Writers.com

Creative Nonfiction: What It Is and How to Write It

Sean Glatch  |  October 18, 2022  |  6 Comments

what is creative nonfiction

What is creative nonfiction? Despite its slightly enigmatic name, no literary genre has grown quite as quickly as creative nonfiction in recent decades. Literary nonfiction is now well-established as a powerful means of storytelling, and bookstores now reserve large amounts of space for nonfiction, when it often used to occupy a single bookshelf.

Like any literary genre, creative nonfiction has a long history; also like other genres, defining contemporary CNF for the modern writer can be nuanced. If you’re interested in writing true-to-life stories but you’re not sure where to begin, let’s start by dissecting the creative nonfiction genre and what it means to write a modern literary essay.

What Creative Nonfiction Is

Creative nonfiction employs the creative writing techniques of literature, such as poetry and fiction, to retell a true story.

How do we define creative nonfiction? What makes it “creative,” as opposed to just “factual writing”? These are great questions to ask when entering the genre, and they require answers which could become literary essays themselves.

In short, creative nonfiction (CNF) is a form of storytelling that employs the creative writing techniques of literature, such as poetry and fiction, to retell a true story. Creative nonfiction writers don’t just share pithy anecdotes, they use craft and technique to situate the reader into their own personal lives. Fictional elements, such as character development and narrative arcs, are employed to create a cohesive story, but so are poetic elements like conceit and juxtaposition.

The CNF genre is wildly experimental, and contemporary nonfiction writers are pushing the bounds of literature by finding new ways to tell their stories. While a CNF writer might retell a personal narrative, they might also focus their gaze on history, politics, or they might use creative writing elements to write an expository essay. There are very few limits to what creative nonfiction can be, which is what makes defining the genre so difficult—but writing it so exciting.

Different Forms of Creative Nonfiction

From the autobiographies of Mark Twain and Benvenuto Cellini, to the more experimental styles of modern writers like Karl Ove Knausgård, creative nonfiction has a long history and takes a wide variety of forms. Common iterations of the creative nonfiction genre include the following:

Also known as biography or autobiography, the memoir form is probably the most recognizable form of creative nonfiction. Memoirs are collections of memories, either surrounding a single narrative thread or multiple interrelated ideas. The memoir is usually published as a book or extended piece of fiction, and many memoirs take years to write and perfect. Memoirs often take on a similar writing style as the personal essay does, though it must be personable and interesting enough to encourage the reader through the entire book.

Personal Essay

Personal essays are stories about personal experiences told using literary techniques.

When someone hears the word “essay,” they instinctively think about those five paragraph book essays everyone wrote in high school. In creative nonfiction, the personal essay is much more vibrant and dynamic. Personal essays are stories about personal experiences, and while some personal essays can be standalone stories about a single event, many essays braid true stories with extended metaphors and other narratives.

Personal essays are often intimate, emotionally charged spaces. Consider the opening two paragraphs from Beth Ann Fennelly’s personal essay “ I Survived the Blizzard of ’79. ”

We didn’t question. Or complain. It wouldn’t have occurred to us, and it wouldn’t have helped. I was eight. Julie was ten.

We didn’t know yet that this blizzard would earn itself a moniker that would be silk-screened on T-shirts. We would own such a shirt, which extended its tenure in our house as a rag for polishing silver.

The word “essay” comes from the French “essayer,” which means “to try” or “attempt.” The personal essay is more than just an autobiographical narrative—it’s an attempt to tell your own history with literary techniques.

Lyric Essay

The lyric essay contains similar subject matter as the personal essay, but is much more experimental in form.

The lyric essay contains similar subject matter as the personal essay, with one key distinction: lyric essays are much more experimental in form. Poetry and creative nonfiction merge in the lyric essay, challenging the conventional prose format of paragraphs and linear sentences.

The lyric essay stands out for its unique writing style and sentence structure. Consider these lines from “ Life Code ” by J. A. Knight:

The dream goes like this: blue room of water. God light from above. Child’s fist, foot, curve, face, the arc of an eye, the symmetry of circles… and then an opening of this body—which surprised her—a movement so clean and assured and then the push towards the light like a frog or a fish.

What we get is language driven by emotion, choosing an internal logic rather than a universally accepted one.

Lyric essays are amazing spaces to break barriers in language. For example, the lyricist might write a few paragraphs about their story, then examine a key emotion in the form of a villanelle or a ghazal. They might decide to write their entire essay in a string of couplets or a series of sonnets, then interrupt those stanzas with moments of insight or analysis. In the lyric essay, language dictates form. The successful lyricist lets the words arrange themselves in whatever format best tells the story, allowing for experimental new forms of storytelling.

Literary Journalism

Much more ambiguously defined is the idea of literary journalism. The idea is simple: report on real life events using literary conventions and styles. But how do you do this effectively, in a way that the audience pays attention and takes the story seriously?

You can best find examples of literary journalism in more “prestigious” news journals, such as The New Yorker , The Atlantic , Salon , and occasionally The New York Times . Think pieces about real world events, as well as expository journalism, might use braiding and extended metaphors to make readers feel more connected to the story. Other forms of nonfiction, such as the academic essay or more technical writing, might also fall under literary journalism, provided those pieces still use the elements of creative nonfiction.

Consider this recently published article from The Atlantic : The Uncanny Tale of Shimmel Zohar by Lawrence Weschler. It employs a style that’s breezy yet personable—including its opening line.

So I first heard about Shimmel Zohar from Gravity Goldberg—yeah, I know, but she insists it’s her real name (explaining that her father was a physicist)—who is the director of public programs and visitor experience at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, in San Francisco.

How to Write Creative Nonfiction: Common Elements and Techniques

What separates a general news update from a well-written piece of literary journalism? What’s the difference between essay writing in high school and the personal essay? When nonfiction writers put out creative work, they are most successful when they utilize the following elements.

Just like fiction, nonfiction relies on effective narration. Telling the story with an effective plot, writing from a certain point of view, and using the narrative to flesh out the story’s big idea are all key craft elements. How you structure your story can have a huge impact on how the reader perceives the work, as well as the insights you draw from the story itself.

Consider the first lines of the story “ To the Miami University Payroll Lady ” by Frenci Nguyen:

You might not remember me, but I’m the dark-haired, Texas-born, Asian-American graduate student who visited the Payroll Office the other day to complete direct deposit and tax forms.

Because the story is written in second person, with the reader experiencing the story as the payroll lady, the story’s narration feels much more personal and important, forcing the reader to evaluate their own personal biases and beliefs.

Observation

Telling the story involves more than just simple plot elements, it also involves situating the reader in the key details. Setting the scene requires attention to all five senses, and interpersonal dialogue is much more effective when the narrator observes changes in vocal pitch, certain facial expressions, and movements in body language. Essentially, let the reader experience the tiny details – we access each other best through minutiae.

The story “ In Transit ” by Erica Plouffe Lazure is a perfect example of storytelling through observation. Every detail of this flash piece is carefully noted to tell a story without direct action, using observations about group behavior to find hope in a crisis. We get observation when the narrator notes the following:

Here at the St. Thomas airport in mid-March, we feel the urgency of the transition, the awareness of how we position our bodies, where we place our luggage, how we consider for the first time the numbers of people whose belongings are placed on the same steel table, the same conveyor belt, the same glowing radioactive scan, whose IDs are touched by the same gloved hand[.]

What’s especially powerful about this story is that it is written in a single sentence, allowing the reader to be just as overwhelmed by observation and context as the narrator is.

We’ve used this word a lot, but what is braiding? Braiding is a technique most often used in creative nonfiction where the writer intertwines multiple narratives, or “threads.” Not all essays use braiding, but the longer a story is, the more it benefits the writer to intertwine their story with an extended metaphor or another idea to draw insight from.

“ The Crush ” by Zsofia McMullin demonstrates braiding wonderfully. Some paragraphs are written in first person, while others are written in second person.

The following example from “The Crush” demonstrates braiding:

Your hair is still wet when you slip into the booth across from me and throw your wallet and glasses and phone on the table, and I marvel at how everything about you is streamlined, compact, organized. I am always overflowing — flesh and wants and a purse stuffed with snacks and toy soldiers and tissues.

The author threads these narratives together by having both people interact in a diner, yet the reader still perceives a distance between the two threads because of the separation of “I” and “you” pronouns. When these threads meet, briefly, we know they will never meet again.

Speaking of insight, creative nonfiction writers must draw novel conclusions from the stories they write. When the narrator pauses in the story to delve into their emotions, explain complex ideas, or draw strength and meaning from tough situations, they’re finding insight in the essay.

Often, creative writers experience insight as they write it, drawing conclusions they hadn’t yet considered as they tell their story, which makes creative nonfiction much more genuine and raw.

The story “ Me Llamo Theresa ” by Theresa Okokun does a fantastic job of finding insight. The story is about the history of our own names and the generations that stand before them, and as the writer explores her disconnect with her own name, she recognizes a similar disconnect in her mother, as well as the need to connect with her name because of her father.

The narrator offers insight when she remarks:

I began to experience a particular type of identity crisis that so many immigrants and children of immigrants go through — where we are called one name at school or at work, but another name at home, and in our hearts.

How to Write Creative Nonfiction: the 5 R’s

CNF pioneer Lee Gutkind developed a very system called the “5 R’s” of creative nonfiction writing. Together, the 5 R’s form a general framework for any creative writing project. They are:

  • Write about r eal life: Creative nonfiction tackles real people, events, and places—things that actually happened or are happening.
  • Conduct extensive r esearch: Learn as much as you can about your subject matter, to deepen and enrich your ability to relay the subject matter. (Are you writing about your tenth birthday? What were the newspaper headlines that day?)
  • (W) r ite a narrative: Use storytelling elements originally from fiction, such as Freytag’s Pyramid , to structure your CNF piece’s narrative as a story with literary impact rather than just a recounting.
  • Include personal r eflection: Share your unique voice and perspective on the narrative you are retelling.
  • Learn by r eading: The best way to learn to write creative nonfiction well is to read it being written well. Read as much CNF as you can, and observe closely how the author’s choices impact you as a reader.

