I'm pretty sure I'm the only idiot around who can't understand what creative non-fiction is so could someone help me understand what this is? I love reading non fiction almost as much as I love writing fiction. And lately I've seen an increase in calls that include this genre/category. I've read so many articles on what this category "is" but I'm still confused. Non-fiction is the facts presented in a way the intended demographic is going to understand. So, is creative non-fiction like the stuff Ann Rule writes? Real life with a side of what the writer 'thinks" happened between the facts? I am soooo confused. I have a piece in my head that involves Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle and their disparate ideas about spiritualism. I keep thinking that this would be just my opinion based on the facts I have gathered in the past year. I'm not an expert on this subject so why would anyone be interested in my opinion about this situation. Would you kind folks please help me get this?
Have you ever been out on the town with friends, going for pizza and a few beers and someone launches into a funny story about a near disastrous fishing trip, or how their kid's peewee football team came back from a score of 21-0 at the 4th quarter to win the game... Creative non fiction. It's telling of an actual event in an entertaining and non clinical way.
Creative nonfiction is usually memoir/person essay type of writing. It's your story, but in telling it the writer often brings up universal truths or things that go beyond their personal narrative. Check out the Modern Love column in The New York Times. That column is a pretty good example of creative nonfiction, and if you read a few of them, you'll see different approaches to handling it. There are tons of examples out there, but I've been a fan of Modern Love like forever.
Creative non-fiction could be a poetic interpretation of one's own life or a historical event. It could also be an abstract telling of something real, like telling a personal experience through an emotional landscape rather than a literal form. "I had a nightmare that my house was haunted! The walls were making strange sounds and the shadows were playing tricks with my mind! I found I couldn't stay, only to wake and realize it was only a bad dream I was having," could be stated as "The whispering walls evoked terror as the forms of writhing, barren trees moved across them; my resolve to stay vanished when, upon opening my eyes, the sleep of death had passed into the void from which it emerged to assail me!" It's an amateurish example, but it gets the point across. Creative non-fiction is basically to embellish the truth, not necessarily to exaggerate it.
That is correct. I think what may be confusing you is maybe you're thinking "creative writing = fiction ---> creative non-fiction = truth plus made up stories." That would be incorrect. Creative doesn't mean false or made up. It just means entertaining, or unusual or interestingly presented. There are also a lot of sub-genres of creative non-fiction, so the term "creative non-fiction" can mean a lot of different things to different people. But really, it's just a (hopefully) entertaining way of telling a true story. When I think of creative non-fiction, I think of humorous slice of life essays. My mom was a fan of Irma Bombeck's columns and books. I think of her stuff as an example of one type of creative non-fiction. But others may think of another sub-genre, because there are many ways to tell a true story, and many subjects to tell about.
