i have learned that writing in creative non fiction brainly

Creative Nonfiction: What It Is and How to Write It

Sean Glatch  |  March 31, 2024  |  6 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 🙂

[…] 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

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Creative Nonfiction: An Overview

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

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.

TRY OUR FREE APP

Write your book in Reedsy Studio. Try the beloved writing app for free today.

Craft your masterpiece in Reedsy Studio

Plan, write, edit, and format your book in our free app made for authors.

Guides • Perfecting your Craft

Last updated on Feb 20, 2023

Creative Nonfiction: How to Spin Facts into Narrative Gold

Creative nonfiction is a genre of creative writing that approaches factual information in a literary way. This type of writing applies techniques drawn from literary fiction and poetry to material that might be at home in a magazine or textbook, combining the craftsmanship of a novel with the rigor of journalism. 

Here are some popular examples of creative nonfiction:

• The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang
• Intimations by Zadie Smith
• Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri
• The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
• I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

Creative nonfiction is not limited to novel-length writing, of course. Popular radio shows and podcasts like WBEZ’s This American Life or Sarah Koenig’s Serial also explore audio essays and documentary with a narrative approach, while personal essays like Nora Ephron’s A Few Words About Breasts and Mariama Lockington’s What A Black Woman Wishes Her Adoptive White Parents Knew also present fact with fiction-esque flair.

Writing short personal essays can be a great entry point to writing creative nonfiction. Think about a topic you would like to explore, perhaps borrowing from your own life, or a universal experience. Journal freely for five to ten minutes about the subject, and see what direction your creativity takes you in. These kinds of exercises will help you begin to approach reality in a more free flowing, literary way — a muscle you can use to build up to longer pieces of creative nonfiction.

If you think you’d like to bring your writerly prowess to nonfiction, here are our top tips for creating compelling creative nonfiction that’s as readable as a novel, but as illuminating as a scholarly article.

Write a memoir focused on a singular experience

Humans love reading about other people’s lives — like first-person memoirs, which allow you to get inside another person’s mind and learn from their wisdom. Unlike autobiographies, memoirs can focus on a single experience or theme instead of chronicling the writers’ life from birth onward.

For that reason, memoirs tend to focus on one core theme and—at least the best ones—present a clear narrative arc, like you would expect from a novel. This can be achieved by selecting a singular story from your life; a formative experience, or period of time, which is self-contained and can be marked by a beginning, a middle, and an end. 

When writing a memoir, you may also choose to share your experience in parallel with further research on this theme. By performing secondary research, you’re able to bring added weight to your anecdotal evidence, and demonstrate the ways your own experience is reflective (or perhaps unique from) the wider whole.

Example: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking , for example, interweaves the author’s experience of widowhood with sociological research on grief. Chronicling the year after her husband’s unexpected death, and the simultaneous health struggles of their daughter, The Year of Magical Thinking is a poignant personal story, layered with universal insight into what it means to lose someone you love. The result is the definitive exploration of bereavement — and a stellar example of creative nonfiction done well.

📚 Looking for more reading recommendations? Check out our list of the best memoirs of the last century .

Tip: What you cut out is just as important as what you keep

When writing a memoir that is focused around a singular theme, it’s important to be selective in what to include, and what to leave out. While broader details of your life may be helpful to provide context, remember to resist the impulse to include too much non-pertinent backstory. By only including what is most relevant, you are able to provide a more focused reader experience, and won’t leave readers guessing what the significance of certain non-essential anecdotes will be.

💡 For more memoir-planning tips, head over to our post on outlining memoirs .

Of course, writing a memoir isn’t the only form of creative nonfiction that lets you tap into your personal life — especially if there’s something more explicit you want to say about the world at large… which brings us onto our next section.

Pen a personal essay that has something bigger to say

Personal essays condense the first-person focus and intimacy of a memoir into a tighter package — tunneling down into a specific aspect of a theme or narrative strand within the author’s personal experience.

Often involving some element of journalistic research, personal essays can provide examples or relevant information that comes from outside the writer’s own experience. This can take the form of other people’s voices quoted in the essay, or facts and stats. By combining lived experiences with external material, personal essay writers can reach toward a bigger message, telling readers something about human behavior or society instead of just letting them know the writer better.

Example: The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

Leslie Jamison's widely acclaimed collection The Empathy Exams  tackles big questions (Why is pain so often performed? Can empathy be “bad”?) by grounding them in the personal. While Jamison draws from her own experiences, both as a medical actor who was paid to imitate pain, and as a sufferer of her own ailments, she also reaches broader points about the world we live in within each of her essays.

Whether she’s talking about the justice system or reality TV, Jamison writes with both vulnerability and poise, using her lived experience as a jumping-off point for exploring the nature of empathy itself.

Tip: Try to show change in how you feel about something

Including external perspectives, as we’ve just discussed above, will help shape your essay, making it meaningful to other people and giving your narrative an arc. 