You can read more about the 5 R’s in this helpful summary article .

How to Write Creative Nonfiction: Give it a Try!

Whatever form you choose, whatever story you tell, and whatever techniques you write with, the more important aspect of creative nonfiction is this: be honest. That may seem redundant, but often, writers mistakenly create narratives that aren’t true, or they use details and symbols that didn’t exist in the story. Trust us – real life is best read when it’s honest, and readers can tell when details in the story feel fabricated or inflated. Write with honesty, and the right words will follow!

Ready to start writing your creative nonfiction piece? If you need extra guidance or want to write alongside our community, take a look at the upcoming nonfiction classes at Writers.com. Now, go and write the next bestselling memoir!

' src=

Sean Glatch

' src=

Thank you so much for including these samples from Hippocampus Magazine essays/contributors; it was so wonderful to see these pieces reflected on from the craft perspective! – Donna from Hippocampus

' src=

Absolutely, Donna! I’m a longtime fan of Hippocampus and am always astounded by the writing you publish. We’re always happy to showcase stunning work 🙂

[…] Source: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/a-complete-guide-to-writing-creative-nonfiction#5-creative-nonfiction-writing-promptshttps://writers.com/what-is-creative-nonfiction […]

' src=

So impressive

' src=

Thank you. I’ve been researching a number of figures from the 1800’s and have come across a large number of ‘biographies’ of figures. These include quoted conversations which I knew to be figments of the author and yet some works are lauded as ‘histories’.

' src=

excellent guidelines inspiring me to write CNF thank you

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Creative Nonfiction: An Overview

OWL logo

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

This resource provides an introduction to creative nonfiction, including an overview of the genre and an explanation of major sub-genres.

The Creative Nonfiction (CNF) genre can be rather elusive. It is focused on story, meaning it has a narrative plot with an inciting moment, rising action, climax and denoument, just like fiction. However, nonfiction only works if the story is based in truth, an accurate retelling of the author’s life experiences. The pieces can vary greatly in length, just as fiction can; anything from a book-length autobiography to a 500-word food blog post can fall within the genre.

Additionally, the genre borrows some aspects, in terms of voice, from poetry; poets generally look for truth and write about the realities they see. While there are many exceptions to this, such as the persona poem, the nonfiction genre depends on the writer’s ability to render their voice in a realistic fashion, just as poetry so often does. Writer Richard Terrill, in comparing the two forms, writes that the voice in creative nonfiction aims “to engage the empathy” of the reader; that, much like a poet, the writer uses “personal candor” to draw the reader in.

Creative Nonfiction encompasses many different forms of prose. As an emerging form, CNF is closely entwined with fiction. Many fiction writers make the cross-over to nonfiction occasionally, if only to write essays on the craft of fiction. This can be done fairly easily, since the ability to write good prose—beautiful description, realistic characters, musical sentences—is required in both genres.

So what, then, makes the literary nonfiction genre unique?

The first key element of nonfiction—perhaps the most crucial thing— is that the genre relies on the author’s ability to retell events that actually happened. The talented CNF writer will certainly use imagination and craft to relay what has happened and tell a story, but the story must be true. You may have heard the idiom that “truth is stranger than fiction;” this is an essential part of the genre. Events—coincidences, love stories, stories of loss—that may be expected or feel clichéd in fiction can be respected when they occur in real life .

A writer of Creative Nonfiction should always be on the lookout for material that can yield an essay; the world at-large is their subject matter. Additionally, because Creative Nonfiction is focused on reality, it relies on research to render events as accurately as possible. While it’s certainly true that fiction writers also research their subjects (especially in the case of historical fiction), CNF writers must be scrupulous in their attention to detail. Their work is somewhat akin to that of a journalist, and in fact, some journalism can fall under the umbrella of CNF as well. Writer Christopher Cokinos claims, “done correctly, lived well, delivered elegantly, such research uncovers not only facts of the world, but reveals and shapes the world of the writer” (93). In addition to traditional research methods, such as interviewing subjects or conducting database searches, he relays Kate Bernheimer’s claim that “A lifetime of reading is research:” any lived experience, even one that is read, can become material for the writer.

The other key element, the thing present in all successful nonfiction, is reflection. A person could have lived the most interesting life and had experiences completely unique to them, but without context—without reflection on how this life of experiences affected the writer—the reader is left with the feeling that the writer hasn’t learned anything, that the writer hasn’t grown. We need to see how the writer has grown because a large part of nonfiction’s appeal is the lessons it offers us, the models for ways of living: that the writer can survive a difficult or strange experience and learn from it. Sean Ironman writes that while “[r]eflection, or the second ‘I,’ is taught in every nonfiction course” (43), writers often find it incredibly hard to actually include reflection in their work. He expresses his frustration that “Students are stuck on the idea—an idea that’s not entirely wrong—that readers need to think” (43), that reflecting in their work would over-explain the ideas to the reader. Not so. Instead, reflection offers “the crucial scene of the writer writing the memoir” (44), of the present-day writer who is looking back on and retelling the past. In a moment of reflection, the author steps out of the story to show a different kind of scene, in which they are sitting at their computer or with their notebook in some quiet place, looking at where they are now, versus where they were then; thinking critically about what they’ve learned. This should ideally happen in small moments, maybe single sentences, interspersed throughout the piece. Without reflection, you have a collection of scenes open for interpretation—though they might add up to nothing.

Looking to publish? Meet your dream editor, designer and marketer on Reedsy.

Find the perfect editor for your next book

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy, come meet them.

Guides • Understanding Publishing

Last updated on Feb 20, 2023

Creative Nonfiction: How to Spin Facts into Narrative Gold

Creative nonfiction is a genre of creative writing that approaches factual information in a literary way. This type of writing applies techniques drawn from literary fiction and poetry to material that might be at home in a magazine or textbook, combining the craftsmanship of a novel with the rigor of journalism. 

Here are some popular examples of creative nonfiction:

  • The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang
  • Intimations by Zadie Smith
  • Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
  • Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri
  • The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
  • I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
  • Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

Creative nonfiction is not limited to novel-length writing, of course. Popular radio shows and podcasts like WBEZ’s This American Life or Sarah Koenig’s Serial also explore audio essays and documentary with a narrative approach, while personal essays like Nora Ephron’s A Few Words About Breasts and Mariama Lockington’s What A Black Woman Wishes Her Adoptive White Parents Knew also present fact with fiction-esque flair.

Writing short personal essays can be a great entry point to writing creative nonfiction. Think about a topic you would like to explore, perhaps borrowing from your own life, or a universal experience. Journal freely for five to ten minutes about the subject, and see what direction your creativity takes you in. These kinds of exercises will help you begin to approach reality in a more free flowing, literary way — a muscle you can use to build up to longer pieces of creative nonfiction.

If you think you’d like to bring your writerly prowess to nonfiction, here are our top tips for creating compelling creative nonfiction that’s as readable as a novel, but as illuminating as a scholarly article.

q85nRfiHdV8 Video Thumb

Write a memoir focused on a singular experience

Humans love reading about other people’s lives — like first-person memoirs, which allow you to get inside another person’s mind and learn from their wisdom. Unlike autobiographies, memoirs can focus on a single experience or theme instead of chronicling the writers’ life from birth onward.

For that reason, memoirs tend to focus on one core theme and—at least the best ones—present a clear narrative arc, like you would expect from a novel. This can be achieved by selecting a singular story from your life; a formative experience, or period of time, which is self-contained and can be marked by a beginning, a middle, and an end. 

When writing a memoir, you may also choose to share your experience in parallel with further research on this theme. By performing secondary research, you’re able to bring added weight to your anecdotal evidence, and demonstrate the ways your own experience is reflective (or perhaps unique from) the wider whole.

Example: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Creative Nonfiction example: Cover of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking , for example, interweaves the author’s experience of widowhood with sociological research on grief. Chronicling the year after her husband’s unexpected death, and the simultaneous health struggles of their daughter, The Year of Magical Thinking is a poignant personal story, layered with universal insight into what it means to lose someone you love. The result is the definitive exploration of bereavement — and a stellar example of creative nonfiction done well.

📚 Looking for more reading recommendations? Check out our list of the best memoirs of the last century .

Tip: What you cut out is just as important as what you keep

When writing a memoir that is focused around a singular theme, it’s important to be selective in what to include, and what to leave out. While broader details of your life may be helpful to provide context, remember to resist the impulse to include too much non-pertinent backstory. By only including what is most relevant, you are able to provide a more focused reader experience, and won’t leave readers guessing what the significance of certain non-essential anecdotes will be.

💡 For more memoir-planning tips, head over to our post on outlining memoirs .

Of course, writing a memoir isn’t the only form of creative nonfiction that lets you tap into your personal life — especially if there’s something more explicit you want to say about the world at large… which brings us onto our next section.

Pen a personal essay that has something bigger to say

Personal essays condense the first-person focus and intimacy of a memoir into a tighter package — tunneling down into a specific aspect of a theme or narrative strand within the author’s personal experience.

Often involving some element of journalistic research, personal essays can provide examples or relevant information that comes from outside the writer’s own experience. This can take the form of other people’s voices quoted in the essay, or facts and stats. By combining lived experiences with external material, personal essay writers can reach toward a bigger message, telling readers something about human behavior or society instead of just letting them know the writer better.

