If you have ever wanted to write a true story, you’ve probably been faced with the quandary of how to tell it. Nonfiction is a broad genre, one that spans from how-to manuals to academic and technical writing, and even journalistic articles, like weather reports or local or global events. But if what you want to write is a portion of or even your entire life story, you may have wondered how you could do so in an engaging way—one that keeps readers glued to the pages, like the way some people become engrossed in a favorite novel.
In the 1960s, a solution gained popularity, although it had been around since at least the 1940s: a form of writing known as creative nonfiction.
Writers who are in the process of drafting a memoir or autobiography may have come across the term “creative nonfiction.” A genre of writing that differs from other forms of nonfiction, creative nonfiction implements literary styles to depict a narrative, connecting with the reader through well-paced storytelling and evocative descriptions. American author and speaker Lee Gutkind, founder of the literary journal Creative Nonfiction, says that this genre:
“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.”
Lee Gutkind
Focused on telling a story, creative nonfiction incorporates exposition, an inciting incident, rising action, a defined climax, falling action, a resolution, and a conclusion—a format sometimes called Freytag’s Pyramid—akin to the structure of a novel. This genre is used to document factual events, such as in memoir, personal essays, anthologies, literary journal narratives, or even feature-length articles in magazines; in other words, creative nonfiction is written not exclusively for scholarly purposes.
Although similar in structure, creative nonfiction is different from creative fiction, referred to hereafter as literature. Fabricated and conceptualized by the author, literature does not convey a true tale. Actual historical events, eras, or individuals may be included in literature; however, the story is not based wholly in fact. Instead, those aspects of truth are oftentimes used as a springboard for the rest of the imagined story. By comparison, creative nonfiction is factual, following real events, usually from the author’s life. While portions of a memoir, for example, may rely solely on the author’s memory and, thus, may vary from the way others remember included events, the author is held to a high standard of integrity.
Of course, readers of creative nonfiction do understand that human memory is imperfect, so for writers of the genre who are concerned about their work’s reception or their professional reputation as a writer, you or your publisher can put a disclaimer on the same page as your copyright information. For example, in resilient by Katherine Turner, Josha Publishing included the following disclaimer at the beginning of her memoir: This book is a work of creative nonfiction. It reflects the author’s present recollections of experiences over time. Some names and characteristics have been changed, some events compressed or excluded, and some dialogue has been recreated.
Disclaimers describing the work as creative nonfiction create grace for the author with their audience. Because human memory is inherently imperfect, by saying the work is the author’s “present recollections of experiences over time,” the author (and publisher) is acknowledging that the included events are described as accurately as possible. As an example, when it comes to recreating dialogue, most readers would agree that it is unreasonable to expect someone to recall every detail of a conversation from the past. While memoir authors may very well recollect the stories from their life they want to include in their manuscript, they may not remember every detail, which is what usually keeps readers turning the pages; it’s usually more engaging to read a story as it occurred, rather than to read a summary of it. By recreating dialogue, the author can bring the reader into their story as they experienced it. Furthermore, disclaimers at the beginning of works of creative nonfiction protect the artistic aspects of the author’s storytelling, all the while reminding readers that the content is not a fabrication.
Creative nonfiction offers writers a way to expressively tell their stories. Those who write creative nonfiction do so in a unique way, though with clear purpose. Ultimately, their goal is to write true stories that provide universal truths—or, at least, their experiences—about a multitude of topics, but with the added flare of their personal insight. And while many stigmas can surround nonfiction as “dry” when compared to imaginative writing, the good news is pizazz can be added to the nonfiction realm through the methodology of creative nonfiction.
Josha Publishing, LLC 