Ultimately, you may be writing about yourself, but readers can read what they want into it. In a personal narrative, they’re looking for interesting insights or realizations they can apply to their own understanding of their lives or the world — so don’t lose sight of that. As the subject of the essay, you are not so much the topic as the vehicle for furthering a conversation.

Often, there are three clear stages in an essay:

• Initial state 
• Encounter with something external
• New, changed state, and conclusions

By bringing readers through this journey with you, you can guide them to new outlooks and demonstrate how your story is still relevant to them.

Had enough of writing about your own life? Let’s look at a form of creative nonfiction that allows you to get outside of yourself.

Tell a factual story as though it were a novel

The form of creative nonfiction that is perhaps closest to conventional nonfiction is literary journalism. Here, the stories are all fact, but they are presented with a creative flourish. While the stories being told might comfortably inhabit a newspaper or history book, they are presented with a sense of literary significance, and writers can make use of literary techniques and character-driven storytelling.

Unlike news reporters, literary journalists can make room for their own perspectives: immersing themselves in the very action they recount. Think of them as both characters and narrators — but every word they write is true. 

If you think literary journalism is up your street, think about the kinds of stories that capture your imagination the most, and what those stories have in common. Are they, at their core, character studies? Parables? An invitation to a new subculture you have never before experienced? Whatever piques your interest, immerse yourself.

Example: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

If you’re looking for an example of literary journalism that tells a great story, look no further than Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World , which sits at the intersection of food writing and popular science. Though it purports to offer a “plant’s-eye view of the world,” it’s as much about human desires as it is about the natural world.

Through the history of four different plants and human’s efforts to cultivate them, Pollan uses first-hand research as well as archival facts to explore how we attempt to domesticate nature for our own pleasure, and how these efforts can even have devastating consequences. Pollan is himself a character in the story, and makes what could be a remarkably dry topic accessible and engaging in the process.

Tip: Don’t pretend that you’re perfectly objective

You may have more room for your own perspective within literary journalism, but with this power comes great responsibility. Your responsibilities toward the reader remain the same as that of a journalist: you must, whenever possible, acknowledge your own biases or conflicts of interest, as well as any limitations on your research. 

Thankfully, the fact that literary journalism often involves a certain amount of immersion in the narrative — that is, the writer acknowledges their involvement in the process — you can touch on any potential biases explicitly, and make it clear that the story you’re telling, while true to what you experienced, is grounded in your own personal perspective.

Approach a famous name with a unique approach 

Biographies are the chronicle of a human life, from birth to the present or, sometimes, their demise. Often, fact is stranger than fiction, and there is no shortage of fascinating figures from history to discover. As such, a biographical approach to creative nonfiction will leave you spoilt for choice in terms of subject matter.

Because they’re not written by the subjects themselves (as memoirs are), biographical nonfiction requires careful research. If you plan to write one, do everything in your power to verify historical facts, and interview the subject’s family, friends, and acquaintances when possible. Despite the necessity for candor, you’re still welcome to approach biography in a literary way — a great creative biography is both truthful and beautifully written.

Example: American Prometheus  by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

Alongside the need for you to present the truth is a duty to interpret that evidence with imagination, and present it in the form of a story. Demonstrating a novelist’s skill for plot and characterization, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s American Prometheus is a great example of creative nonfiction that develops a character right in front of the readers’ eyes.

American Prometheus follows J. Robert Oppenheimer from his bashful childhood to his role as the father of the atomic bomb, all the way to his later attempts to reckon with his violent legacy.

FREE COURSE

How to Develop Characters

In 10 days, learn to develop complex characters readers will love.

The biography tells a story that would fit comfortably in the pages of a tragic novel, but is grounded in historical research. Clocking in at a hefty 721 pages, American Prometheus distills an enormous volume of archival material, including letters, FBI files, and interviews into a remarkably readable volume. 

📚 For more examples of world-widening, eye-opening biographies, check out our list of the 30 best biographies of all time .

Tip: The good stuff lies in the mundane details

Biographers are expected to undertake academic-grade research before they put pen to paper. You will, of course, read any existing biographies on the person you’re writing about, and visit any archives containing relevant material. If you’re lucky, there’ll be people you can interview who knew your subject personally — but even if there aren’t, what’s going to make your biography stand out is paying attention to details, even if they seem mundane at first.

Of course, no one cares which brand of slippers a former US President wore — gossip is not what we’re talking about. But if you discover that they took a long, silent walk every single morning, that’s a granular detail you could include to give your readers a sense of the weight they carried every day. These smaller details add up to a realistic portrait of a living, breathing human being.

But creative nonfiction isn’t just writing about yourself or other people. Writing about art is also an art, as we’ll see below.

Put your favorite writers through the wringer with literary criticism

Literary criticism is often associated with dull, jargon-laden college dissertations — but it can be a wonderfully rewarding form that blurs the lines between academia and literature itself. When tackled by a deft writer, a literary critique can be just as engrossing as the books it analyzes.