Example: The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

Creative nonfiction example: Cover of Leslie Jamison's The Empathy Exams

Leslie Jamison's widely acclaimed collection The Empathy Exams  tackles big questions (Why is pain so often performed? Can empathy be “bad”?) by grounding them in the personal. While Jamison draws from her own experiences, both as a medical actor who was paid to imitate pain, and as a sufferer of her own ailments, she also reaches broader points about the world we live in within each of her essays.

Whether she’s talking about the justice system or reality TV, Jamison writes with both vulnerability and poise, using her lived experience as a jumping-off point for exploring the nature of empathy itself.

Tip: Try to show change in how you feel about something

Including external perspectives, as we’ve just discussed above, will help shape your essay, making it meaningful to other people and giving your narrative an arc. 

Ultimately, you may be writing about yourself, but readers can read what they want into it. In a personal narrative, they’re looking for interesting insights or realizations they can apply to their own understanding of their lives or the world — so don’t lose sight of that. As the subject of the essay, you are not so much the topic as the vehicle for furthering a conversation.

Often, there are three clear stages in an essay:

  • Initial state 
  • Encounter with something external
  • New, changed state, and conclusions

By bringing readers through this journey with you, you can guide them to new outlooks and demonstrate how your story is still relevant to them.

Had enough of writing about your own life? Let’s look at a form of creative nonfiction that allows you to get outside of yourself.

Tell a factual story as though it were a novel

The form of creative nonfiction that is perhaps closest to conventional nonfiction is literary journalism. Here, the stories are all fact, but they are presented with a creative flourish. While the stories being told might comfortably inhabit a newspaper or history book, they are presented with a sense of literary significance, and writers can make use of literary techniques and character-driven storytelling.

Unlike news reporters, literary journalists can make room for their own perspectives: immersing themselves in the very action they recount. Think of them as both characters and narrators — but every word they write is true. 

If you think literary journalism is up your street, think about the kinds of stories that capture your imagination the most, and what those stories have in common. Are they, at their core, character studies? Parables? An invitation to a new subculture you have never before experienced? Whatever piques your interest, immerse yourself.

Example: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

Creative nonfiction example: Cover of Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire

If you’re looking for an example of literary journalism that tells a great story, look no further than Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World , which sits at the intersection of food writing and popular science. Though it purports to offer a “plant’s-eye view of the world,” it’s as much about human desires as it is about the natural world.

Through the history of four different plants and human’s efforts to cultivate them, Pollan uses first-hand research as well as archival facts to explore how we attempt to domesticate nature for our own pleasure, and how these efforts can even have devastating consequences. Pollan is himself a character in the story, and makes what could be a remarkably dry topic accessible and engaging in the process.

Tip: Don’t pretend that you’re perfectly objective

You may have more room for your own perspective within literary journalism, but with this power comes great responsibility. Your responsibilities toward the reader remain the same as that of a journalist: you must, whenever possible, acknowledge your own biases or conflicts of interest, as well as any limitations on your research. 

Thankfully, the fact that literary journalism often involves a certain amount of immersion in the narrative — that is, the writer acknowledges their involvement in the process — you can touch on any potential biases explicitly, and make it clear that the story you’re telling, while true to what you experienced, is grounded in your own personal perspective.

Approach a famous name with a unique approach 

Biographies are the chronicle of a human life, from birth to the present or, sometimes, their demise. Often, fact is stranger than fiction, and there is no shortage of fascinating figures from history to discover. As such, a biographical approach to creative nonfiction will leave you spoilt for choice in terms of subject matter.

Because they’re not written by the subjects themselves (as memoirs are), biographical nonfiction requires careful research. If you plan to write one, do everything in your power to verify historical facts, and interview the subject’s family, friends, and acquaintances when possible. Despite the necessity for candor, you’re still welcome to approach biography in a literary way — a great creative biography is both truthful and beautifully written.

Example: American Prometheus  by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

Creative nonfiction example: Cover of American Prometheus

Alongside the need for you to present the truth is a duty to interpret that evidence with imagination, and present it in the form of a story. Demonstrating a novelist’s skill for plot and characterization, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s American Prometheus is a great example of creative nonfiction that develops a character right in front of the readers’ eyes.

American Prometheus follows J. Robert Oppenheimer from his bashful childhood to his role as the father of the atomic bomb, all the way to his later attempts to reckon with his violent legacy.

FREE COURSE

FREE COURSE

How to Develop Characters

In 10 days, learn to develop complex characters readers will love.

The biography tells a story that would fit comfortably in the pages of a tragic novel, but is grounded in historical research. Clocking in at a hefty 721 pages, American Prometheus distills an enormous volume of archival material, including letters, FBI files, and interviews into a remarkably readable volume. 

📚 For more examples of world-widening, eye-opening biographies, check out our list of the 30 best biographies of all time .

Tip: The good stuff lies in the mundane details

Biographers are expected to undertake academic-grade research before they put pen to paper. You will, of course, read any existing biographies on the person you’re writing about, and visit any archives containing relevant material. If you’re lucky, there’ll be people you can interview who knew your subject personally — but even if there aren’t, what’s going to make your biography stand out is paying attention to details, even if they seem mundane at first.

Of course, no one cares which brand of slippers a former US President wore — gossip is not what we’re talking about. But if you discover that they took a long, silent walk every single morning, that’s a granular detail you could include to give your readers a sense of the weight they carried every day. These smaller details add up to a realistic portrait of a living, breathing human being.

But creative nonfiction isn’t just writing about yourself or other people. Writing about art is also an art, as we’ll see below.

Put your favorite writers through the wringer with literary criticism

Literary criticism is often associated with dull, jargon-laden college dissertations — but it can be a wonderfully rewarding form that blurs the lines between academia and literature itself. When tackled by a deft writer, a literary critique can be just as engrossing as the books it analyzes.

Many of the sharpest literary critics are also poets, poetry editors , novelists, or short story writers, with first-hand awareness of literary techniques and the ability to express their insights with elegance and flair. Though literary criticism sounds highly theoretical, it can be profoundly intimate: you’re invited to share in someone’s experience as a reader or writer — just about the most private experience there is.

Example: The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar

Creative nonfiction example: Cover of The Madwoman in the Attic

Take The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, a seminal work approaching Victorian literature from a feminist perspective. Written as a conversation between two friends and academics, this brilliant book reads like an intellectual brainstorming session in a casual dining venue. Highly original, accessible, and not suffering from the morose gravitas academia is often associated with, this text is a fantastic example of creative nonfiction.

Tip: Remember to make your critiques creative

Literary criticism may be a serious undertaking, but unless you’re trying to pitch an academic journal, you’ll need to be mindful of academic jargon and convoluted sentence structure. Don’t forget that the point of popular literary criticism is to make ideas accessible to readers who aren’t necessarily academics, introducing them to new ways of looking at anything they read. 

If you’re not feeling confident, a professional nonfiction editor could help you confirm you’ve hit the right stylistic balance.

elements of creative nonfiction writing

Give your book the help it deserves

The best editors, designers, and book marketers are on Reedsy. Sign up for free and meet them.

Learn how Reedsy can help you craft a beautiful book.

Is creative nonfiction looking a little bit clearer now? You can try your hand at the genre , or head to the next post in this guide and discover online classes where you can hone your skills at creative writing.

Join a community of over 1 million authors

Reedsy is more than just a blog. Become a member today to discover how we can help you publish a beautiful book.

Reedsy | Default - newsroom | 2023-09

Bring your publishing dreams to life

The world's best editors, designers, and marketers are on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Reedsy Marketplace UI

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy, come meet them.

Enter your email or get started with a social account:

  • Link to facebook
  • Link to linkedin
  • Link to twitter
  • Link to youtube
  • Writing Tips

A Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction

A Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction

4-minute read

  • 21st August 2022

Creative nonfiction is a genre that uses literary elements usually associated with fiction writing (e.g., narrative arc, character development) to tell true stories. Sometimes referred to as narrative nonfiction, creative nonfiction can range from tweet-sized stories to book-length memoirs.

Creative Nonfiction , a magazine dedicated to the genre, defines it succinctly as “true stories, well told.” In today’s post, we offer our advice to anyone setting out to write a piece of creative nonfiction:

  • Tell the truth.
  • Use literary devices.
  • Record your sources.
  • Include your own thoughts and opinions.
  • Check your work for errors.

If you’re inspired to write a literary journalistic article , personal essay, biography , or any other piece of creative nonfiction, read on to learn more about these points:

1. Don’t Make Anything Up

Everything you say in creative nonfiction must be true (the clue’s in the name). You must, therefore, be diligent in recording only verifiable events that you have thoroughly researched or that you personally remember.

It can be especially hard to do this if you’re writing your own story. It’s tempting to leave out or alter details that cast you in a bad light. However, the creative nonfiction genre demands honesty and accuracy.

Sometimes, of course, information will be unavailable, or you’ll have conflicting accounts of an event or conversation. The golden rule is to never contradict what you know to be true. If there are different versions of an incident, present both (or all) of them and let the reader decide which is the most convincing.

2. Use the Tools of a Fiction Writer

Creative nonfiction is different than a textbook or news article. Rather than simply reporting a series of facts, writers of creative nonfiction present those facts in narrative form. To do this, you have all the tools of fiction writing at your disposal.

Rather than telling your story chronologically, you could employ in medias res . In other words, start things off by plunging the reader straight into the action. You can reveal the events that led up to this dramatic moment by jumping back to an earlier time, or referring to it in flashbacks and conversations.

Find this useful?

Subscribe to our newsletter and get writing tips from our editors straight to your inbox.

