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We have also included some links to some well- known examples of creative non-fiction to give you a sense of what is out there. An Introduction to Creative Non-Fulton What “Is” creative non-Fulton? * Creative nonfiction merges the boundaries between literary art (fiction, poetry) and research nonfiction (statistical, fact-filled, run of the mill journalism). It is writing composed of the real, or of facts, that employs the same literary devices as fiction such as setting, voice/tone, character development, etc. This makes if deferent (more “creative”) than standard nonfiction writing. Sometimes called literary Journalism or the literature of fact, creative nonfiction merges the boundaries between literary art (fiction, poetry) and research nonfiction (statistical, fact-filled, run of the mill journalism). It is writing composed of the real, or of facts, that employs the same literary devices as fiction, such as setting, voice/tone, character development, etc. * Creative nonfiction should (1) include accurate and well-researched information, (2) hold the interest of the reader, and (3) potentially blur the realms of fact and fiction in a pleasing, literary style (while remaining grounded in fact). In the end, creative nonfiction can be as experimental as fiction-?let Just needs to be based In the real. Content of creative nonfiction: * It’s important to clarify that the content of creative nonfiction does not necessarily have to come from the life or the experience of the writer. Say, for instance, the writer is using techniques from literary journalism to create a portrait of a person interviewed. The writer may choose to write a portrait of the interviewee through an omniscient perspective, meaning the writer wouldn’t be in the piece at all. * On the them (including themselves).
As long as the piece deals with something real, or something based on the real, the writer is allowed to take the piece in any direction e or she wishes. * In creative nonfiction, writers attempt to observe, record, and thus shape a moment(s) from real life. Writers thus extract meaning through factual details-?they combine the fact of detail with the literary extrapolation necessary in rendering meaning from an observed scene. * At the same time, successful creative nonfiction attempts to overlay fact with traditional conceptions of dramatic structure.
While rendering meaning from an observed scene, a piece should suggest a beginning, middle and end that clearly conveys the conflict and the characters, and ashes the action toward some sort of closure. * In effect, creative nonfiction attempts to project a dramatic, literary framework upon everyday existence, rendering it enjoyable, enlightening and potentially meaningful. * While writing creative nonfiction, writers should dwell on sensory details and “show show show. ” * A piece should never Just tell the reader something or summarize-?this is what research non-fiction does.
Different “types” of creative non-fiction writing: * Due to the fact that creative nonfiction is an ever-evolving genre of writing, it is difficult to define set types: * The Personal Essay: A piece of writing, usually in the first person, that focuses on a topic through the lens of the personal experience of the narrator. It can be narrative or non-narrative-it can tell a story in a traditional way or improvise a new way for doing so. Ultimately, it should always be based on true, personal experience. * The Memoir: A memoir is a longer piece of creative nonfiction that delves deep into a writer’s personal experience.
It typically uses multiple scenes/stories as a way of examining a writer’s life (or an important moment in a writer’s life). It is usually, but not necessarily, narrative. The Short Short: A short/short is a (typically) narrative work that is concise and to the point. It uses imagery and details to relay the meaning, or the main idea of the piece. Typically it’s only one or two scenes, and is like a flash of a moment that tells a whole story. * Literary Journalism: Literary Journalism uses the techniques of Journalism (such as interviews and reviews) in order to look outside of the straight forward, objective world that journalism creates.
It uses literary practices to capture the scene/setting of the assignment or the persona of the person being interviewed. It can often be narrative or heavily animistic. Another important aspect of literary Journalism is that it often stretches the idea of “objective facts” in order to better reflect real life and real people. In other words, while Journalism is about being completely objective, literary journalism says that people can’t be objective because they already have their own subjective views about the world. Therefore, by taking the “objectiveness” out of the journalistic process, the writer is being more truthful.
The lyric essay is similar to the personal essay in that it also deals with a topic that affects the reader. However, the lyric essay relies heavily on descriptions and imagery. Lyrical suggests something poetic, musical, or flowing (in a sense). This type of piece uses a heavily descriptive, flowing tone in order to tell a story. Top of Page Memoir: Tips for Writing about Your Life Memoirs are an often overlooked subdivision of creative writing, and more specifically, creative non-fiction. They have the potential to be incredibly interesting, richly developed, beautifully moving pieces that can sometimes be confused with autobiography.