Many of the sharpest literary critics are also poets, poetry editors , novelists, or short story writers, with first-hand awareness of literary techniques and the ability to express their insights with elegance and flair. Though literary criticism sounds highly theoretical, it can be profoundly intimate: you’re invited to share in someone’s experience as a reader or writer — just about the most private experience there is.

Example: The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar

Take The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, a seminal work approaching Victorian literature from a feminist perspective. Written as a conversation between two friends and academics, this brilliant book reads like an intellectual brainstorming session in a casual dining venue. Highly original, accessible, and not suffering from the morose gravitas academia is often associated with, this text is a fantastic example of creative nonfiction.

Tip: Remember to make your critiques creative

Literary criticism may be a serious undertaking, but unless you’re trying to pitch an academic journal, you’ll need to be mindful of academic jargon and convoluted sentence structure. Don’t forget that the point of popular literary criticism is to make ideas accessible to readers who aren’t necessarily academics, introducing them to new ways of looking at anything they read. 

If you’re not feeling confident, a professional nonfiction editor could help you confirm you’ve hit the right stylistic balance.

Give your book the help it deserves

The best editors, designers, and book marketers are on Reedsy. Sign up for free and meet them.

Learn how Reedsy can help you craft a beautiful book.

Is creative nonfiction looking a little bit clearer now? You can try your hand at the genre , or head to the next post in this guide and discover online classes where you can hone your skills at creative writing.

Join a community of over 1 million authors

Reedsy is more than just a blog. Become a member today to discover how we can help you publish a beautiful book.

Bring your publishing dreams to life

The world's best editors, designers, and marketers are on Reedsy. Come meet them.

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Enter your email or get started with a social account:

Writers' Treasure

Effective writing advice for aspiring writers

Creative Non-Fiction: What is it?

• Creative Writing Tips

1. An Introduction to Creative Writing 2. How to Get Started in Creative Writing in Just Three Step s 3. Creative Writing vs. Technical Writing 4. Fiction Writing 101: The Elements of Stories 5. Poetry Writing: Forms and Terms Galore

Hence we advance to creative nonfiction. What is it? It’s just writing which is true, but which also contains some creativity. Creative nonfiction differs from other nonfiction because a certain amount of creativity is needed to write in it, as for example a biography. It uses literary styles and techniques to create factually correct narratives, says Wikipedia.

Let’s suppose you’ve got knowledge on a famous personality (it needn’t necessarily be famous, just for saying). But to cover a whole life in a single book is a pretty hard task. The purpose isn’t just to give information. It’s to show things, it’s to entertain and intrigue the reader, or show them accounts of the subject in a compelling and creative manner. That, in a nutshell, is the meaning of creative nonfiction.

There is high demand for biographies and autobiographies. But what else constitutes creative nonfiction? There are memoirs, published by famous business people. Some of them sell for over a million. Then there are essays. There can be short essays and there can be long essays. There are food and travel books. There is literary journalism. We’ll look at them in a while. First, let’s take a look at the autobiography…

An Autobiography is…

An autobiography is the book about the whole life of a person, written by the person itself. Hence the “auto” in autobiography. An autobiography is pretty much essential in some political fields. It is now expected for celebrities to produce autobiographies. Some people hire a ghostwriter to write their autobiography.

It is almost needless to say that in autobiographies people tend to portray themselves in a more positive light. In the same case, when people write unauthorized biographies, it becomes the opposite and all the negative qualities are brought to the light. The autobiographies and biographies of personalities, heroes, etc are nowadays sold like hot cakes (although perhaps not in our bookstore — excuse the cliché).

The History of Autobiographies

If I were to write the entire history of autobiographies, I would be merely repeating information that can be easily found on Wikipedia, and boring you all. If you do have an interest in how autobiographies came to be, click here for appropriate information.

The Difference Between Autobiographies and Other Similar Forms of Creative Nonfiction

An autobiography differs from a biography in the significant fact that it is written by the person of whom it is based on. The biography is written by a different person. Then there is the memoir. Memoirs, although written by the person of whom it is based on, does not cover the whole life of the period. They cover only a select time period or single experience.

The Types of Autobiographies

1. Diaries 2. Fictional (consider it as first person novel) 3. Sensationalist (mostly written by ghost writers) 4. Memoirs may be considered as autobiographies; but not all autobiographies are memoirs.

A Biography is…

Consider it same as an autobiography but in some ways vastly different (yeah I know, doesn’t make sense). A biography is a description or account of someone’s life and the times, usually published in a book or essay form, sometimes as a documentary using the new media (usually TV).

How to tell if a work is biographical or not? There’s one simple question to ask. It is: Does it cover all of a person’s life? If yes, then it is a biography. If not, then it does not deserve that title.

