Creative Non-Fiction
Creative non-fiction is a genre of writing that combines factual information with literary techniques to create engaging and compelling narratives. It encompasses a wide range of forms, including personal essays, memoirs, and literary journalism. This genre allows writers to explore real-life experiences and events in a creative and artistic manner, blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
8 Key excerpts on "Creative Non-Fiction"
eBook - ePub- (Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Emerald Publishing(Publisher)
...8 Creative Non-Fiction One-minute summary: starting out in creative writing for many people is not about writing fiction, despite the dominance of novels on the shelves. Other genres of factual writing have developed and have become increasingly popular. Factual writing covers life-writing, travel, documentary, reportage and the personal essay. To add more interest and possibilities for writers, there has been a cross-over tendency in these areas, so that it is common now to find books and articles that mix fact and fiction. Courses and journals in this area are proliferating, notably in the USA, and many courses in Britain contain tuition in writing biography and related areas. In this chapter we look at the skills involved in writing and researching some of these genres. In this chapter, you will learn: ➢ How to plan and research a non-fiction book ➢ How to mix genres and conventions ➢ What resources are available to you ➢ How original treatments of such subjects can be achieved Life-writing Creative Non-Fiction – what is it? In America, there is a journal devoted to this writing, and the editor recently stressed the joy of writing in any form based on the real feel of life itself, and celebrated the nature of life is always as full of interest as the best conceived fictional plot. So Creative Non-Fiction is a confluence of all the traditional forms of what used to be called ‘discursive prose’ – that is, reflective writing such as an essay, whether it is concerned with a place, a person, or a thought. A cursory look at the book review columns or the shelves of a bookshop will indicate just how popular biography is. Today, there are many options and outlets for life-writing, as it is a genre that links to many other parallel forms of writing...
eBook - ePubLiterature for Young Adults
Books (and More) for Contemporary Readers
- Joan L. Knickerbocker, James A. Rycik(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Literary nonfiction is sometimes called creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, or literature of reality. It has also been labeled the “fourth genre” to elevate it to the status of literature, while distinguishing it from poetry, fiction, and drama (Root & Steinberg, 2010). Literary nonfiction: recognizes both the inherent power of the real and the deep resonance of the literary. It is a form that allows a writer both to narrate facts and to search for truth, blending the empirical eye of the reporter with the moral vision the—I—of the novelist. (University of Oregon, n.d., p. 1) Nonfiction has come to play a much greater role in middle and high school language arts classrooms. Content Learning Standards for English Language Arts (2018) in the state where we live, Ohio (education.ohio.gov), were influenced by the Common Core State Standards for the English Language Arts (National Governors Association, 2010). Beginning with the sixth-grade standards, the term “literary nonfiction” replaces “informational texts” in the category of “reading information.” The result is to reposition nonfiction in the curriculum, giving a much greater emphasis to creative nonfiction than it had in the past. Both literary and informational works of nonfiction may be read outside of school as part of a young adult’s personal reading, but, in the classroom, teachers can acquaint their students with the many genres of nonfiction and guide them to recognize the elements that characterize each genre. The Genres of Nonfiction There is not a universal system for categorizing the genre of a nonfiction work. The following genres were chosen to aid in selection and instruction for works of nonfiction that were either written for young adults or may have a particular appeal to that audience. Biography A biography is the history of a person’s life written by someone else; it can also focus on several persons, which is called a collective biography...
eBook - ePubA Writer's Craft
Multi-Genre Creative Writing
- Kendall Dunkelberg(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
...How do we know what the author intended? A lot may depend on what the reader can get out of the work, based on the tone and the voice as much as the content. Another distinction between creative nonfiction and regular nonfiction is based not on why it is written, but on how it is written. We might say that creative nonfiction is more concerned with how it is written than what it is about. Though of course content matters, form is a bigger issue in creative nonfiction than in other types of nonfiction. In creative nonfiction, like in other literary genres, a word is chosen, not only for what it means, but also based on its sound or connotations. We might combine both of these distinctions by saying that creative nonfiction uses literary techniques to add multiple layers of content to nonfiction. This is not to say that creative nonfiction is necessarily better than other forms of nonfiction, just that it is different. I might enjoy reading a literary phone book more than I would a regular phonebook, but if I wanted to look up a number, I’d still turn to the White Pages. A personal essay on the effects of global warming might really bring the issues home and make me care about them, but if I really want to understand the science behind the theories, I might want to look at articles in scientific journals. Perhaps the most essential forms of creative nonfiction are the essay and the story, judging from the two most common types, the personal essay and the memoir. Both of these forms often stem from personal experience and are based in fact. For example, memoir is a dialogue with the author’s past, and thus relies more heavily on story. Personal essay is a dialogue with the reader, and may use more argument or analysis. But both forms can use elements of the other. A personal essay may tell a story as evidence to back up a point the writer wants to make. A memoir may start out with a story, but then include some logical argument like you would find in an essay...