Generally, autobiographies are the life story or history of a person’s life written by that person. Though memoirs share some similarities with autobiographies, such as first person narration, they are more than a recounting of one’s life events in chronological order. Instead, they can be descriptions of one single event or moment in one’s life, rather than that life in its entirety, and tend to be written in a less structured or formal manner. Memoirs have the capacity to be funny, profound, moving, cynical, etc. , and may even have resemblances to fiction in their creativity.
Memoirs can focus on one specific event, place, person, etc. Or they can be expanded to encompass a broader range of events, snapshots, or memories in he author’s experience. Here are some basic things you should know about writing a memoir: Here are some basic things you should know about writing a memoir: * A memoir can be about nearly anything in your personal experience/life that is significant enough for you to want to retell it, or it can simply be a snapshot of a moment or a description off person, place, or thing in your life. Choose a topic that you care about, for this will make your piece more descriptive, emotional, and creative. Even though it is about YOUR life, if you care about your topic then so will the reader. Seek a deeper or underlying theme within the simple description of an event etc. That the reader can connect to. Use a lot of description and imagery, if you can, to make the reader feel like they know the topic intimately. * There is no specific form or style that it is necessary for a memoir to have USE YOUR OWN UNIQUE VOICE! Do not confuse memoirs with autobiography, they are NOT the same thing (as noted above). You may want to find some memoirs in the library or online in order to get a feel for the variety out there and some of the ways you might want to go about writing yours. A few examples we are familiar with are: My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Darrell * Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir by Lauren Slater * Angel’s Ashes, ‘Its, and Teacher Man by Frank McClure * The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be by Farley Moat Though these are longer books, memoirs can take the form of shorter, more “snapshot” like pieces as well.
A memoir does not have to be a long, all-inclusive cataloguing of your life-that could be overwhelming, boring, and read more like a formal autobiography—choose a specific focus. Take creative license. * A memoir, though based on and rooted in truth and fact, does not have to be 100% straight aced non-fiction. Take a new perspective, get creative, find a way to make your piece more interesting, fresh, thought-provoking etc. In other words, Just because this is humorlessly. Though there is some controversy over what can and cannot be called memoir, Lauren Slather’s book Lying is a good example of how creative you can get with this genre. Hers is specifically labeled a metaphorical memoir in order to avoid this controversy (though it has followed her anyway), and so perhaps saying something to that effect is a way of avoiding complaints of false advertising and fraud. Though you should not claim something to be true that is not, you can choose what you want to leave out of or include in your memoir.
You can make it read like fiction, and you can make conscious decisions to surround your work with ambiguity that questions the nature of truth vs.. Fact (as Slater does). It may sound complicated, but really is quite basic: don’t make claims your piece is something it’s not, don’t outright lie and then say it’s fact, but choose your material carefully and you can do many more things with memoirs than you might at first think (see the limits of the al in creative non-fiction). * Finally, have fun with it! Enjoy it!
Memoirs can be very emotionality releasing, fun to play around with, and can reward not only the reader but also you, the writer. Test your limits and try different ways of writing-?its all about self-exploration and discovery. Top of Page The Personal Essay: A Few Pointers The personal essay is one of the most popular forms of creative non-fiction writing found in English classes, especially in high school but also, to a certain degree and in a more complex way, college. This kind of writing allows you to explore a topic wrought the lens of your own, personal experiences, reflections, ideas, and reactions.
It can be one of the most powerful kinds of writing you get to do, both in its direct connection to you, the writer, allowing you to engage with material in class at a very personal, complex, and meaningful level, and also in the amount of latitude that you as a writer are afforded in terms of style, technique, and form. The following are some tips and strategies to help you think as you write and revise a personal essay, or prepare to write this kind of assignment for the first time (the topic of the essay ill always vary-?we are focused on the genre as a whole here). Focus. In some ways, the personal essay is similar to memoir and many of the same techniques can be used effectively. It differs in that an essay is focused on one specific topic(and here, it will be explored through your own experiences) whereas the memoir has the capability to trace or illuminate several themes, topics, and ideas via the author’s life (or part(s) of that life) that he/she describes (and how he/she describes it). * Organization. Not to be confused with form (see below). Your essay, like other essays, would have some kind of coherent organization to it.