The Two Types of Biographies

There are authorized biographies and unauthorized biographies. You may have never heard the term before. That’s okay; even I didn’t know of it until a week ago. Authorized biographies tend to portray the positive sides of a person in their work (that makes human nature sense). Whereas unauthorized biographies tend to do the opposite. To be honest, I’ve never read a biography and wouldn’t really want to read an unauthorized one. It can be viewed as an intrusion of privacy in the subject’s life, or so some people say. Click here to know more about biographies .

A Memoir is…

I just saw the Wikipedia entry on memoir. Sounds interesting. I may try to write one when I grow up; my experiences have been pretty interesting…

Jokes aside, here is the Wikipedia definition (modified a bit):

As a literary genre, a memoir (from the French: mémoire from the Latin memoria, meaning “memory”, or a reminiscence), forms a subclass of autobiography – although the terms ‘memoir’ and ‘autobiography’ are almost interchangeable in modern parlance. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir. It only covers a select period of the subject’s life or a single experience. The author of a memoir may be referred to as a memoirist

. Have you ever tried writing a memoir? I used to think that they could only be written by politicians, famous personalities to write about their career, businessmen, military men and generally those that are, well, known. What an understatement. The vast of us don’t get the title famous. But recently…

Recently I discovered that absolutely anyone can write a memoir and if well written, can give pleasure to the reader because of its literary style. To be honest, I don’t really like the word ‘literary’, the words ‘stilted’ and ‘formal’ come to mind. But memoirs are bestsellers. In his memoir Palimpsest (heard of it? I definitely hadn’t), Gore Vidal defines a memoir as “how one remembers one’s own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked.”

Have Your Say

Yes, there is no mention of essays and food and travel writing in this post because it’s already gigantic enough. Perhaps some of you could fill it in the comments section.

Sources : Writing Forward’s Creative Nonfiction Category Wikipedia – Autobiography

This post is the sixth instalment in the Creative Writing 101 series.

Share this:

Further reading:.

• An Introduction to Creative Writing
• How to Write an Essay — Part I
• How to Get Started in Creative Writing in Just Three Steps
• An Introduction to Academic Writing
• POV: What it is and how it matters

20 thoughts on “Creative Non-Fiction: What is it?”

• Pingback: How to Get Started in Creative Writing | Writers' Treasure
• Pingback: Web Writing vs. Print Writing

I think im gunna subscribe. Impress me with great content in the future please.

*laughs* Well thanks for subscribing, and I’ll do my best to impress you with great content!

Don’t forget to check out the archives , there are some real gems there which should be enough to make you wildly impressed. 😉

Delightful AND informative!

Wow, thanks!

Wow! You totally got me hooked on your blog. I’m a bit surprised that your just 15 year old. I thought I was reading an old English professor’s blog. 🙂 Anyway, I really enjoy reading every bit of information here. Keep it up! 🙂

That’s such a nice comment! I’m now 16 years old, actually. Glad to hear that you liked the blog. Stay tuned for more great content.

Best regards Idrees

Wow… I have been reading through this for the past hour and then suddenly realised your age. I think you might be going places, keep up the good work!

Kind Regards

Glad to hear that, thanks! By the way, you say “I have been reading through this for the past hour”… do you mean one particular article or the whole website?

Just wondering if you know the difference between biographical fiction/novels and creative nonfiction?

Biographical fiction, to the best of my knowledge, is a part of creative nonfiction (as mentioned in the article). Creative nonfiction also includes memoirs, food writing, travel writing, etc.

• Pingback: How to Get Started in Creative Writing in Just Three Steps | Blog do Learning

Wow….the best blog for creative writing!

I have a question if you kindly answer it: what is the difference between creative writing and descriptive writing?

Creative writing doesn’t really have any definition as such. You can refer to Creative Writing 101 for more details. As far as descriptive writing is concerned, its primary purpose is to describe a person, place or thing in such a way that a picture is formed in the reader’s mind.

• Pingback: Creative non-fiction | Dark Wine and Shallow Graves

I had researching my passion for more than a year . I find out that I enjoy writing. And its been more than a week that I am reading stuff on wrting. Finding the way out to master my writing before i begin with . I come across your article. I had read most of your article. And just in the mid of reading your article I just thought of writing something, just to begin my writing. And I see that when I start writing , I did not know when did I finish writing 9 complete page. The story just keep on popping up one after another. I connect all the story. The plot, the subplot, the sets, the theme and so on. I use to write and tell story of my own imagination back than when I was in high school. I think I had found one more passion. Thank you buddy. Your article just boost me to do something new which ws my passion which i had not known for so long. Thank you once again. Keep the good work up.

best regards Krishna chhetry.

You write with clarity,simplicity and social intelligence not forgetting passion. Your responses are formal and very inoffensive. Keep the good work.

BRAVO!! Thank you!!!

Beautiful piece of article, so glad I found your website when I googled for Creative Writing. Will definitely be subscribing! Keep it up!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Related Post

Pen and paper vs. computer – which do you use pen and paper vs. computer – which do you use.

