter is fair game in the realm of creative nonfiction. Some nonfiction genres and topics that offer opportunities for creative nonfiction writing include food and travel writing, self-development, art and history, and health and fitness. It’s not so much the topic or subject matter that renders a written work as creative; it’s how it’s written — with due diligence to the craft of writing through application of language and literary devices.

Guidelines for Writing Creative Nonfiction

Here are six simple guidelines to follow when writing creative nonfiction:

• Get your facts straight. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing your own story or someone else’s. If readers, publishers, and the media find out you’ve taken liberties with the truth of what happened, you and your work will be scrutinized. Negative publicity might boost sales, but it will tarnish your reputation; you’ll lose credibility. If you can’t refrain from fabrication, then think about writing fiction instead of creative nonfiction.
• Issue a disclaimer. A lot of nonfiction is written from memory, and we all know that human memory is deeply flawed. It’s almost impossible to recall a conversation word for word. You might forget minor details, like the color of a dress or the make and model of a car. If you aren’t sure about the details but are determined to include them, be upfront and include a disclaimer that clarifies the creative liberties you’ve taken.
• Consider the repercussions. If you’re writing about other people (even if they are secondary figures), you might want to check with them before you publish your nonfiction. Some people are extremely private and don’t want any details of their lives published. Others might request that you leave certain things out, which they want to keep private. Otherwise, make sure you’ve weighed the repercussions of revealing other people’s lives to the world. Relationships have been both strengthened and destroyed as a result of authors publishing the details of other people’s lives.
• Be objective. You don’t need to be overly objective if you’re telling your own, personal story. However, nobody wants to read a highly biased biography. Book reviews for biographies are packed with harsh criticism for authors who didn’t fact-check or provide references and for those who leave out important information or pick and choose which details to include to make the subject look good or bad.
• Pay attention to language. You’re not writing a textbook, so make full use of language, literary devices, and storytelling techniques.
• Know your audience. Creative nonfiction sells, but you must have an interested audience. A memoir about an ordinary person’s first year of college isn’t especially interesting. Who’s going to read it? However, a memoir about someone with a learning disability navigating the first year of college is quite compelling, and there’s an identifiable audience for it. When writing creative nonfiction, a clearly defined audience is essential.

Are you looking for inspiration? Check out these creative nonfiction writing ideas.

Ten creative nonfiction writing prompts and projects.

The prompts below are excerpted from my book, 1200 Creative Writing Prompts , which contains fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction writing prompts. Use these prompts to spark a creative nonfiction writing session.

1200 Creative Writing Prompts (aff link).

• What is your favorite season? What do you like about it? Write a descriptive essay about it.
• What do you think the world of technology will look like in ten years? Twenty? What kind of computers, phones, and other devices will we use? Will technology improve travel? Health care? What do you expect will happen and what would you like to happen?
• Have you ever fixed something that was broken? Ever solved a computer problem on your own? Write an article about how to fix something or solve some problem.
• Have you ever had a run-in with the police? What happened?
• Have you ever traveled alone? Tell your story. Where did you go? Why? What happened?
• Let’s say you write a weekly advice column. Choose the topic you’d offer advice on, and then write one week’s column.
• Think of a major worldwide problem: for example, hunger, climate change, or political corruption. Write an article outlining a solution (or steps toward a solution).
• Choose a cause that you feel is worthy and write an article persuading others to join that cause.
• Someone you barely know asks you to recommend a book. What do you recommend and why?
• Hard skills are abilities you have acquired, such as using software, analyzing numbers, and cooking. Choose a hard skill you’ve mastered and write an article about how this skill is beneficial using your own life experiences as examples.

Do You Write Creative Nonfiction?

Have you ever written creative nonfiction? How often do you read it? Can you think of any nonfiction forms and genres that aren’t included here? Do you have any guidelines to add to this list? Are there any situations in which it would be acceptable to ignore these guidelines? Got any tips to add? Do you feel that nonfiction should focus on content and not on craft? Leave a comment to share your thoughts, and keep writing.

12 Comments

Shouldn’t ALL non-fiction be creative to some extent? I am a former business journalist, and won awards for the imaginative approach I took to writing about even the driest of business topics: pensions, venture capital, tax, employment law and other potentially dusty subjects. The drier and more complicated the topic, the more creative the approach must be, otherwise no-one with anything else to do will bother to wade through it. [to be honest, taking the fictional approach to these ghastly tortuous topics was the only way I could face writing about them.] I used all the techniques that fiction writers have to play with, and used some poetic techniques, too, to make the prose more readable. What won the first award was a little serial about two businesses run and owned by a large family at war with itself. Every episode centred on one or two common and crucial business issues, wrapped up in a comedy-drama, and it won a lot of fans (happily for me) because it was so much easier to read and understand than the dry technical writing they were used to. Life’s too short for dusty writing!