This is not to say that you must use thesis style (in fact, we are confident that powerful personal essays follow that organization scheme less than 5% of the time). No matter how you choose to organize (and what form you use), be sure that your paragraphs and ideas flow from one to the next, connected by a common theme (trying to tackle the topic on which you are writing). It can be scattered or fragmented (if that is a stylistic/form choice you make), but the entire paper should have a relationship, even if it only becomes clear at the ND.
This allows the reader to follow your experience. * Form. One of the best parts of this kind of writing is the power given to you as the writer. There is no form, no formula, no tried and true method that you must use to be effective. In fact, to copy the purpose of this being a personal essay. Choose a form and style that suits you and is fitting for the experience that you are describing. Try to think of the form as a part of the writing itself, not Just a framework for it: the form should actually enhance and make more poignant what it is you are taking about.
Push the boundaries, but onto go too far-?you are still writing an essay (and be sure that you follow any specific requirements outlined by your professor). * Diction/Language. Like form, in the personal essay (and creative writing generally, perhaps even, to some extent, writing in general) the way in which you say something can “mean” Just as much as the form into which you place what it is you are saying. Use language to enhance what you are writing about and not Just as a means to say it.
Here is where you can get really creative and appropriately use linguistic “play’ to explore your topic and your own relation to it in new and complex ways. Choosing at Topic and Approach When beginning a personal essay, you should choose a significant event in your life. This can be almost anything, but something about it should matter to you. Many personal essays hinge around a sad experience, but Joy is Just as strong an emotion, if not more so. As always in creative writing, you should consider why you are writing this piece: what can writing about this experience teach others?
What can you learn from revisiting the memory? In a personal essay, the importance of the word “personal” is not to be undervalued. Whatever you choose to write about must e important to you, hinge around your experience, and have some impact on you. When writing a personal essay, it is important to remember that the main character is you. This is challenging for a lot of people who are used to expressing themselves through a character or through poetry. Personal essays demand more vulnerability than either of these forms.
In a personal essay, the writer should never be afraid of the word “l” in fact, it should be used as often as possible. In most situations where you find yourself straying into the first person plural (“we”) or even the third person, sing such vague language as “one could” or “one would,” you will almost always find the writing becomes stronger if you replace the subject with “l. ” Most of the time, drifting into vague language is a sign that you are trying to convey a message you find “too” personal and are afraid of expressing. However, it is this vulnerability that fuels the personal essay.
You cannot learn from the experience unless you are honest with yourself, and readers will not be able to understand why this experience is significant if you hide yourself from view. Your character in the story can only develop if you claim the story as your own. Revising Tips While one of the most common kinds of creative non-fiction writing (at least in an academic setting), the personal essay is probably one of the harder assignments to revise. After all, how do you “fix” a paper that is composed of very personal ideas? A personal essay is not like a formal analytical essay– it doesn’t need an explicit thesis- driven format.
Therefore, revising a personal essay can be complicated, especially when you feel as though you don’t want to tamper with personal thoughts. However, a personal essay often needs someone to tamper with it in order to make it a omelet piece. Below we have listed several steps that may be useful when revising or giving feedback on a personal essay (either your own or someone else’s). * Voice/ Tone: The voice and tone are important in the personal essay because they reflect Are we placed inside the writer’s head? These are all important questions to ask in order to realize the effect/the emotion the writer wants the piece to convey.
Ask yourself (or the writer): Is the writer’s voice consistent throughout the piece? Does it reflect the tone of the piece? Does the piece incorporate some experimental ideas? It s not necessary to have a personal essay be “experimental,” but it does need to be unique to the writer (hence the name). Some experimental ideas include: playing with the sentence structure by Juxtaposing short sentences with longer, complicated sentences playing with word usage by including repetition or alliteration or playing with form by including other voices, dialogue, and points of views. * Showing v.