Draw readers into your story by using vibrant, descriptive language that brings to life the setting and characters. You can also enrich your writing by using foreshadowing, metaphors, symbolism, dramatic irony, and all manner of other literary devices.

3. Keep Track of Your Information Sources

To tell your story accurately, you’ll have to do a lot of research. Even if you’re writing about your own experience, you’ll want to draw on other people’s memories of events rather than simply rely on your own.

Additionally, you could gain relevant information from books, old newspapers, and the internet, or by visiting places that are significant to your story.

It’s vital to keep a record of where all your information comes from. Even if you don’t refer to your sources in your book or article, you might be called on to verify something you’ve written. Moreover, if you want to go back over something to check the finer details, it can be hard to remember where to look if you haven’t written it down.

4. Let Your Own Voice Be Heard

One of the things that sets creative nonfiction apart from traditional journalism is that the writer’s voice is a key element of creative nonfiction. While you must relate events truthfully, you are free to share your own opinions and feelings and allow them to influence the way you write.

5. Remember to Proofread

While it’s up to you to faithfully depict the events, characters, and setting of your creative nonfiction piece, we can help you eliminate writing errors like typos and grammatical mistakes.

Our proofreading service includes tweaking sentences that don’t flow smoothly and suggesting corrections for anything unclear. Our team is available around the clock and will return your document error-free within 24 hours. Find out more today with a free trial .

Share this article:

Post A New Comment

Got content that needs a quick turnaround? Let us polish your work. Explore our editorial business services.

3-minute read

How to Come Up With Newsletter Ideas

If used strategically, email can have a substantial impact on your business. In fact, according...

Free Online Peer Review Template

Having your writing peer-reviewed is a valuable process that can showcase the strengths and weaknesses...

How to Embed a Video in PowerPoint

Including a video in your PowerPoint presentation can make it more exciting and engaging. And...

What Is a Patent?

A patent is a form of intellectual property that restricts who can copy your invention....

How to Add Speaker Notes in PowerPoint

Adding speaker notes to your PowerPoint allows you to present with confidence while avoiding information...

How to Download a PowerPoint Presentation

PowerPoint is Microsoft’s presentation software. It’s frequently used by families, students, and businesses to create...

Logo Harvard University

Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Introduction

Creative nonfiction—you’ve probably heard the term before, but what exactly does it mean? At first glance, the term may seem almost oxymoronic. If it’s nonfiction, where does the creative come in? you might ask yourself. Isn’t creativity about making things up?

In fact, creative nonfiction involves plenty of creativity, just as much as fiction or poetry. As Lee Gutkind, editor of the journal Creative Nonfiction, says, creative nonfiction is, plainly, “true stories, well told.”

It’s that well told part that it’s imperative. Creative nonfiction writers use the same techniques as playwrights or novelists. They may write memoirs, personal essays, long-form journalism; they may write travelogues or biographies or very brief essays called flash nonfiction. What’s common across these forms of creative nonfiction is the reliance on scene. Scene, many argue, is what separates creative nonfiction from informational nonfiction.

And scenes contain other literary elements. Scenes are set in a time and a place, and a good writer sketches out those details for their reader. Scenes contain characters, people the writer describes with precision and clarity. Most importantly, scenes contain conflict. And that’s one more distinction between creative nonfiction and informational nonfiction. There’s a problem or crisis or conflict at the heart of creative nonfiction and, like in a story or a novel or a play, the protagonist is trying to see some part of that problem resolved. All that’s different is the premise: when you read creative nonfiction, you always remember, “this really happened.”

What is Creative Nonfiction?

There are many ways to define the literary genre we call Creative Nonfiction. It is a genre that answers to many different names, depending on how it is packaged and who is doing the defining. Some of these names are: Literary Nonfiction; Narrative Nonfiction; Literary Journalism; Imaginative Nonfiction; Lyric Essay; Personal Essay; Personal Narrative; and Literary Memoir. Creative Nonfiction is even, sometimes, thought of as another way of writing fiction, because of the way writing changes the way we know a subject.

I like to define the genre in as broad a way as possible. I describe it as memory-or-fact-based writing that makes use of the styles and elements of fiction, poetry, memoir, and essay. It is writing about and from a world that includes the author’s life and/or the author’s eye on the lives of others.

Under the umbrella called Creative Nonfiction we might find a long list of sub-genres such as: memoir, personal essay, meditations on ideas, literary journalism, nature writing, city writing, travel writing, journals or letters, cultural commentary, hybrid forms, and even, sometimes, autobiographical fiction.

Creative nonfiction writing can embody both personal and public history. It is a form that utilizes memory, experience, observation, opinion, and all kinds of research. Sometimes the form can do all of the above at the same time. Other times it is more selective.

What links all these forms is that the “I,” the literary version of the author, is either explicitly or implicitly present—the author is in the work. This is work that includes the particular sensibility of the author while it is also some sort of report from the world. Be it a public or a personal world. Be the style straightforward like a newspaper feature, narrative like a novel, or metaphorical like a poem.

One of my favorite words to attach to the art of creative nonfiction writing is the word “actual.” I prefer the word actual to the word truth. Fiction writers insist that they too write the truth, and that they must invent in order to tell this truth. I prefer the word actual to the word fact. Facts alone are too dry, and too absent of association. I prefer the word actual to the word real. What is and is not real is continually up for grabs. Do we know, for instance, what is a real woman? A real man? The word real is too laden with assumption. I prefer the word actual because it refers to simple actuality. We begin a work of creative nonfiction not with the imaginary but with the actual, with what actually is or actually was, or what actually happened. From this point we might move in any direction, but the actual is our touchstone.

Different writers have said very different things about why they write in this form. Lee Gutkind, the editor of the magazine Creative Nonfiction, has described the form as a quest for understanding and information. The cultural critic bell hooks has said she wrote her memoir Bone Black in order to “recover the past.” Essayist, memoirist, and diva of nonfiction prose style Annie Dillard has said she writes to “fashion a text.” Dorothy Allison has used the stories of her life in both fiction and nonfiction in order, she’s written, “to save my life.”

The various roots of this form are quite widespread. The practice of narrative and social witness reportage can be traced all the way back to Daniel Defoe’s (fictional) Journal of a Plague Year as well as to 18th century “disaster journalism.” In the 1960’s the New Journalists revolutionized modern journalistic form by insisting on inserting the first person into their reportage. These writers, such as Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion, were interested in bringing the presence of an individual awareness to the work, acknowledging that the writer is incapable of complete subjectivity and is constantly interpreting what he or she observes. From this tradition we inherit countless models of the ways to translate interviews and research into a style that resembles the storytelling and dramatic movement of fiction and the language and rhythms of poetry.

The personal essay form is much older. It dates back, according to some, to 16th century French writer Montaigne and to the French root of the word “essay,” which means to “attempt” or “try.” Others suggest we might date the essay form back even further, and include such works as The Pillow Book of Sei Shonogan,the eloquent musings of a 10th century Japanese lady of the court. The personal essay reflects the mind at odds with itself, and some of the most beautiful personal essays ask questions they cannot hope to answer. It’s the meander through ideas and stories that make the work wonderful to read.

We can look, also, to St. Augustine’s Confessions, written in the 5th century, as a model for writing out of our own life and experience. Sometimes referred to as “the first memoir” St. Augustine’s story is one of conversion and rebirth, not unlike today’s familiar recovery-from-addiction narrative. Personal memoir is a form that has slowly evolved into the sort of the book commonly found on the contemporary bookstore new release table. At one time the actual memoirist was considered insignificant to the memoir. When a soldier described the battle, for instance, it was the battle that mattered, not the soldier. Public events were considered historical, while private life was seen as inappropriate to the written word, unless you were a person considered of singular historical importance—Winston Churchill, or a Kennedy, for instance. All this has changed in our postmodern day-to-day. Feminism has privileged the personal, changing the paradigms of what is worthy of cultural notice and recovering the stories of lives previously absent from history. Identity and cultural politics redirected attention to people of color, gays and lesbians, the disabled, and anyone else who was up to that point missing from the public record. The mainstreaming of psychoanalysis and related disciplines suggested that our conscious and unconscious motivations and feelings are no longer considered strictly private matters.

A negative interpretation of these cultural changes suggests we are interested in the private story and the personal vantage point only because we are held hostage by talk show and “reality TV” culture. While it is true that it’s often difficult to fully comprehend how commercial culture has influenced our tastes and cravings, I believe that these phenomena are coupled with what has become a healthy intellectual and emotional curiosity about the world as it actually exists. We want to know what really happened. What distinguishes quality literary endeavor from media manipulation has as much to do with intention and artistry as it does public confession. Beyond the hype and exploitation of the worst of the commercial personal forms, what I continue to value is one person’s story—the world as seen through the scrim of each of our personal experiences. For better or worse, we are more aware than we once were of the role the personal plays in everything we do. These changes in literary nonfiction grow out of parallel changes in our world.

The report, the critique, the rumination, the lyric impression and the hard fact are all found in contemporary creative nonfiction writing. It is the mix of all these elements that make creative nonfiction an illuminating and moving form of historical documentary, as well as lovely literature. Finally, I’m with Annie Dillard when I say creative nonfiction writing is first about the formation of a text, the creation of piece of art, just like any painting or musical composition. Your life and the life of the world is your raw material, as much a part of the mix as is the paint, the chords, the words. Your subjects might be any part of this world.

Accounting for the fluid lines of tradition streaming into the creative nonfiction of today can be overwhelming, but also freeing. We creative nonfiction writers can make form out of whatever containers we are capable of imagining, and still be working within the wide parameters of the actual. Let’s end with some famous words on the subject of creating creative nonfiction literature. This is a quote from Annie Dillard, from her famous essay “To Fashion a Text.”

