What is creative nonfiction?
This graphic identifies an original creative nonfiction work I have written and posted in the Penned Category.
Bruce Dobler in the Creative Nonfiction Compendium provides the definition by which I would categorize my writing.
CREATIVE NONFICTION is that branch of writing which employs literary techniques and artistic vision usually associated with fiction or poetry to report on actual persons and events.
Alternatively, it is defined as “literary journalism” or the “literature of fact.”
From the University of Pittsburg English Department website “Creative Nonfiction Writing Links,” Bruce Hoffman writes:
Though only recently identified and taught as a distinct and separate literary genre, the roots of creative nonfiction run deeply into literary tradition and history. The genre, as currently defined, is broad enough to include nature and travel writing, the personal memoir and essay, as well as “new journalism,” “gonzo journalism,” and the “nonfiction novel.”
I know that my primary readership is comprised of family and friends. It is for that audience that I’ve put this special “bug” on these pages to alert you to read these as creative nonfiction and not autobiography.
My creative nonfiction works are based on actual events, people and conversations. I condense events and write in a non-chronological order. I may also merge several people into a composite allowing the narrative to flow better. Dialogue is as I remember what was said and will not be verbatim of course.
Underlying my use of this genre is an attempt to give the reader a sense my world as it affected me at the time. In some cases, actual events and people who may have participated in the actual event of which I write may be edited out completely.
If you were a participant and say, “but that’s not how it happened,” I will have accomplished my goal of writing creative non-fiction. That my scribblings are “not as it happened” is the jumping off place for anyone reading these stories.
A sampling of other resources on the topic of creative nonfiction include:
Creative Non-Fiction The journal devoted exclusively to the creative non-fiction genre by Lee Gutkind.
Lee Gutkind, the editor and founder of this journal provides this description.
What is creative non-fiction?
Dramatic, true stories using scenes, dialogue, close, detailed descriptions and other techniques usually employed by poets and fiction writers about important subjects - from politics, to economics, to sports, to the arts and sciences, to racial relations, and family relations.
Creative Nonfiction heightens the whole concept and idea of essay writing. It allows a writer to employ the diligence of a reporter, the shifting voices and viewpoints of a novelist, the refined wordplay of a poet and the analytical modes of the essayist.
Prepared by: Patricia L. Johnson and Gary Presley
Posted on: March 21, 2004
Many literary journals and magazine publications accept works of creative nonfiction. Some of the definitions vary depending on the editor and the publication, but in general it involves relating events (via essay, memoir, or narrative journalism) using the techniques of fiction (scene, character, dialogue, foreshadowing, parallels, point of view, etc.) to send readers on a journey of discovery of the human condition and the world around them.
Often the subjects are considered important and may include interpersonal family relations, politics, economics, art and science. It brings new dimensions to writing by incorporating aspects of reporting, novel techniques like the ones mentioned in the first paragraph, poetic wordplay, and analytical techniques. Creative nonfiction is as old as storytelling itself.
Gay Talese (in his profiles of Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio) is considered the father of narrative journalism. Tom Wolfe (in his early work for ESQUIRE) is someone whose early essays got tagged as “creative nonfiction.” Then, of course, there are heavy-hitters like Barry Lopez, Edward Abbey, John McPhee, Lewis Thomas, and (Gary’s favorite) Richard Selzer.
In 400 words write about an event or encounter that taught a life lesson or revealed a personality to you. Be sure to write the truth in a style that is as accurate and informative as reportage yet also as personally provocative and dramatic as fiction. When giving critiques mention specific examples that manage to blend facts with fiction techniques.
Read some examples of creative nonfiction at Brevity Magazine: www.creativenonfiction.org
Read Lee Gutkind’s definition of creative nonfiction here: www.creativenonfiction.org
For a list of several creative nonfiction definitions and a comprehensive reading list visit these URLs:
www.pitt.edu
Roundtable discussion on creative nonfiction: www.pitt.edu
Great article on creative nonfiction by Frank Tempone: www.webdelsol.com
A more skeptical view of creative nonfiction: www.postgazette.com
Inventing Creative Non-Fiction
Some thoughts from Lee Ann Mortensen and Others
Creative nonfiction can take any form, from the letter to the list, from the biography to the memoir, from the journal to the obituary. When I say we are trying to find order in what has happened, I do not mean creative nonfiction is simply writing about what happened to me. Rather, it is writing about oneself in relation to the subject at hand. A book review is creative nonfiction in that it is a written record of the reviewer in relation to the book in question; John Krakauer’s fantastic book Into the Wild is a biography of an idealistic young man, Chris McCandless, who upon graduation from college disappeared into the wild, his decomposed body found four months later in
an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness. The biography becomes creative nonfiction as the author increasingly identifies himself with the young man, increasingly recognizing in the stupidity of the boy’s folly his own reckless self—Krakauer sees himself in relation to the subject at hand: the death of Chris McCandless. This essay itself is a form of creative nonfiction in that it is my attempt at defining an abstract through the smallest of apertures: my own experience in relation to creative nonfiction. So creative nonfiction is not solely, What happened to me today, and why is it important?
Creative nonfiction can be and often is a euphemism for the personal essay, and my earlier assertion that creative nonfiction’s being understood only through its being written is borne out rather handily in the meaning of the word essay itself.