Telling: Details and imagery can only help a personal essay; they help to develop a story by making it more real to the reader. A personal essay doesn’t incarnadines scenes, but it does need a well formed focus or point and imagery an help to establish that. * Character Development: If the personal essay has characters, make sure they’re developed clearly and that the relationships between the characters are developed. Dialogue between characters not only helps the reader to understand the relationships, it helps the reader to understand the individual characters and their actions.
Imagery also helps with this and ties back into showing v. Telling; by describing a character through details (of their actions or their appearance), we better understand a character. * Original Language: Everything in piece of creative writing is subject to scrutiny, including word choice. Therefore it’s helpful to look closely at language. Is the writing fresh? Are there any obvious clicks that detract from the piece? * Form: How a piece of creative non-fiction writing is put together is extremely important.
The form not only needs to be organized well, it also speaks to the piece as a whole. Good questions to ask: Why is it organized in this way? How does this reflect your (or the writer’s) experience? It’s also helpful to discuss different form techniques such as flashbacks, stream of consciousness, or different scenes that piece together a writer’s main idea. * Fiction/Poetry Techniques: Since creative non-fiction writing is such a hybrid and multi-faceted genre, it’s often helpful to use/borrow techniques from fiction or poetry.
Scenes, dialogue, narrative structure, setting, and an emphasis on language are all important aspects of creative nonfiction as well. Top of Page Examples * Excerpt from Holidays on Ice by David Seeders A collection of memoir-essays by David Seeders, this particular except is from the essay entitled Santayana Diaries, where Seeders recounts his experience working as a holiday elf for Macy’s. It is a great example of memoir. As you read, think about the debate going on about the memoir (see handout on memoirs)-?where do you see embellishment or possible “stretching of the truth” for artistic purposes?
How is this different from a straight autobiography? What kinds of stylistic devices is Seeders using that would make this a piece of creative non-fiction? * Excerpt from Tom Wolf’s The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test This piece is a classic example of Literary Journalism (also called New Journalism). In it, Wolfe is reporting on both the sixties in general as well as Ken Keyes, the author of One Flew Over the essential period piece of that decade, this novel is also one of the first examples of Literary Journalism.
What about this piece separates it from more traditional journalism? How is it closer to what we would otherwise consider (mistake for?? ) a novel? From this excerpt, can you see how this kind of Journalism is considered a kind of creative non-fiction? What does this type of Journalism have to offer us as readers that more traditional Journalism doesn’t/can’t? This piece also demonstrates nicely the concept of “the limits of the real” in creative non-fiction-?how so? (see our note on his concept under Creative Non-fiction)?
Note: To access excerpt, follow the link, click where it says “click to look inside” and then use the arrows to flip the pages. * Excerpt from Lars Seigneur’s Travels with Elizabeth: Three Years on the Road and on the Streets A great example of memoir. What do you see as the “point” or message of this piece to be? How does the author accomplish this? What features make this an example of creative non-fiction? Of memoir? I INTRODUCTION I I I THE PLACE WHERE THE REAL AND THE IMAGINED COINCIDES: AN INTRODUCTION TO AUSTRALIAN CREATIVE NONFICTION I I Donna Lee
Bribe I creative (adverb) creating; able to create; inventive, imaginative; showing imagination as well as routine skill. Nonfiction (noun) literary matter based directly on fact (pop. Novels etc. ) [from the Oxford English Dictionary] When in discussions in late 1999 it emerged that not only was Creative Nonfiction to be one of the main themes of Writing 2000, the fifth annual conference of the PAW (Australian Association of Writing Programs), but that one of the keynote speakers for the conference would be Professor Lee Gutting (pioneer of the teaching of this so-called ‘fourth genre’ in the
USA), Engel Karate and I agreed that it seemed timely to gather together some Australian examples of this kind of writing. This collection is the outcome – its aim to begin to reveal some of the variety and qualities of creative nonfiction as it is practiced in Australia. The contributors were not chosen as those we Judged the ‘best’ or the ‘most famous’ proponents of what we defined as creative nonfiction, rather they are an interesting and wide-ranging (although modest) selection of writers who, we thought, could each bring something unique and different to this preliminary survey.