eBook - ePub- Stephen May(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Teach Yourself(Publisher)
...6 Creative Non-Fiction In this chapter you will learn: what Creative Non-Fiction is how to find a subject how to think about structure how to write a proposal. Memoirs: The backstairs of history. George Meredith What is Creative Non-Fiction? Creative Non-Fiction is becoming the most widely used term to cover memoir, biography, autobiography, travel writing and writing about historical events. All these kinds of writing have always been popular, but in recent years there has been an increase in demand for works in these genres. More than ever, audiences seem to crave ‘authenticity’ and ‘real life’. The truth is that in order to work, non-fiction requires the same creative writing skills as those of fiction. It needs a solid structure, a compelling narrative voice and a clear connection of ideas. The ‘truth’ of your work will not necessarily be what engages your readers, it will be how well you present that truth. WHY BECOME A NON-FICTION WRITER? Everyone tells real-life stories. Everyone comes home from even the simplest journey with an anecdote to tell. Something that happened to them or something they saw; a funny story told to them in a shop, or at work. We are a storytelling species. It is how we make sense of the world around us. For most people these stories are true. Real things that happened to real people in real places. Nevertheless everyone – often without realizing it – crafts their story. Shapes it so that it becomes more entertaining for the listener. In this way everyone already has the basics for producing great non-fiction work instinctively. Some people will be better at it than others, just as some people are naturally faster than others, but we all have the basic tools and can develop this native ability. Everyone has had important, dramatic, surprising things happen to them. Equally, every family history is filled with characters and dramas: little legends that demand telling...
eBook - ePubWhat Isn't History?
Selected Articles and Speeches on Writing History and Historical Fiction
- Ian Mortimer(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- RosettaBooks(Publisher)
...In the course of writing this talk I was contacted by Julie Wheelwright, who is the programme director of the University’s MA in ‘Non-fiction creative writing’. But she informs me that City University’s course is the only example in the UK.] Creative writing is a term used generally to describe the composition of literary works that are assumed to be fictional or purely imaginative. However, as we all know, these forms can be rooted in reality—and normally they are, to a greater or lesser extent—and sometimes overtly, as in confessional poetry, novels based on actual events, history plays and even kitchen-sink dramas. It should come as no surprise to anyone whose reading is wider than academic history that the same techniques and forms of inspiration that power most poetic, fictional and dramatic writing can be used to enhance historical non-fiction too. All non-fiction writing has a creative element, and the historian has a personal role in the choice of subject, the selection of evidence, judgement, inclusion of contextual detail, and direction of the output. Even a work of quantitative analysis has its qualitative element, and that qualitative element cannot be separated from the person of the author and his or her desire to say something—to create. In this talk I hope to show that creative writing techniques as used by poets, playwrights and novelists all can be used to enrich scholarly history without having to ‘dumb it down’ in any way—and that includes removing footnotes and endnotes. The six history books I have published with Random House each have between 500 and 1200 endnotes and by the end of last year had sold a total of 272,000 copies in the UK, not including ebooks. I am not saying that unrestricted historical writing is ‘better’ than academic writing, or trying to denigrate scholarship in any way...