There was a time when every notebook I used to buy I filled it up with words. Nothing but words. There were stories , information about sports I was interested in (at the time) and a whole lot of other idiotic stuff. Whole pages and pages were drowned in words, and I used to love my notebooks.

A year or two later however, we got a new computer. I improved my typing skills (and learned touch typing). I also learned to use programs like Microsoft Word for writing. Henceforth I was using this almost exclusively for my writing. My notebooks, which were once so full that there wasn’t even space to copy down a phone number, now were empty. What happened?

The thing that happened was that I had changed my writing medium from pen and paper to the computer .

But of them is better for your writing? Which is better – pen and paper or the computer keyboard ?

(more…)

• Top Ten Tips to Fight and Defeat Writers’ Block
• Writing Tip: Experiment with Free-writing
• Writing Tip: The Importance of Word Count
• The Big Picture of a Novel – Part III
• Proofreading: Catching Contextual Spelling Errors

What is good writing? What is good writing?

Good writing. More precisely, a piece of writing or multiple pieces of writing which have been labelled with the quality of goodness. Everyone strives to have their writing become, through hard work, good writing. Good writing is a great thing, a thing to strive for.

But what is it, really?

Why is that we don’t have a single complete definition of what exactly good writing means?

Is it because good writing is subjective? After all, for one person, a piece of writing may be good. But that same piece of writing could be pathetic for a different reader. There lies the problem. Any definition of good writing won’t hold water for a second if it’s based on the writer’s own opinion. One could say, “good writing is writing which contains so-and-so”, and then a reader with different likes / dislikes will say: “What? Those qualities worsen a piece of writing instead of the other way around…”

How can anyone define good writing when people are not really thinking of good writing as such but good writing for them (a substantial difference) and when people are thinking of effective writing and not good writing?

Takeaway : let’s forget “good writing” for a moment. Consider a different concept, effective writing. Why? Because that can be measured. And the measurement leads to comparison in terms of degrees. The most effective writing turns out to be irresistible writing. Irresistible writing, in the proper context, leads to magnetic, award-winning, profit-making and productive writing.

With that in mind, let’s move on to the qualities of good writing — ahem, I mean effective writing…

• How to Master Clarity in Writing
• Be Aware of the Reading Level of Your Audience
• Writing Tip: Use Vivid Description
• Tips and tricks to write effectively for web readers – Web Writing 101
• Writing Tip: Finding the Balance of Narrative and Dialogue

Creative Writing Skills: Do You Have Them All? Creative Writing Skills: Do You Have Them All?

Do you know that creative writing isn’t easy?

Silly question, I know. But do you know that there are a certain set of skills which you need to master if you want to be an expert in it?

And the questions that comes out of this are: what are these skills? And are they important?

Read on for the first question. As for the second, of course you already know that the answer is going to be:

“Of course!”

• Creative Writing vs. Technical Writing
• Who Else Wants to Master the Creative Writing Skills?
• Four Top-Notch Ways to Polish Your Writing Skills with Creative Writing

Claudia Ann Seaman Award

Interested in all things Polyphony?

• Jan 4, 2020

Writing Creative Nonfiction

By Sally Park and Nishka Dalmia

‘Creative non-fiction’ is a paradox in itself. While people tend to think that creative necessarily implies using of imagination to make something unique or surreal, I believe, the word encompasses a wide world within it which doesn’t explicitly require the use of imagination to create something non-existent. Hence, creative and non-fiction are more compatible than you think.

The difference between a non-fictional piece and a ‘creative’ non- fictional piece is solely the way it is written. While the facts drive a non-fictional piece, the authenticity and the music of the writer’s writing drive a creative non-fictional piece.

Since we can’t tamper with facts in this particular writing style, what makes CNF interesting to a reader? Why would a reader want to read a memoir? While some life experiences can be diverting, many those which are written are rather grey. How then, do they become bestsellers?

CNF is a very tricky genre to say the least. A writer has to present all the facts without alter and still make it make it a compulsive read. While searching to the answer to the above posed question, I wondered why, I as a reader, would read this genre? I then realized, that I read it because CNF is like poetry. It tells you simple truths of life. It puts inexplicable feelings into words so beautifully that the entire experience becomes so surreal. Consequently, I try to include as much authenticity and insight into my writing to make it that much more relatable to the writer.

CNF is a very popular genre amongst many. And one of the prime reason for that is that a creative non-fictional piece gives you a very humane and wonderful insight to the most mundane of things in a very exciting way. It is not just mere facts describing the when and the where of a happening but the entire brain mechanism of the writer during the happening.

When beginning to write creative nonfiction, you must take into consideration the message you would like to convey through your writing. What is the significance of your story? Why is this story relevant to the reader? What new insight could your piece offer to the world? Arguably the most beautiful attribute about creative nonfiction is that you are given the power to influence the reader in the utmost personal and intricate matter. With every word and sentence, aim to personally form a connection with the reader through your story. The stronger the connection you can form with the reader, the more impactful and effective your story can be.