Creative nonfiction is currently a highly visible literary and publishing phenomenon in the United States (where creative nonfiction has been labeled the literature of reality’, ‘the literature of fact’, the ‘fourth genre’, and ‘real life stories'[l]) and is indeed described by Gutting as more of a ‘movement’ than a genre. Australians have been writing creative nonfiction in various guises for decades, but it has not been identified as such.
The advent of the creative nonfiction label, however, means that there is now a meaningful way to group, discuss and publish writing as diverse as memoir, factionalism biography, autobiography and there liberating, some literary/New Journalism, the ‘creative’ essay, innovative self- aware critical fiction, and various forms of experimental and narrative/dramatists history writing.
This list is in no way complete or definitive, as the term ‘creative conversation of the term, with questions arising of how, for example, creative nonfiction differs from what we already understand as literary Journalism or, even, Victorianism, and even whether or not yet another literary descriptor is particularly useful. From the inception of this project we sought to be non-prescriptive, rather Han setting a concise (and limiting) definition to work from, we were interested in how each writer chose to interpret the term.
The range of work represented by this modest number of pieces does begin to suggest the range and flexibility of the appellation. The contents page indicates an order for the contributions, but e- publishing enables the reader to browse and select an author at a mouse click, and thus discover their own connections and resonances between the pieces. It is not easy to access and read longer pieces on the Internet, so we gave the authors a rower-end word limit (800 words), but perhaps we were too stingy, for most authors just went ahead and wrote lengthier works.
Each writer has, in their interpretation of creative nonfiction, taken a nonfiction subject and utilized creative strategies and structures to relate their factual material. How each writer has diverged from traditional nonfiction writing differs from work to work, but each of these pieces has in common the use of fictional techniques and/or an overtly subjective point-of-view in order to write something which is still nonfiction in aim, scope and realization. This is the hallmark of successful creative nonfiction as otherwise, logically, the resulting work would be non-nonfiction, or fiction.
To state this unambiguously, creative nonfiction must be nonfiction first and foremost, and the best creative nonfiction always emphasizes the substance/content over the style. To quote Gutting:Here are people with something to say, which is at the cusp of the best creative nonfiction pre-eminent leaders in the field have chosen to emphasis the substance of their work over the style of their presentation that is not to say that style shouldn’t be important to writers, but not at the expense of the message and the meaning. 2]Thus, in none of the works in this collection has the ultimate aim of nonfiction writing (I. E. To somehow relate some real/factual/truthful material) been sacrificed to the creative method. There is a current anxiety in Australia surrounding the notion of authenticity, and much heated debate regarding the ethics of appropriation – about stealing other’s names, personae and cultural or intellectual property, about copyright, and about the precise meaning of words and phrases.
Some of this debate s well-reasoned and well-intentioned, some is mean-spirited and motivated only by political desire, but all these questions are difficult to resolve. Creative nonfiction does not seek to subvert in any way the truth-telling aspirations of nonfiction, nor does it blend fact and fiction (not caring if the connection to the real is distorted in the process) or utilize fiction to somehow ‘spice up’ dry factual material.
The mongrel’s terms doc-drama, true fiction, factual story, fact-based novel, nonfiction novel, research fiction and (the particularly nasty) faction are often used to describe such departures from narrow definitions of fiction but, apart from being ugly, these hybrid terms are relatively worthless for, as we know, very little fiction is not based on some wider reality and it has long been accepted that nonfiction can never be ‘pure’ fact.
As such, we realism that creative nonfiction is a ‘descriptive’ as much as a defining term. Creative nonfiction writes a more discursive, more subjective, more type of writing is particularly suited to a focus on the personal, on human values and ethical issues, on a sense of the self in action, and on material which deals with motional content in a way that texts which aim to be totally objective may not be able to.
Creative nonfiction is thus the perfect vehicle for the writer who wishes to reveal the impossibility of any immaculate objectivity when it comes to writing nonfiction, and instead wants/needs to revel in a subjective approach. In creative nonfiction subjectivity is not hidden, but is rather one of the foundations of the approach. let must also be stated that the weakest (and most annoying) creative nonfiction portrays an overbearing ‘l’, where the author’s subjectivity overshadows the subject being discussed.