“When I gave up writing poetry I was very sad, for I had devoted 15 years to the study of how the structures of poems carry meaning. But I was delighted to find that nonfiction prose can also carry meaning in its structures, can tolerate all sorts of figurative language, as well as alliteration and even rhyme. The range of rhythms in prose is larger and grander than it is in poetry, and it can handle discursive ideas and plain information as well as character and story. It can do everything. I felt as though I had switched from a single reed instrument to a full orchestra.”

“What is Creative Nonfiction?” by Barrie Jean Borich. Licensed under CC BY SA 4.0 http://barriejeanborich.com/what-is-creative-nonfiction-an-introduction/

Creative nonfiction has been growing in popularity for years. After the rise of new journalism and the memoir boom of the 1990s, we find ourselves in a literary landscape teeming with creative nonfiction. Now, whenever you go to a bookstore, you’re bound to find a creative nonfiction section sure to rival the fiction section (and sure to trump the poetry section!). Memoirs, essay collections, biographies—these are examples of creative nonfiction, and as often as anything else, they become best sellers.

What makes creative nonfiction so compelling? Perhaps it’s as simple as Gutkind’s definition of the genre: “true stories, well told.” As readers, we care about being told a good story. We want to enter the realm of make-believe, if we know that the make-believe we’re reading about isn’t make-believe at all! By using literary elements like scene, which inherently necessitate things like character, plot, conflict, and setting, creative nonfiction writers weave compelling tales. These tales contain drama and action, peril and intrigue, and they become all the more powerful when you, as a reader, consider that the events described or explored may have happened to someone just like you.

ENG134 – Literary Genres Copyright © by The American Women's College and Jessica Egan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

creative nonfiction

6 Best Practices for Writing Creative Nonfiction

People browsing books usually scan the cover for the title, author, and whoever wrote the foreword. Then they glance at the back cover.

If intrigued, they’ll turn to the first chapter.

Your first paragraph—from the first sentence—must compel your reader to continue.

The power of creative nonfiction comes from using a technique common in fiction—rendering a visual to trigger the theater of the readers’ minds.

Certain stories should be told exactly as they happened. Take it from a novelist who also writes nonfiction: You don’t have to resort to fiction to captivate readers. Creative nonfiction is often the best way to go.

  • What is Creative Nonfiction?

creative nonfiction

Also referred to as literary or narrative nonfiction (and sometimes literary journalism), the term can be confusing. “Creative” is usually associated with make-believe. So can nonfiction be creative?

It not only can, but should be to gain the attention of an agent or publisher—and ultimately your readership.

Unlike academic and technical writing (and even objective journalism), creative nonfiction uses many of the techniques and devices employed in fiction to tell a compelling true story. The goal is the same as in fiction: a story well told.

Some nonfiction narratives carry a literary flair every bit as beautiful as classic novels.

My very favorite book ever, Rick Bragg’s memoir All Over but the Shoutin’ , won rave reviews all over the country. Bragg’s haunting, poetic prose was a byproduct of the point of his book, not the reason for it.

The Best Creative Nonfiction Writers Are…

1. avid readers..

creative nonfiction

Writers are readers. Good writers are good readers . Great writers are great readers.

Read everything you can find in your genre before trying to write in it.

You’ll quickly learn the conventions and expectations, what works and what doesn’t.

2. Focused on the heart, but not preachy.

Creative nonfiction consists of an emotionally powerful message that moves readers, potentially changing their lives. But don’t preach. True art gives your reader credit for getting the point.

Readers love to be educated and entertained, but move them emotionally and they’ll never forget it.

3. Precise.

Employing fictional literary tools doesn’t mean being loose with the facts. Become an avid researcher.

Your story should be:

  • Interesting

Are you being objective or spinning your own angle?

Your research should contribute to real stories well told.

Remember to use your research to season your main course—the point of your book. Resist the urge to show off all you learned with an information dump.

4. Rule followers.

Writing a story is like building a house—if the foundation’s not solid, even the most beautiful structure won’t stand.

Experts agree that these 7 elements must exist in a story (follow the links to study further).

  • Point of View

5. Not afraid to get personal.

Include your unique voice and perspective, even if the book or story is not about you.

6. Creative (pun intended).

Readers bore quickly, so don’t just review a Chinese restaurant—explain how they get that fortune inside the cookie without getting it soggy.

Don’t just write a standard business piece on a store. Profile one of its most loyal customers.

Autobiography: First We Have Coffee by Margaret Jensen, Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Biography: A Passion for the Impossible by Miriam Huffman Rockness, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, John Adams by David McCullough, Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir by Linnie Marsh Wolfe

Memoir: All Over but the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg, Cultivate by Lara Casey, A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, Out of Africa by Karen Blixen, Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

How-to: Reconcilable Differences by Jim Talley, the … For Dummies guides, The Magical Power of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris

Motivational: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Seven Decisions by Andy Andrews, Intentional Living by John Maxwell

Christian Living: Chasing God by Angie Smith, The Search for Significance by Robert McGee, The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts by Gary Chapman, Boundaries by John Townsend, Love Does by Bob Goff

Children’s Books: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus by Jen Bryant, My Brother’s Book by Maurice Sendak

Inspirational: Joni by Joni Eareckson Tada with Joe Musser, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill, Undone: A Story of Making Peace with an Unexpected Life by Michele Cushatt, You’ve Gotta Keep Dancin’ by Tim Hansel

Expository: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, Desiring God by John Piper, Breaker Boys: How a Photograph Helped End Child Labor by Michael Burgan, Who Was First? Discovering the Americas by Russell Freedman, The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer

  • Time to Get to Work

creative nonfiction

Few pleasures in life compare to getting lost in a great story . The stories we tell can live for years in the hearts of readers.

Do you have an idea, an insight, a challenge, or an experience you long to share?

Don’t let it rest just because of all the work it takes. If it was easy, anybody could do it.

Master the best practices I’ve shared above so you can do justice to the important stories you have to tell.

For additional help writing creative nonfiction:

  • How to Write Your Memoir: A 5-Step Guide and How to Start Writing Your Memoir
  • How to Write an Anecdote and Why Stories Bring Your Nonfiction to Life
  • How to Write a Devotional: The Definitive Guide
  • How to Edit a Book: 7 Steps for Becoming a Ferocious Self Editor
  • The Best Creative Nonfiction Writers Are...

Amateur writing mistake

Are You Making This #1 Amateur Writing Mistake?

White blooming flower

Faith-Based Words and Phrases

elements of creative nonfiction writing

What You and I Can Learn From Patricia Raybon

elements of creative nonfiction writing

Before you go, be sure to grab my FREE guide:

How to Write a Book: Everything You Need to Know in 20 Steps

Just tell me where to send it:

The 5 Rs of Creative Nonfiction

What's the Story #06

“The Essayist at Work” is our first special issue. The cover is different, and although it is our habit to center each issue around a general theme, the essays and profiles in “The Essayist at Work” are narrower in scope. In the future, we intend to publish special issues on a variety of topics, but this one is especially important, not only because it is our first, but also because it helps to launch the first Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction Summer Writers’ Conference with the Goucher College Center for Graduate and Continuing Studies in Baltimore, Md., a supportive and enthusiastic summer partner. Many writers featured in “The Essayist at Work” will also be participating at the conference – an event we hope to continue to co-sponsor with Goucher for years to come.

The writers in this issue represent the incredible range of the newly emerging genre of creative nonfiction, from the struggle and success stories of Darcy Frey (“The Last Shot”) and William Least Heat-Moon (“Blue Highways”) to the master of the profession, John McPhee. From the roots of traditional journalism to poetry and fiction, Pulitzer Prize-winner Alice Steinbach, poet Diane Ackerman and novelists Phillip Lopate and Paul West, have helped expand the boundaries of form and tradition. Jane Bernstein, Steven Harvey, Mary Paumier Jones, Wendy Lesser and Natalia Rachel Singer ponder the spirit of the essay (and e-mail!), while I continue to reflect on and define the creative nonfiction form.

From the beginning, it has been our mission to probe the depths and intricacies of nonfiction by publishing the best prose by new and established writers. Creative Nonfiction provides a forum for writers, editors and readers interested in pushing the envelope of creativity and discussing and defining the parameters of accuracy, validity and truth. My essay below, “The 5 Rs of Creative Nonfiction,” is dedicated to that mission. It will appear in “More than the Truth: Teaching Nonfiction Writing Through Journalism,” which will be published in the fall of 1996 by Heineman.

It is 3 a.m., and I am standing on a stool in the operating room at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, in scrubs, mask, cap and paper booties, peering over the hunched shoulders of four surgeons and a scrub nurse as a dying woman’s heart and lungs are being removed from her chest. This is a scene I have observed frequently since starting my work on a book about the world of organ transplantation, but it never fails to amaze and startle me: to look down into a gaping hole in a human being’s chest, which has been cracked open and emptied of all of its contents, watching the monitor and listening to the rhythmic sighing sounds of the ventilator, knowing that this woman is on the fragile cusp of life and death and that I am observing what might well be the final moments of her life.

Now the telephone rings; a nurse answers, listens for a moment and then hangs up. “On the roof,” she announces, meaning that the helicopter has set down on the hospital helipad and that a healthy set of organs, a heart and two lungs, en bloc, will soon be available to implant into this woman, whose immediate fate will be decided within the next few hours.

With a brisk nod, the lead surgeon, Bartley Griffith, a young man who pioneered heart-lung transplantation and who at this point has lost more patients with the procedure than he had saved, looks up, glances around and finally rests his eyes on me: “Lee,” he says, “would you do me a great favor?”