But perhaps the most important aspect of writing a creative nonfiction piece is that you are genuine and honest throughout. You may passively exaggerate certain details and events in your story in hopes of creating a more engaging piece of writing. However, by doing so, it would instead lessen the impact and effectiveness of your story. Readers would ultimately be able to sense the ingenuity of your story and question the validity of it as well. Keep in mind that your story is unique and engaging because it is your story. No other individual could attempt to replicate your writing because it is a personal event that occurred to you only, and the commentary present in your story should be reflective of your unique personality and mentality.

This being said, do not stray away from using literary styles and techniques throughout your piece. A key component of creative nonfiction is the mentality you undergo while experiencing the events within the story. Express such components of your mentality through literary styles and techniques to artistically represent the intricacy of your thought process within the experiences of the story. Show the reader who you are so that by the end of the story, your reader has a fair idea of who you are as a person. As previously mentioned, a strong connection with the reader is vital in creating an effective piece of creative nonfiction, and by expressing your honest and true self, you can further the connection the reader has with you.

The stories of the events we have experienced, the lessons we have learned, and the life-changing moments we have endured are enough to radically change the perceptions that other people have acquired throughout their life. Creative nonfiction offers new and compelling insights that readers can learn from and apply to their own lives. For these reasons, creative nonfiction has become arguably one of the most influential forms of writing to exist. From every word to every sentence, remind yourself of your message, your mentality, and most of all, your truth.

Sally Park is a First Reader at Polyphony Lit and a blogger at Voices .

Nishka Dalmia is a First Reader at Polyphony Lit and a blogger at Voices.

• #thestruggleisreal

Recent Posts

Winter Issue 2024 Inside Look

How Creative Writing and College Essays are More Similar Than You Might Think

Putting the “Creative” in Nonfiction

William Bradley responds to Dinty W. Moore's recent essay about the origins of the term "creative nonfiction."

Not too long ago, when we spoke of literary genres, we spoke only of fiction, poetry, and drama, which means that those of us interested in studying memoir, essays, or literary journalism often had to navigate without a map. Lacking any sort of canonical tradition, we tried to invent one as we went along, with anthologies edited by Phillip Lopate and Lee Gutkind as our guides. Students in workshops and graduate programs today get syllabi telling them what they ought to read, but the previous generation, I think, had a bit less structure and thus a bit more freedom—even if we also sometimes had a little more to prove.

Those of us who came to creative nonfiction prior to the last decade or so knew from those older than us that we needed to read Speak, Memory and “The Death of the Moth,” of course, but we were also left to discover works and ideas about this genre on our own a lot of the time. It was expected of us, I think, back in the late ’90s and early part of the twenty-first century. Which is how I came to learn aspects of the genre’s history by reading Michael Stephens’s essay about his relationship with the Beat author and teacher Seymour Krim in “A Different Kind of Two-Fisted, Two-Breasted Terror: Seymour Krim and Creative Nonfiction.”

The Stephens essay may not be quite as well known as other works in the genre, but I’m glad to have read it multiple times as a graduate student. I’m pleased that I had the insight to realize that this is an important text in our genre. The essay itself was originally published in the second issue of Creative Nonfiction , way back in 1994, and later anthologized in The Essayist at Work: Profiles of Creative Nonfiction Writers . I probably read it for the first time about a decade after its initial publication, as I was preparing for my PhD exams.

Back then, I was trying to make sense of conflicting claims about the genre—some insisted that this “fourth genre” was an “emerging genre,” a new form of writing, the likes of which had never really been seen. But when, exactly, this emergence began . . . well, people couldn’t really say. Others pointed out that St. Augustine had written his Confessions over 1,500 years ago, Montaigne his Essais more than four hundred years ago. How could anyone make the claim that a genre with so much history was somehow just beginning to “emerge?”

The Stephens essay helped me get a better handle on the history of this type of writing. Yes, you might find examples from centuries ago, but the name we have given as a sort of umbrella term to cover memoir, personal essay, and literary journalism only went back to the ’70s. Stephens writes that Krim proposed a course on what he called “imaginative nonfiction”—distinct from traditional journalism and expository writing—at Columbia University. His dean, J. R. “Dick” Humphreys, reportedly liked the idea but wasn’t thrilled with the proposed course title; he thought that the class should be called “creative nonfiction.” And thus, an entire genre of literature was named.

I liked this story of our origins an awful lot. I liked the idea of Krim—a writer I admire—realizing that this is a type of writing worthy of study. And I liked the idea of Humphreys—a writer, true, but also a university administrator—needlessly micromanaging. “Imaginative” vs. “creative”? Honestly, who gives a shit? But I ultimately liked that Krim agreed to change the name of the proposed course in order to placate his dean. I liked to imagine he received the suggestion, perhaps bristled a bit, and then shrugged, thinking, “Honestly, who gives a shit?”

The fact that I “knew” how our genre came to be called what it is called was really the only thing I had going for me, in a lot of ways.