Even the ‘l’ of the memoirs can become egocentrically overbearing [3] and, perhaps even worse, boring. The best memoir relates information about the author, but as Michael Wilding (who has long used himself and his life as subjects for his fiction and prefers to write about what he calls ‘authentic experience’) has said, in memoir ‘you are trying to record accurately the details of what happened to strictly and literally transcribe people’. 4] Holding’s ‘War and Pacifism’ as memoir thus charts the development of his political awareness and his faltering ‘first step into literary ability, first participation in the machinery of dietary production’, but also provides an accurate picture of a wartime childhood: aircraft spotting and gardening for England. Creative nonfiction is particularly suited to relating such historically-based narratives.
Patrick Bickering, a scholar of Renaissance literature who has published several articles in recent years on the ‘Shakespeare Authorship Debate’, has used the form to continue his argument for Sir Edward Dyer (1543-1607) as the principal author of the Shakespeare canon. This piece is an attempt to evoke, by means of a fictional ‘fleshing out’, the cultural and lattice milieus that gave rise to the performance and publication of the Shakespearean drama, and to give ‘the Bard’ a voice.
The notion of the voices that can be constructed in creative nonfiction drives Brier’s work in the area of factionalism biography. Faced with the dilemma of how to write about an artist’s motivations and personal life when the documentary evidence is sparse – in this case, when the details could be summarily reduced to a dry paragraph – John Power’s biographer has chosen to relate her subject’s life by way of a woman who was absolutely central o his story, his mother.
The construction of Mary Power’s factionalism (but fully researched) voice allows one of the seminal forces involved in the formation of an artistic character to be explored, together with a recognition of how historical reality provides the arena in which all character is formed and action is played out. Author Gary Crew reveals how he began with a fascinating moment in history, that fateful day – 4th June, 1629 – when the Dutch vessel Batavia struck rocks off the coast of Terra Australia(what is now Western Australia) and foundered.
Over 300 assigners and crew survived by clambering up on a coral outcrop, but 120 were subsequently murdered by their peers. The accused were tried and two of them castaway on what is now known as the mainland of Australia and left to die, but there is evidence that they survived. Crew relates how he researched and reconstructed the aftermath of that wreck and the lives of the two castaways in his multiple award- winning novel Strange Objects. In this piece we learn about the author, the process bibliography to Strange Objects.
This is not to suggest that creative nonfiction writes only about the past. While Antonio Jack’s most recent novel, Layers of the City, is a researched poetic contemplation of history and ancestry as much as an analysis of the present, his piece for this collection ‘No 50. The Problem of the City’, is a meditation on such inescapably unpatriotic aspects of contemporary life as ecological and environmental disaster, squashed Native Title rights, and the alienation and dehumidification of urban life. When you walk around the city you get the feeling that the people are in slow motion – but the buildings are growing up awfully fast, eating up the available airspace at an enormous rate. Embedded in a series of blackly, almost-humorous, cameos is a serious discussion of how we have given cars precedence over the human in the city and destroyed the environment. ‘We could leave the city for its original inhabitants,’ Each writes. We could say we took your land away, now we are returning it.
Look at how we have covered your hills with mighty fine grey concrete and black bitumen, dammed up your river and torn out your trees… Pity about the mess, but that’s Progress! ‘ Creative nonfiction has political and social, as well as aesthetic, potential. Crew, Day, Karate and Wilding write about riding. Perhaps, if creative nonfiction does provide an avenue for the writer’s singular voice as an active participant in his or her inexperience'[5], then it should be obvious that the literary life will be of immediate relevance to a creative nonfiction author.
By describing a series of imagined and actual Journeys, Marble Day charts some of the process by which she became a writer. From reading Girls Own Annual and Blink Bill and imagining being elsewhere through the colored worlds of the atlas, to actual travel abroad and the discovery that what was told in books could e real, what was important for her development as an author (whose ability to portray a sense of place is remarkable) was both the details of the places imagined and the imagining.
For Day, what was central was the recognition that: We need to have faith in words because they map the world for us’; and that literature is a ‘place where the real and the imagined coincide’. A working definition for the creative nonfiction in this collection, perhaps? Stated rather grandly, we hope that one of the results of this collection is to open up discussion and further the definition and reactive of creative nonfiction writing in Australia.