Creative Non-Fiction

[Lady Ravyn]

i just finished a class this semester called writing creative non-fiction. in it we discussed techniques for writing personal essays, nature essays, segmented essays, and memoirs (among other types of essays).

it was very interesting; i learned alot about a genre that i'd read many times before, but had never known what to officially call it.

one of the topics we discussed was what constitutes "lying" in creative non-fiction? for example- the david sedaris controversy? or even the issue about the author of "a million little pieces"?

does anyone have any creative non-fiction to put up? i'll put some of mine up soon...

[Earniel]

How creative can one actually get with non-fiction? Somehow it sounds contradictory. But then again, non-fiction is really not my field. I'm still sore over those essays in highschool that never got great grades.

Although I think a class to learn techniques and methods for writing non-fiction can be very useful.

I don't know the David Sedaris thing, but didn't the guy from 'A Million Little Pieces' get a little too creative with his non-fiction, i.o.w. making a lot of stuff up for his biography?

[Mari]

Lady Ravyn, did you mean creative in the sense of writing style and word choice and the describing of a certain event or more the selection of what to write and what not to write?
I think you can be pretty creative if you vary with the choice of words, use of wordplays and the viewpoint you take on things.
I have been keeping an online diary for the whole year I was in Japan and allthough I never made something up, I think (or hope) I succeeded in writing the stories in such ways that it was and continued to be interesting to read. (even though I ended up with over 200 pages worth of writing. I know because I had to edit it so my parents could have it made into a book and give it for my birthday as a reminder of my adventures... Man that was a lot of work!!! >_<)
Non-fiction doesn't have to be purely descriptive. ^_^

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Eärniel

How creative can one actually get with non-fiction? Somehow it sounds contradictory. But then again, non-fiction is really not my field. I'm still sore over those essays in highschool that never got great grades.

One can get very creative. I'm majoring in Literary Journalism. In Literary Journalism, everything that one writes has to be absolutely factual. Every thought and word a character says has to have really been said, and the people and location and time of day, everything, has to be factual.

However, that leaves a LOT of wiggle room. Even though everything that one writes is true, you can decide what stories you write and how you write them. You can find someone who has a fascinating story to tell and then can relate it. You also can decide how much material to include, exactly what material to include, etc. I sometimes have whole scenes I could create, but I don't create them. That's part of the decision making process. The more material you dig up through interviews and research, the more wiggle room you have in what you present.

The writing style one uses in Literary Journalism is often exactly the same as the style one would use in fiction. One can write one's characters in third person, or in first person. One can describe their thoughts as though they're thinking them in the moment, just as one would do for a fictional character.
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If your interviewee found a sunset striking, you can hunt through the person's memory for specifics and then from his clumsy words construct a vivid image through your descriptive writing talent. One can turn a statement such as, "he hit me," into (after digging for a little more detail), "the fist crashed into his jaw." Or "I fell over," becomes, "My foot caught on the fold of the rug; I stumbled." There's a lot of room for creative writing in the genre through the style of one's writing.

The freedom to choose what material we select for our stories and which material we throw out is also a big freedom, a big opportunity for us to construct exciting stories in the way we want. The key here is to spend a lot of time getting interviews and doing research, so that one has a lot of options. After all those options are on the table, one can select from them whatever one wants and the story structure becomes one's own. You choose where to begin and where to end, how to begin and how to end, and what to put in between. The more researching you do, the more options you have. And if there isn't much engaging material really to get out of this story, go and find somebody else who's more interesting and write his story! There are endless stories out there waiting to be discovered, structured and then written in exciting, fiction-honed writing styles.

[Lady Ravyn]

Originally Posted by Eärniel

How creative can one actually get with non-fiction? Somehow it sounds contradictory.

creative non-fiction isn't like the typical non-fiction you'd see in a historical account or an instructional or informational book. creative non-fiction is what you get when you use elements of fiction in the telling of an account of something that really happened- non-fiction.
it's pretty much writing factually- with pizzazz!

have you ever read mark twain's autobiography or his many essays? "life on the mississippi"? "roughing it"? or laurie notaro's "idiot girls' action adventure club"? or jack keroac's "dharma bums"? all of that is creative non-fiction.

the issue with david sedaris was virtually similar to that of the author of "a million little pieces". there were certain factors in his books and essays that weren't true. i believe in one essay he talked about his midget guitar teacher from his childhood, and the guitar teacher came out and proclaimed his non-midget-ness.
but in sedaris's defense, he was a kid at the time. to him, in his mind, the teacher was a midget.

so the question becomes is it lying if you're telling the story the way you perceived it at the time, or the way you remember it? even it your version isn't exactly the way it happened?