I was surprised. Over the past three years I had observed Bart Griffith in the operating room a number of times, and although a great deal of conversation takes place between doctors and nurses during the long and intense surgical ordeal, he had only infrequently addressed me in such a direct and spontaneous manner.

Our personal distance is a by-product of my own technique as an immersion journalist – my “fly-on-the wall” or “living room sofa” concept of “immersion”: Writers should be regular and silent observers, so much so that they are virtually unnoticed. Like walking through your living room dozens of times, but only paying attention to the sofa when suddenly you realize that it is missing. Researching a book about transplantation, “Many Sleepless Nights” (W.W. Norton), I had been accorded great access to the O.R., the transplant wards, ethics debates and the most intimate conversations between patients, family members and medical staff. I had jetted through the night on organ donor runs. I had witnessed great drama – at a personal distance.

But on that important early morning, Bartley Griffith took note of my presence and requested that I perform a service for him. He explained that this was going to be a crucial time in the heart-lung procedure, which had been going on for about five hours, but that he felt obligated to make contact with this woman’s husband who had traveled here from Kansas City, Mo. “I can’t take the time to talk to the man myself, but I am wondering if you would brief him as to what has happened so far. Tell him that the organs have arrived, but that even if all goes well, the procedure will take at least another five hours and maybe longer.” Griffith didn’t need to mention that the most challenging aspect of the surgery – the implantation – was upcoming; the danger to the woman was at a heightened state.

A few minutes later, on my way to the ICU waiting area where I would find Dave Fulk, the woman’s husband, I stopped in the surgeon’s lounge for a quick cup of coffee and a moment to think about how I might approach this man, undoubtedly nervous – perhaps even hysterical – waiting for news of his wife. I also felt kind of relieved, truthfully, to be out of the O.R,, where the atmosphere is so intense.

Although I had been totally caught-up in the drama of organ transplantation during my research, I had recently been losing my passion and curiosity; I was slipping into a life and death overload in which all of the sad stories from people all across the world seemed to be congealing into the same muddled dream. From experience, I recognized this feeling – a clear signal that it was time to abandon the research phase of this book and sit down and start to write. Yet, as a writer, I was confronting a serious and frightening problem: Overwhelmed with facts and statistics, tragic and triumphant stories, I felt confused. I knew, basically, what I wanted to say about what I learned, but I didn’t know how to structure my message or where to begin.

And so, instead of walking away from this research experience and sitting down and starting to write my book, I continued to return to the scene of my transplant adventures waiting for lightning to strike . . . inspiration for when the very special way to start my book would make itself known. In retrospect, I believe that Bart Griffith’s rare request triggered that magic moment of clarity I had long been awaiting.

Defining the Discussion

Before I tell you what happened, however, let me explain what kind of work I do as an immersion journalist/creative nonfiction writer, and explain what I am doing, from a writer’s point-of-view, in this essay.

But first some definitions: “Immersion journalists” immerse or involve themselves in the lives of the people about whom they are writing in ways that will provide readers with a rare and special intimacy.

The other phrase to define, a much broader term, creative nonfiction, is a concept that offers great flexibility and freedom, while adhering to the basic tenets of nonfiction writing and/or reporting. In creative nonfiction, writers can be poetic and journalistic simultaneously. Creative nonfiction writers are encouraged to utilize fictional (literary) techniques in their prose – from scene to dialogue to description to point-of-view – and be cinematic at the same time. Creative nonfiction writers write about themselves and/or capture real people and real life in ways that can and have changed the world. What is most important and enjoyable about creative nonfiction is that it not only allows, but encourages the writer to become a part of the story or essay being written. The personal involvement creates a special magic that alleviates the suffering and anxiety of the writing experience; it provides many outlets for satisfaction and self-discovery, flexibility and freedom.

When I refer to creative nonfiction, I include memoir (autobiography), and documentary drama, a term more often used in relation to film, as in “Hoop Dreams,” which captures the lives of two inner-city high school basketball players over a six-year period. Much of what is generically referred to as “literary journalism” or in the past, “new journalism,” can be classified as creative nonfiction. Although it is the current vogue in the world of writing today, the combination of creative nonfiction as a form of writing and immersion as a method of research has a long history. George Orwell’s famous essay, “Shooting an Elephant” combines personal experience and high quality literary writing techniques. The Daniel DeFoe classic, “Robinson Crusoe,” is based upon a true story of a physician who was marooned on a desert island. Ernest Hemingway’s paean to bullfighting, “Death in the Afternoon,” comes under the creative nonfiction umbrella, as does Tom Wolfe’s, “The Right Stuff,” which was made into an award-winning film. Other well-known creative nonfiction writers, who may utilize immersion techniques include John McPhee (“Coming Into the Country”), Tracy Kidder (“House”), Diane Ackerman (“A Natural History of the Senses”) and Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard (“Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”), to name only a few of the many authors who have contributed to this burgeoning genre.

Currently, many of our best magazines – The New Yorker, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, Esquire – publish more creative nonfiction than fiction and poetry combined. Universities offer Master of Fine Arts degrees in creative nonfiction. Newspapers are publishing an increasing amount of creative nonfiction, not only as features, but in the news and op-ed pages, as well.

Reading, ‘Riting, ‘Rithmitic – the 3Rs – was the way in which basic public school education was once described. The “5 Rs” is an easy way to remember the basic tenets of creative nonfiction/immersion journalism.

The first “R” has already been explained and discussed: the “immersion” or “real life” aspect of the writing experience. As a writing teacher, I design assignments that have a real-life aspect: I force my students out into their communities for an hour, a day, or even a week so that they see and understand that the foundation of good writing emerges from personal experience. Some writers (and students) may utilize their own personal experience rather than immersing themselves in the experiences of others. In a recent introductory class I taught, one young man working his way through school as a sales person wrote about selling shoes, while another student, who served as a volunteer in a hospice, captured a dramatic moment of death, grief and family relief. I’ve sent my students to police stations, bagel shops, golf courses; together, my classes have gone on excursions and participated in public service projects – all in an attempt to experience or re-create from personal experience real life.

In contrast to the term “reportage,” the word “essay” usually connotes a more personal message from writer to reader. “An essay is when I write what I think about something,” students will often say to me. Which is true, to a certain extent – and also the source of the meaning of the second “R” for “reflection.” A writer’s feelings and responses about a subject are permitted and encouraged, as long as what they think is written to embrace the reader in a variety of ways. As editor of Creative Nonfiction, I receive approximately 150 unsolicited essays, book excerpts and profiles a month for possible publication. Of the many reasons the vast majority of these submissions are rejected, two are most prevalent, the first being an overwhelming egocentrism; in other words, writers write too much about themselves without seeking a universal focus or umbrella so that readers are properly and firmly engaged. Essays that are so personal that they omit the reader are essays that will never see the light of print. The overall objective of the personal essayist is to make the reader tune in – not out.

The second reason Creative Nonfiction and most other journals and magazines reject essays is a lack of attention to the mission of the genre, which is to gather and present information, to teach readers about a person, place, idea or situation combining the creativity of the artistic experience with the essential third “R” in the formula: “Research.”

Even the most personal essay is usually full of substantive detail about a subject that affects or concerns a writer and the people about whom he or she is writing. Read the books and essays of the most renowned nonfiction writers in this century and you will read about a writer engaged in a quest for information and discovery. From George Orwell to Ernest Hemingway to John McPhee, books and essays written by these writers are invariably about a subject other than themselves, although the narrator will be intimately included in the story. Personal experience and spontaneous intellectual discourse – an airing and exploration of ideas – are equally vital. In her first book, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” which won the Pulitzer Prize, and in her other books and essays, Annie Dillard repeatedly overwhelms her readers with factual information, minutely detailed descriptions of insects, botany and biology, history, anthropology, blended with her own feelings about life.

One of my favorite Dillard essays, “Schedules,” focuses upon the importance of writers working on a regular schedule rather than writing only intermittently. In “Schedules,” she discusses, among many other subjects, Hasidism, chess, baseball, warblers, pine trees, june bugs, writers’ studios and potted plants – not to mention her own schedule and writing habits and that of Wallace Stevens and Jack London.

What I am saying is that the genre of creative nonfiction, although anchored in factual information, is open to anyone with a curious mind and a sense of self. The research phase actually launches and anchors the creative effort. Whether it is a book or essay I am planning, I always begin my quest in the library – for three reasons. First, I need to familiarize myself with the subject. If it is something about which I do not know, I want to make myself knowledgeable enough to ask intelligent questions. If I can’t display at least a minimal understanding of the subject about which I am writing, I will lose the confidence and the support of the people who must provide access to the experience.

Secondly, I will want to assess my competition. What other essays, books and articles have been written about this subject? Who are the experts, the pioneers, the most controversial figures? I want to find a new angle – not write a story similar to one that has already been written. And finally, how can I reflect and evaluate a person, subject or place unless I know all of the contrasting points-of-view? Reflection may permit a certain amount of speculation, but only when based upon a solid foundation of knowledge.

So far in this essay I have named a number of well-respected creative nonfiction writers and discussed their work, which means I have satisfied the fourth “R” in our “5R” formula: “Reading.” Not only must writers read the research material unearthed in the library, but they also must read the work of the masters of their profession. I have heard some very fine writers claim that they don’t read too much anymore – or that they don’t read for long periods, especially during the time they are laboring on a lengthy writing project. But almost all writers have read the best writers in their field and are able to converse in great detail about the stylistic approach and intellectual content. An artist who has never studied Picasso, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, even Warhol, is an artist who will quite possibly never succeed.

