UNDERSTANDING CREATIVE NONFICTION
What is Creative Nonfiction?
The words “creative” and “nonfiction” describe the form. The word “creative” refers to the use of literary craft, the techniques fiction writers, playwrights, and poets employ to present nonfiction—factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid, dramatic manner. The goal is to make nonfiction stories read like fiction so that your readers are as enthralled by fact as they are by fantasy.
The word “creative” has been criticized in this context because some people have maintained that being creative means that you pretend or exaggerate or make up facts and embellish details. This is completely incorrect. It is possible to be honest and straightforward and brilliant and creative at the same time.
"Creative” doesn’t mean inventing what didn’t happen, reporting and describing what wasn’t there. It doesn’t mean that the writer has a license to lie. The cardinal rule is clear—and cannot be violated. This is the pledge the writer makes to the reader—the maxim we live by, the anchor of creative nonfiction: “You can’t make this stuff up!”
Examples of Creative Nonfiction
- "Coney Island at Night," by James Huneker
- "An Experiment in Misery," by Stephen Crane
- "In Mammoth Cave," by John Burroughs
- "Outcasts in Salt Lake City," by James Weldon Johnson
- "Rural Hours," by Susan Fenimore Cooper
- "The San Francisco Earthquake," by Jack London
- "The Watercress Girl," by Henry Mayhew
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