I particularly liked to keep this origin story in mind at conferences, where inevitably there would be a discussion of what we call it. “I prefer literary nonfiction,” one writer might proclaim over her $6 glass of chardonnay. “Well, I just call what I do essay writing ,” another would respond. I liked to listen, nodding but silently smug, aligned with Krim, the guy who brought us all into the academy, honestly not giving a shit.

You have to understand: I’ve been toiling away on the same book for the past ten years. I no longer have an academic job. The fact that I “knew” how our genre came to be called what it is called was really the only thing I had going for me, in a lot of ways. Other writers might talk about winning book awards, or getting tenure, or the pride they took in being asked to judge a contest, but at least I could feel smart when people asked, “Why do we even call it creative nonfiction anyway?”

And then Dinty W. Moore—flash nonfiction pioneer, Google Maps essayist, “accidental Buddhist”—took it all away from me.

                                                                                        ***

I know it’s traditional to refer to writers by their last names when writing about their work. But Dinty W. Moore and I go back a bit—he used to comment occasionally on my blog, he has published my work, he sent my wife a very nice e-mail, once, complimenting her on her photography. So I’m going to call him Dinty here, because that’s what I tend to call him, and this isn’t just an essay about creative nonfiction—it is itself a work of creative nonfiction, after a fashion.

Anyway, Dinty recently published a history of the term creative nonfiction . Groovy, I thought, certain that I already knew what was to be revealed. Sure enough, there was the claim, put forth in an article from Poets and Writers , that Lee Gutkind coined the term. Wrong, dummies, I thought. There was Fourth Genre editor Michael Steinberg theorizing that Gutkind took the term from the National Endowment for the Arts. Not quite, Steinberg , I smirked. Sue William Silverman admits that she was unfamiliar with the term when she submitted her manuscript for the 1995 AWP Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. Truly, I thought, I may not be as accomplished, famous, or talented as these people, but I know about Krim and Humphreys and how they named this genre. As Bill Murray says in Caddyshack, “So I got that goin’ for me.” 

Then, finally, Dinty got to Krim and Humphreys. And then he kept going.

You see, he’d found an example of the term in a review of Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time written by David Madden in 1969. When reached by e-mail, Madden acknowledged that he had used the words “creative” and “imaginative”—that is, both the Humphreys and the Krim language—pretty interchangeably (so I guess we can still ask “Who gives a shit?” when it comes to labels), and said that he was pretty sure he’d invented the terms himself.  

I was shocked, and somewhat disappointed. I really, really wanted Krim and Humphreys to have come up with the term. So I was heartened, a few days later, when Michael Stephens commented on Facebook that he was pretty sure that, in fact, he had been mistaken in the older article—that he now had information suggesting that Krim started teaching the class in the ’60s, and not the ’70s as he had originally claimed. He and Dinty went back and forth, I weighed in occasionally—mostly just to express my enthusiasm to hear more on the subject—and then my friend and occasional writing partner Christian Exoo jumped into the fray. I’ve known Christian, a librarian by training, since he was in high school; he is one of the smartest and most knowledgeable people I know. On those rare occasions when he doesn’t know something off the top of his head, he almost always knows how to find the information quickly and reliably.

Christian had been following the Facebook discussions, and noted that it seemed like something I cared about a great deal. So he did a little digging and pointed out that, in fact, the generic label seems to be much older than Madden’s 1969 Conroy review. Without devoting too much time and attention to the issue, he was able to locate an article from a 1947 Publishers Weekly that identified Frederick Philip Grove as the 1946 winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for creative nonfiction.

Our genre, it appeared, might not have been born in New York or Ohio, or even in the United States at all.

This sent us down a research rabbit hole from which we emerged only last week, after spending two weeks looking for information online and e-mailing some people with more expertise in Canadian literary history than ourselves—Heather Home, archivist at Queen’s University, put us in touch with Christopher Doody, a book historian whose dissertation is a literary history of the Canadian Authors Association (CAA) and who, it turns out, had relatively easy access to the information we were looking for.

The first winner for creative non-fiction , specifically, was John D. Robins for The Incomplete Anglers , in 1944. We found information to suggest that the works considered “creative” were largely works of autobiography or journalism; there was also an “academic” category, which concerned itself with scholarship. Indeed, the chairman of the board for the 1944 CAA Awards wrote a letter instructing the judges that nonfiction works written to be “entertaining” should be considered for the creative nonfiction prize. In a 1947 report from the board, that description was modified to explain that “lighter, more fanciful books” ought to be considered for the creative award. Almost from the beginning, then, people had trouble understanding and explaining this literary genre.

We eventually learned—thanks to Chris Doody’s research—that, in fact, the term creative non-fiction was introduced and adopted as a prize category at the January 16, 1943, meeting of the CAA. Later, Bruce Hutchison won the inaugural Governor General’s Award for Creative Non-fiction for his autobiography The Unknown Country . If the term creative non-fiction (or creative nonfiction ) was used prior to these 1943 awards, we have not been able to find any reference to it. Nevertheless, it is clear the term came into being long before most of us thought it did.