So far we have mostly discussed the nonfiction or journalistic aspects of the immersion journalism/creative nonfiction genre. The 5th “R” the “riting” part is the most artistic and romantic aspect of the total experience. After all of the preparatory (nonfiction) work is complete, writers will often “create” in two phases. Usually, there is an inspirational explosion, a time when writers allow instinct and feeling to guide their fingers as they create paragraphs, pages, and even entire chapters of books or complete essays. This is what art of any form is all about – the passion of the moment and the magic of the muse. I am not saying that this always happens; it doesn’t. Writing is a difficult labor, in which a regular schedule, a daily grind of struggle, is inevitable. But this first part of the experience for most writers is rather loose and spontaneous and therefore more “creative” and fun. The second part of the writing experience – the “craft” part, which comes into play after your basic essay is written – is equally important – and a hundred times more difficult.

Writing in Scenes

Vignettes, episodes, slices of reality are the building blocks of creative nonfiction – the primary distinguishing factor between traditional reportage/journalism and “literary” and/or creative nonfiction and between good, evocative writing and ordinary prose. The uninspired writer will tell the reader about a subject, place or personality, but the creative nonfiction writer will show that subject, place or personality in action. Before we discuss the actual content or construction of a scene, let me suggest that you perform what I like to call the “yellow test.”

Take a yellow “Hi-Liter” or Magic Marker and leaf through your favorite magazines – Vanity Fair, Esquire, The New Yorker or Creative Nonfiction. Or return to favorite chapters in previously mentioned books by Dillard, Ackerman, etc. Yellow-in the scenes, just the scenes, large and small. Then return to the beginning and review your handiwork. Chances are, anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of each essay, short story, novel selected will be yellow. Plays are obviously constructed with scenes, as are films. Most poems are very scenic.

Jeanne Marie Laskas, the talented columnist for the Washington Post Magazine, once told me: “I only have one rule from start to finish. I write in scenes. It doesn’t matter to me in which order the scenes are written; I write whichever scene inspires me at any given time, and I worry about the plot or frame or narrative later. The scene – a scene – any scene – is always first.”

The Elements of a Scene

First and foremost, a scene contains action. Something happens. I jump on my motorcycle and go helter-skelter around the country; suddenly, in the middle of July in Yellowstone National Park I am confronted with 20 inches of snow. Action needn’t be wild, sexy and death-defying, however. There’s also action in the classroom. A student asks a question, which requires an answer, which necessitates a dialogue, which is a marvelously effective tool to trigger or record action. Dialogue represents people saying things to one another, expressing themselves. It is a valuable scenic building block. Discovering dialogue is one of the reasons to immerse ourselves at a police station, bagel shop or at a zoo. To discover what people have to say spontaneously – and not in response to a reporter’s prepared questions.

Another vehicle or technique of the creative nonfiction experience may be described as “intimate and specific detail.” Through use of intimate detail, we can hear and see how the people about whom we are writing say what is on their minds; we may note the inflections in their voices, their elaborate hand movements and any other eccentricities. “Intimate” is a key distinction in the use of detail when crafting good scenes. Intimate means recording and noting detail that the reader might not know or even imagine without your particular inside insight. Sometimes intimate detail can be so specific and special that it becomes unforgettable in the reader’s mind. A very famous “intimate” detail appears in a classic creative nonfiction profile, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” written by Gay Talese in 1962 and published in Esquire Magazine.

In this profile, Talese leads readers on a whirlwind cross country tour, revealing Sinatra and his entourage interacting with one another and with the rest of the world and demonstrating how the Sinatra world and the world inhabited by everyone else will often collide. These scenes are action-oriented; they contain dialogue and evocative description with great specificity and intimacy such as the gray-haired lady spotted in the shadows of the Sinatra entourage – the guardian of Sinatra’s collection of toupees. This tiny detail – Sinatra’s wig lady – loomed so large in my mind when I first read the essay that even now, 35 years later, anytime I see Sinatra on TV or spot his photo in a magazine, I find myself unconsciously searching the background for the gray-haired lady with the hatbox.

The Narrative – or Frame

The frame represents a way of ordering or controlling a writer’s narrative so that the elements of his book, article or essay are presented in an interesting and orderly fashion with an interlaced integrity from beginning to end.

Some frames are very complicated, as in the movie, “Pulp Fiction”; Quentin Tarantino skillfully tangles and manipulates time. But the most basic frame is a simple beginning-to-end chronology. “Hoop Dreams,” for example, the dramatic documentary (which is also classic creative nonfiction) begins with two African-American teen-age basketball stars living in a ghetto and sharing a dream of stardom in the NBA and dramatically tracks both of their careers over the next six years.

As demonstrated in “Pulp Fiction,” writers don’t always frame in a strictly chronological sequence. My book, “One Children’s Place,” begins in the operating room at a children’s hospital. It introduces a surgeon, whose name is Marc Rowe, his severely handicapped patient, Danielle, and her mother, Debbie, who has dedicated her every waking moment to Danielle. Two years of her life have been spent inside the walls of this building with parents and children from all across the world whose lives are too endangered to leave the confines of the hospital. As Danielle’s surgery goes forward, the reader tours the hospital in a very intimate way, observing in the emergency room, participating in helicopter rescue missions as part of the emergency trauma team, attending ethics meetings, well-baby clinics, child abuse examinations – every conceivable activity at a typical high-acuity children’s hospital so that readers will learn from the inside out how such an institution and the people it services and supports function on an hour-by-hour basis. We even learn about Marc Rowe’s guilty conscience about how he has slighted his own wife and children over the years so that he can care for other families.

The book ends when Danielle is released from the hospital. It took two years to research and write this book, returning day and night to the hospital in order to understand the hospital and the people who made it special, but the story in which it is framed begins and ends in a few months.

Back to the Beginning – That Rare and Wonderful Moment of Clarity

Now let’s think about this essay as a piece of creative nonfiction writing, especially in relation to the concept of framing. It begins with a scene. We are in an operating room at the University of Pittsburgh, the world’s largest organ transplant center, in the middle of a rare and delicate surgery that will decide a dying woman’s fate. Her heart and both lungs have been emptied out of her chest and she is maintained on a heart-bypass system. The telephone alerts the surgical team that a fresh and potentially lifesaving set of organs has arrived at the hospital via helicopter. Suddenly the lead surgeon looks up and asks an observer (me) to make contact with the woman’s husband. I agree, leave the operating room and then stop for a coffee in the surgeon’s lounge.

Then, instead of moving the story forward, fulfilling my promise to Dr. Griffith and resolving my own writing dilemma, I change directions, move backwards (flashback) in time and sequence and begin to discuss this genre – immersion journalism/creative nonfiction. I provide a mountain of information – definitions, descriptions, examples, explanations. Basically, I am attempting to satisfy the nonfiction part of my responsibility to my readers and my editors while hoping that the suspense created in the first few pages will provide an added inducement for readers to remain focused and interested in this Introduction from the beginning to the end where, (the reader assumes) the two stories introduced in the first few pages will be completed.

In fact, my meeting with Dave Fulk in the ICU waiting room that dark morning was exactly the experience I had been waiting for, leading to that precious and magic moment of clarity for which I was searching and hoping. When I arrived, Mr. Fulk was talking with an elderly man and woman from Sacramento, Calif., who happened to be the parents of a 21-year-old U.S. Army private named Rebecca Treat who, I soon discovered, was the recipient of the liver from the same donor who gave Dave’s wife (Winkle Fulk) a heart and lungs. Rebecca Treat, “life-flighted” to Pittsburgh from California, had been in a coma for 10 days by the time she arrived in Pittsburgh; the transplanted liver was her only hope of ever emerging from that coma and seeing the light of day.

Over the next half-hour of conversation, I learned that Winkle Fulk had been slowly dying for four years, had been bedbound for three of those years, as Dave and their children watched her life dwindle away, as fluid filled her lungs and began to destroy her heart. Rebecca’s fate had been much more sudden; having contracted hepatitis in the army, she crashed almost immediately. To make matters worse, Rebecca and her new husband had separated. As I sat in the darkened waiting area with Dave Fulk and Rebecca’s parents, I suddenly realized what it was I was looking for, what my frame or narrative element could be. I wanted to tell about the organ transplant experience – and what organ transplantation can mean from a universal perspective – medically, scientifically, personally for patients, families and surgeons. Rebecca’s parents and the Fulk family, once strangers, would now be permanently and intimately connected by still another stranger – the donor – the person whose tragic death provided hope and perhaps salvation to two dying people. In fact, my last quest in the research phase of the transplant book experience was to discover the identity of this mysterious donor and literally connect the principal characters. In so doing, the frame or narrative drive of the story emerged.

“Many Sleepless Nights” begins when 15-year-old Richie Becker, a healthy and handsome teen-ager from Charlotte, N.C., discovers that his father is going to sell the sports car that he had hoped would one day be his. In a spontaneous and thoughtless gesture of defiance, Richie, who had never been behind the wheel, secretly takes his father’s sports car on a joy ride. Three blocks from his home, he wraps the car around a tree and is subsequently declared brain dead at the local hospital. Devastated by the experience, but hoping for some positive outcome to such a senseless tragedy, Richie’s father, Dick, donates his son’s organs for transplantation.

Then the story flashes back a half century, detailing surgeons’ first attempts at transplantation and all of the experimentation and controversy leading up to the development and acceptance of transplant techniques. I introduce Winkle Fulk and Pvt. Rebecca Treat. Richie Becker’s liver is transplanted into Rebecca, while his heart and lungs are sewn into Mrs. Fulk by Dr. Bartley Griffith. The last scene of the book 370 pages later is dramatic and telling and finishes the frame three years later when Winkle Fulk travels to Charlotte, N.C., a reunion I arranged to allow the folks to personally thank Richie’s father for his son’s gift of life.