eBook - ePubDocuments in Crisis
Nonfiction Literatures in Twentieth-Century Mexico
- Beth E. Jörgensen(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- SUNY Press(Publisher)
...She develops her argument for limiting the category of fiction to nonreferential narrative by carrying out a systematic narratological comparison and contrast between various forms of history writing (biography, autobiography, historiography) and their fictional counterparts. In the present study, the focus is reversed to attend to the distinction of nonfiction by examining the interplay of conventions and expectations that inform the production and the reception of nonfictional narrative and that structure our perception of its particular relationship to material reality and human actions, past and present. The two Mexican writers quoted above are well-known for their contributions to literary nonfiction, in particular the chronicle and, in the case of Leñero, the documentary or nonfiction novel and documentary theater as well. Their reflections that I have excerpted articulate the fundamental connection between nonfiction writing and real world events and identifiable people, and they introduce a number of concepts and terms that arise in any discussion of nonfictional narrative: reality, real life, testimony, datum, fact, and document are part of the essential vocabulary with which to talk about the texts brought together in this book. This lexicon, which must also include other terms such as evidence, plausibility, factual status, and factual adequacy, requires a rigorous interrogation and theorization that goes well beyond the limits of commonsense usage. In this chapter I have assembled critical resources provided by studies in history and literary and genre theory in order to formulate functional definitions for a core vocabulary, without negating the persistent ambiguities inherent in each concept. Three distinct and competing conditions for writing and reading nonfiction inform my study, which acknowledges and seeks to explain the tensions at play among them...
eBook - ePub- Christopher D. Benson, Charles F. Whitaker(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...For example, good characters have dimension. They are not all good, nor are they all bad. The writer of literary non-fiction will want to show the full range of qualities in writing about people. This involves probing interviews that sometimes go off topic just to explore certain character traits or background information. ▶ Literary Non-Fiction Process As you can see, good non-fiction employs many of the techniques of short fiction, except, of course, the fiction part. We must keep in mind that the stories we write for magazine publishing are expected to be real; they are expected to be factual. That is why so much emphasis is placed on the reporting—or fact-gathering—component of this form. There is great pressure on the writer to become immersed in the story, spending many hours researching even the smallest details and focusing on probing interviews that sometimes can require days of full access to sources. The result, though, is rich storytelling that engages and entertains the reader, even while informing. Narrative detail These stories must provide description. This description, in turn, is highly detailed. But here, the quality of specific details will outweigh the quantity. The accomplished writer in this form will provide the detail that is necessary to tell, or show, the story. What does a particular hand gesture say about the character you are revealing? And what does that character say about the issue she is illustrating? This is what must be kept in mind as you absorb all the details in your work. And, obviously, that work involves research, interviews, and the writer’s observations. In this way, you will be able to provide description of place and situations as well as people and character. With respect to people, there are a number of details to capture, including speech, appearance, and manner. What does the voice sound like? Capture real-life dialogue as Professor Harrington suggests...
- ANNABEL WATSON, Ruth G Newman, Annabel Watson, Ruth Newman(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Interwoven into these sections are practical activities for you to try out and take into your classrooms. These activities are centred on exploring writer’s language choices and how they have been crafted to convey meaning to the implied reader. At the end of this chapter you should be able to: develop understanding of the sociocultural views of reading, writing and genre; understand the reciprocal relationship between reading and writing; develop knowledge and understanding of how model texts can be used to explore real writers’ uses of language, as well as scaffold pupils’ own writing; develop knowledge of the ways in which language, grammar and structural features can be used to convey meaning. Non-fiction across UK curricula If you take a moment to consider the range of non-fiction texts which circulate in our communities, it becomes evident that the list is an incredibly long one. From formal newspaper articles to celebrity ‘insta’ captions, non-fiction texts permeate our daily lives – informing us, advising us and most definitely persuading us! Therefore, it is of little surprise that non-fiction reading, and writing, is embedded in curricula across the nations of the UK. All curricula highlight the need for pupils to read and write for ‘a variety of purposes and audiences across a range of contexts’ (DfE, 2014c, p. 3) and develop ‘an understanding of how meaning is created’ (CCEA, 2017). As a result, this synergy across the four corners of the UK indicates the importance non-fiction plays in our society, and given how new media technologies grant us (and at times bombard us with) constant access to online content, there is little wonder why twenty-first-century pupils need experience analysing and evaluating non-fiction texts where potentially biased statements and ‘fake news’ can be presented as verifiable truths and facts...