I can’t say what motivated Dinty W. Moore or Michael Stephens to explore the origins of this genre and its name. I think that when I first started thinking about the subject, I wanted to find something definitive, something I could point to and say, “That was the pivotal moment.” I don’t know. Maybe I thought it would lend the enterprise some type of legitimacy. If we could say, “No, this is a real thing—and it starts here,” then maybe we could stop having to defend the very existence of our genre.

It’s entirely possible that Christian Exoo and I have found the very first usage of the adjective creative being used to modify nonfiction or non-fiction . It is also possible that someone will eventually find an even earlier usage. The question then becomes, again, “Honestly, who gives a shit?” What did we prove? Why does it matter?

If we could say, “No, this is a real thing—and it starts here,” then maybe we could stop having to defend the very existence of our genre.

To answer that question, I should start by saying that I don’t think anybody involved in this discussion has lied. In our haste to discover new information and to unveil previously obscured facts, I think we sometimes forget the hard work and the good intentions of researchers who came before, and anybody whose takeaway from this essay is “the Canadians invented the term in 1943—to hell with Seymour Krim, Dick Humphreys, Dave Madden, Michael Stephens, and Dinty Moore” has sorely missed the point. Yes, the Canadian Authors Association may have used the term first, but does that mean they named the magazine that Lee Gutkind founded in 1994? I don’t think so. Dave Madden reports that he coined the term without any input from anyone else. Is he lying? Again, I don’t think so. And Michael Stephens recounts the way these two educators came up with a name for a class. There is no reason to believe that anyone got any details wrong as they recalled how Krim and Humphries arrived at their course title.

No, I think maybe some of us have gone about this enterprise in the wrong way. We—or at least I—have been so focused on trying to locate that transformative moment when Everything Changed Forever. That moment when Dick Humphreys or Dave Madden handed down creative nonfiction like Prometheus with the flame or Moses with the tablets. But for heaven’s sake, I work in creative nonfiction—I know better than to believe in such larger-than-life epiphanies. Don’t I?

Rather than saying some unknown member of the CAA invented the term, which then made its way to Dave Madden in Ohio, then found its way to Krim and Humphreys in New York, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that, over the course of three decades or so, something was happening in North American literary culture. Something largely unprecedented and, at the time, unnamed. Surviving the global wars of the 20th century brought us all together, but the individuals among and within us wouldn’t be completely silenced or assimilated. We’d praise famous men, read the notes of our native sons, travel once more to the lake. And eventually, we’d honor and study these personal writings the way we had always honored and studied other, less inherently personal forms of literature. The old labels—journalism, memoir, essay—seemed too small to apply to this entire movement. We’d need a new label—something that said, “This is the real world as its author perceives it, but the execution is artful, not merely informative.” Narrative nonfiction ? Well, it doesn’t always tell a story. Literature of fact ? Hmm. Well, perhaps, but that barely seems to hint at the artistry on display. Imaginative nonfiction ? Oh, maybe. That’s definitely close.

The old labels—journalism, memoir, essay—seemed too small to apply to this entire movement. We’d need a new label.

We will continue to discuss and debate genre classifications. Of this I have no doubt. But if my research into the term’s origins has taught me anything, it’s that there was a phrase that people all over North America independently recognized as an umbrella term that best described a type of writing. There was something in the air in the middle of the twentieth century—something in our consciousness that woke up and demanded to express itself. Honestly, I guess I don’t give a shit what you choose to call it—that’s not really any of my business. But I’m going to follow the lead of the people who first recognized and sought to name this form of literature. I’m sticking with creative nonfiction.

Special thanks to Heather Home, Christopher Doody, and Christian Exoo, for sharing their research and their knowledge with me.

Roots of Creative Nonfiction Anyone interested in this debate (and many thanks for holding it) might want to consult William Howarth’s 1976 introductory essay to The John McPhee Reader, and also add to the origins list the influential Yale Daily Themes course, tormenting undergrads since the days of Henry Luce.

Comments are closed.

What is creative nonfiction? O A. Creative writing that has rhyme and meter B. Creative writing based on real life C. Creative writing based on imagined events D. Creative writing without storytelling

Livelyflower46 is waiting for your help., expert-verified answer.

• 441 people helped

Final answer:

Creative nonfiction is a genre of creative writing that combines storytelling with factual information to present real-life events in a captivating way.

Explanation:

Creative nonfiction is a genre of creative writing that is based on real-life events and experiences. It is a form of writing that combines elements of storytelling with factual information to create engaging narratives. Unlike fiction, which is based on imagined events, creative nonfiction draws from actual experiences and uses literary techniques to present them in a captivating way.

Learn more about Creative nonfiction here:

brainly.com/question/37342566

Still have questions?

Get more answers for free, expand your knowledge with related topics.

• Creative Writing

You might be interested in

New questions in english.