I believe most journalism is creative and would therefore fall under creative nonfiction. However, there is a lot of legal, technical, medical, science, and textbook writing in which there is no room for creativity (or creativity has not made its way into these genres yet). With some forms, it makes sense. I don’t think it would be appropriate for legal briefings to use story or literary devices just to add a little flair. On the other hand, it would be a good thing if textbooks were a little more readable.

I think Abbs is right – even in academic papers, an example or story helps the reader visualize the problem or explanation more easily. I scan business books to see if there are stories or examples, if not, then I don’t pick up the book. That’s where the creativity comes in – how to create examples, what to conflate, what to emphasis as we create our fictional people to illustrate important, real points.

Thanks for the post. Very helpful. I’d never thought about writing creative nonfiction before.

You’re welcome 🙂

Hi Melissa!

Love your website. You always give a fun and frank assessment of all things pertaining to writing. It is a pleasure to read. I have even bought several of the reference and writing books you recommended. Keep up the great work.

Top 10 Reasons Why Creative Nonfiction Is A Questionable Category

10. When you look up “Creative Nonfiction” in the dictionary it reads: See Fiction

9. The first creative nonfiction example was a Schwinn Bicycle Assembly Guide that had printed in its instructions: Can easily be assembled by one person with a Phillips head screw driver, Allen keys, adjustable wrench and cable cutters in less than an hour.

8. Creative Nonfiction; Based on actual events; Suggested by a true event; Based on a true story. It’s a slippery slope.

7. The Creative Nonfiction Quarterly is only read by eleven people. Five have the same last name.

6. Creative Nonfiction settings may only include: hospitals, concentration camps, prisons and cemeteries. Exceptions may be made for asylums, rehab centers and Capitol Hill.

5. The writers who create Sterile Nonfiction or Unimaginative Nonfiction now want their category recognized.

4. Creative; Poetic License; Embellishment; Puffery. See where this is leading?

3. Creative Nonfiction is to Nonfiction as Reality TV is to Documentaries.

2. My attorney has advised that I exercise my 5th Amendment Rights or that I be allowed to give written testimony in a creative nonfiction way.

1. People believe it is a film with Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson and Queen Latifa.

Hi Steve. I’m not sure if your comment is meant to be taken tongue-in-cheek, but I found it humorous.

My publisher is releasing my Creative Nonfiction book based on my grandmother’s life this May 2019 in Waikiki. I’ll give you an update soon about sales. I was fortunate enough to get some of the original and current Hawaii 5-0 members to show up for the book signing.

Hi, when writing creative nonfiction- is it appropriate to write from someone else’s point of view when you don’t know them? I was thinking of writing about Greta Thungbrurg for creative nonfiction competition – but I can directly ask her questions so I’m unsure as to whether it’s accurate enough to be classified as creative non-fiction. Thank you!

Hi Madeleine. I’m not aware of creative nonfiction being written in first person from someone else’s point of view. The fact of the matter is that it wouldn’t be creative nonfiction because a person cannot truly show events from another person’s perspective. So I wouldn’t consider something like that nonfiction. It would usually be a biography written in third person, and that is common. You can certainly use quotes and other indicators to represent someone else’s views and experiences. I could probably be more specific if I knew what kind of work it is (memoir, biography, self-development, etc.).

Dear Melissa: I am trying to market a book in the metaphysical genre about an experience I had, receiving the voice of a Civil War spirit who tells his story (not channeling). Part is my reaction and discussion with a close friend so it is not just memoir. I referred to it as ‘literary non-fiction’ but an agent put this down by saying it is NOT literary non-fiction. Looking at your post, could I say that my book is ‘creative non-fiction’? (agents can sometimes be so nit-picky)

Hi Liz. You opened your comment by classifying the book as metaphysical but later referred to it as literary nonfiction. The premise definitely sounds like a better fit in the metaphysical category. Creative nonfiction is not a genre; it’s a broader category or description. Basically, all literature is either fiction or nonfiction (poetry would be separate from these). Describing nonfiction as creative only indicates that it’s not something like a user guide. I think you were heading in the right direction with the metaphysical classification.

The goal of marketing and labeling books with genres is to find a readership that will be interested in the work. This is an agent’s area of expertise, so assuming you’re speaking with a competent agent, I’d suggest taking their advice in this matter. It indicates that the audience perusing the literary nonfiction aisles is simply not a match for this book.

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