The Creative Nonfiction

The Creative Nonfiction

Literature 2 Lecture SeriesUniversity of San Carlos


It used to be called personal journalism or literary journalism or new journalism or parajournalism.

DEFINITION: Creative nonfiction is nonfiction prose which utilizes the techniques and strategies of fiction.


Creative nonfiction requires the skill of the storyteller and the research ability of the reporter.

Theodore A. Rees Cheney

Lee Gutkind points out that the main objective of CN is to teach in a manner that the most resistant reader will be interested in learning more.


This type of writing, begins with the facts, but does much more. It elaborates on the facts, interprets them, and, more significantly, presents them in an interesting and engaging way.

It is a “more imaginative approach to reporting.”


It is a “fact-based writing that remains compelling, undiminished by the passage of time, that has at heart an interest in enduring human values: foremost a fidelity to accuracy, to truthfulness” (Forche and Gerard 2001,1).

The keyword is “personal.” The writer of creative nonfiction presents the world-or that slice of it that he/she wishes to focus on-through the prism of his own personality.


U-DISCUSS: Practitioners of the art believe that they may “even come a little closer to the truth.”

Hemingway’s journalistic pieces, collected in By-line: Ernest Hemingway (1968), is highly regarded as a modern model for this type of nonfiction narrative.


The writer of creative nonfiction may not alter facts in the interest of improving his/her story.

The writer must nor deliberately misquote his sources, misconstrue their statements, or mislead readers.


The writer is expected to write compelling stories about real life, and in doing so he must employ all the devices and strategies available to the fictionist. Sometimes this involves imagining scenes or even conversations that did not actually happen. This is tricky ground, and the writer would be well advised to tread softly here.


In “Would Luna Have Been a Strongman?” an account of the assassination of Antonio Luna, Nick Joaquin writes:

Eyes flashing and fists clenched, Luna entered the house and ran upstairs, after slapping a sentry who had been too unnerved to salute. Upstairs, Luna was met by his mortal foe, Felipe Buencamino, who told him that Aguinaldo had gone to San Isidro. (1977, 178).


One assumes that the slapping of the sentry is documented. The “eyes flashing and fists clenched” is imagined by the author in the interest of an imaginative reconstruction of the event, what Virginia Woolf once recommended to writers of biography as the “creative fact.”


Literary memoir or a travel essay (travelogue/itinerary) it might be useful to say, invent a travelling companion who would serve as foil to the narrator by presenting entirely different impressions of the placess described.


What are the types of creative nonfiction?• Literary journalism – (what used to be called

“new journalism”)- writing in a personal way about the facts in a news event-which is still close to traditional reportage.

• Literary memoir – what Annie Dillard referred to when she said that “works of nonfiction can be coherent and crafted works of literature” (1995, 56).


Between those two poles would fall a whole range of other types of writing:• the magazine feature article• the newspaper column as cultural commentary• the review• the interview story• the character sketch• the biographical sketch or profile• the personal (or familiar) essay• the autobiographical sketch


Essay and article are often used interchangeably. But the term “article” usually refers to a “feature” in a magazine or newspaper or e-zine. it thus tends to address a specific type of reader (the particular market of the periodical or website) in which it appears.


A profile is an in-depth article or essay that concentrates on one person or place.

Literary journalism or new journalism is writing in a personal way about the facts in a news event.


Personal narratives, or “life stories,” as they ar now called may be divided into: autobiographical narratives,(e.g., memoirs, travel narratives, journals, etc.); and biographical narratives (e.g., character sketches, interview stories, etc.)


Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo have written:

But when does a feature article become an essay, hence, “literature”? How about an interview story? or a column? or a movie review? Is “literariness” a matter of subject or style or approach or tone? For the matter, when does a story or narrative become an essay? And given the paradigms of poststructuralist criticism, should we be worrying about these distinctions at all? Are not all these materials simply “texts?” (2002, 354.)


The strategies of creative nonfiction are very much like the strategies of fiction.

The main point for CN is to handle the subject-whatever it might be-as a “human interest” story. What this means is simply that a good piece of creative nonfiction has a personal voice, a clearly defined point-of-view, which will reveal itself in the tone, and be presented through scene, summary, and description.

Strategies of Creative Nonfiction

• approach• point-of-view• tone• voice• structure• a strong beginning• rhetorical

techniques• character• concrete and

evocative details• scene• a convincing ending

final words about CN…

One way of looking at what happens in a work of creative nonfiction is this: it is a personal account of a quest.

The point is the discovery, the triumph of the quest. It is this discovery, this insight, which the reader looks for when he agrees to participate in the adventure.

final words about CN…

Presenting it as a quest-an exciting exploration-and not just as a bare listing of events or facts or steps or developments or trends-this is the challenge faced by the writer of creative nonfiction.

Q: Are you ready for this kind of CHALLENGE?

SOURCES

Creative Nonfiction: A Manual for Filipino WritersCristina Pantoja HidalgoThe University of the Philippines Press, 2005.

Creative Nonfiction: A ReaderEdited by Cristina Pantoja HidalgoThe University of the Philippines Press, 2003.

The Creative Nonfiction

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