At the end of the evening, just as we were about to say goodbye and return to the motel, Dick Becker stood up in the center of the living room of his house, paused, and then walked slowly and hesitantly over toward Winkle Fulk, who had once stood alone at the precipice of death. He eased himself down on his knees, took Winkle Fulk by the shoulder and simultaneously drew her closer, as he leaned forward and placed his ear gently but firmly between her breasts and then at her back.

Everyone in that room was suddenly and silently breathless, watching as Dick Becker listened for the last time to the absolutely astounding miracle of organ transplantation: the heart and the lungs of his dead son Richie, beating faithfully and unceasingly inside this stranger’s warm and loving chest.

Library Home

Elements of Creative Writing

(0 reviews)

J.D. Schraffenberger, University of Northern Iowa

Rachel Morgan, University of Northern Iowa

Grant Tracey, University of Northern Iowa

Copyright Year: 2023

ISBN 13: 9780915996179

Publisher: University of Northern Iowa

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Attribution-NonCommercial

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • Chapter One: One Great Way to Write a Short Story
  • Chapter Two: Plotting
  • Chapter Three: Counterpointed Plotting
  • Chapter Four: Show and Tell
  • Chapter Five: Characterization and Method Writing
  • Chapter Six: Character and Dialouge
  • Chapter Seven: Setting, Stillness, and Voice
  • Chapter Eight: Point of View
  • Chapter Nine: Learning the Unwritten Rules
  • Chapter One: A Poetry State of Mind
  • Chapter Two: The Architecture of a Poem
  • Chapter Three: Sound
  • Chapter Four: Inspiration and Risk
  • Chapter Five: Endings and Beginnings
  • Chapter Six: Figurative Language
  • Chapter Seven: Forms, Forms, Forms
  • Chapter Eight: Go to the Image
  • Chapter Nine: The Difficult Simplicity of Short Poems and Killing Darlings

Creative Nonfiction

  • Chapter One: Creative Nonfiction and the Essay
  • Chapter Two: Truth and Memory, Truth in Memory
  • Chapter Three: Research and History
  • Chapter Four: Writing Environments
  • Chapter Five: Notes on Style
  • Chapter Seven: Imagery and the Senses
  • Chapter Eight: Writing the Body
  • Chapter Nine: Forms

Back Matter

  • Contributors
  • North American Review Staff

Ancillary Material

  • University of Northern Iowa

About the Book

This free and open access textbook introduces new writers to some basic elements of the craft of creative writing in the genres of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. The authors—Rachel Morgan, Jeremy Schraffenberger, and Grant Tracey—are editors of the North American Review, the oldest and one of the most well-regarded literary magazines in the United States. They’ve selected nearly all of the readings and examples (more than 60) from writing that has appeared in NAR pages over the years. Because they had a hand in publishing these pieces originally, their perspective as editors permeates this book. As such, they hope that even seasoned writers might gain insight into the aesthetics of the magazine as they analyze and discuss some reasons this work is so remarkable—and therefore teachable. This project was supported by NAR staff and funded via the UNI Textbook Equity Mini-Grant Program.

About the Contributors

J.D. Schraffenberger  is a professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa. He is the author of two books of poems,  Saint Joe's Passion  and  The Waxen Poor , and co-author with Martín Espada and Lauren Schmidt of  The Necessary Poetics of Atheism . His other work has appeared in  Best of Brevity ,  Best Creative Nonfiction ,  Notre Dame Review ,  Poetry East ,  Prairie Schooner , and elsewhere.

Rachel Morgan   is an instructor of English at the University of Northern Iowa. She is the author of the chapbook  Honey & Blood , Blood & Honey . Her work is included in the anthology  Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in American  and has appeared in the  Journal of American Medical Association ,  Boulevard ,  Prairie Schooner , and elsewhere.

Grant Tracey   author of three novels in the Hayden Fuller Mysteries ; the chapbook  Winsome  featuring cab driver Eddie Sands; and the story collection  Final Stanzas , is fiction editor of the  North American Review  and an English professor at the University of Northern Iowa, where he teaches film, modern drama, and creative writing. Nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, he has published nearly fifty short stories and three previous collections. He has acted in over forty community theater productions and has published critical work on Samuel Fuller and James Cagney. He lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Contribute to this Page

Authority Self-Publishing

10 Elements Of A Good Nonfiction Book

A good nonfiction book has many elements that make it a valuable learning experience for readers so they can engage proactively with the content.

As an authority in your field, you want to be sure your nonfiction book is written with the key components that make it “wow” readers and keep them coming back for more.

Writing a great book takes a lot of work, but it can be easier if you know what the main components are that creates a winning read.

Before we get into that, just take a moment to sit back, relax and think about a recent nonfiction book you read.

What made it so great?

What actionable steps were included that made you feel engaged with both the content and the author?

Why would you recommend this book to a friend?

You’ll find many of the elements that drive you as a reader to engage with a book are the same components you should include in your next book.

If you want to write a book that captures readers’ attention, keeps them flipping pages and turns your book into a worthwhile investment then you must have all the right elements in place.

10 components of a great nonfiction writing:

1. provides a solution to a problem.

If a nonfiction book is a journey that you are taking your readers on, then there are going to be obstacles your readers face along the way. You can help them by providing the solutions to overcoming these barriers.

We know the reason people want to read good fiction: to be entertained and to escape reality, if only for a short while. But with nonfiction, instead of looking for a way to escape, readers are searching for better ways to cope with their difficulties.

As a nonfiction author you are providing your readers with a way out of a dark tunnel. Everyone has different needs and, depending on the audience you are writing for, your purpose is to be their guide and provide those solutions to problems along the way.

  • If someone has a bad habit of eating junk food every night before bed, they want to know how to replace that with a healthy alternative.
  • If someone is in debt, they want a solution for getting out of a bad situation and saving cash instead of burning it.
  • If someone struggles with using modern technology such as apps or creating a landing page for their new book, they want to know how they can manage a business using modern tech stuff without feeling overwhelmed.

You get the idea.

The journey our readers are buying into is the promise of becoming better equipped to deal with life’s situations at the end.

What you can do now…

  • Come up with several themes such as “How to save money” or “How to create the writing habit.” Then, come up with 3-5 solutions for each that anyone could put into action right away.
  • Draft up a “hook for your book”. This is a powerful reason why someone would buy your next nonfiction novel. Your hook is the promise of transformation and the solutions that come with it.
  • Check out Quora to see what problems people have and if you could provide a solution to these problems.

2. Include a Killer Introduction

The first part of your book readers are going to engage with is the introduction. It is critical to capture their attention right away from the opening. The introduction does several things:

  • Tells readers what they are going to get.
  • Promises them they are going to get it.
  • Creates atmosphere for the book.
  • Set up their expectations for what is to come.
  • Gain trust from the very beginning.

There are six elements to include in your introduction that is going to:

1. State the problem : let readers know right away what it is you are going to solve for them.

Here is an example: “In today’s world, heavy debt is killing the dreams of millions of people. People have borrowed billions from the bank and now that it’s time to pay it back, we are struggling to make ends meet.”

2. Give them the solution : “I can help you by providing a framework for removing your debt.”

3. Create a sense of urgency : “You want to start reading this book right away if you want to eliminate your debt and be free by next year…”

4. List the benefits : “This book is for you if…”

5. Call to action : “Are you ready to remove debt from your life? Then let’s begin!”

6. Why should readers trust you? You can include a short blurb about yourself, who you and are and what qualifies you to help your readers.

Remember, it’s all about building trust. The introduction is the “doorway” to opening up communication with readers and building that trust right and credibility right away.

3. Eliminate the Fluff and Get to the Point

When it comes to writing content that flows, readers get turned off if a book is beefed up with fluffy words and run-on sentences that don’t add value to the lesson in the chapter. Make it so your writing gets right to the point without wasting time.

Related: 31 Ridiculously Simple Tips For Writing Your Next Book

With so much content being published everyday you want yours to be the best it can be and give readers a quality experience with your book. This way they’ll stay with your book until the end and are more likely to leave a positive review.

There is a three step easy-way to eliminate the fluff:

  • Tell them what you are going to tell them : set up the chapter to introduce the material that is coming.
  • Tell them : now give readers what they need to know and justify the reason they bought your book.
  • Tell them what you just told them : wrap it up with a short summary at the end, just a few bullet points will do right after the Call To Action.

Follow this simple process and you’ll deliver on your promise: “No fluff, just the good stuff.” Throw out all unnecessary words from your manuscript and eliminate these 43 words from your next book.

4. Take the Reader on a Journey

In The Lord of the Rings J.R.R Tolkien takes us on an incredible and unforgettable journey as our Hobbit heroes battle their way to Mount Doom to destroy the Ring. By the time the story is finished the heroes have won their victory by overcoming evil forces and they undergo a major transformation.

In a nonfiction book we are also taking our readers on a journey and, by promising what they will get upfront if they join you on this quest, at the end of the book there’s a transformation people are expecting.

Readers invest in a nonfiction book so they can be taken on a journey that promises change, a better life or a transformation to improve or completely change their lifestyle.

If you write a book on losing weight, readers will expect to be dropping pounds before they get to the conclusion. Financial advice? The journey promises to help them save more money and build a retirement fund. Creating a business?

Readers want that blueprint to show them how to build a business from the ground up. Think of your nonfiction book as a journey you are taking people on and you’ll be super-excited to have them aboard.

You’ll write the book with more enthusiasm knowing readers are going to be getting a great R eturn O n I nvestment.

Related: How to Outline a Nonfiction Book

By the end of the journey, although they won’t be destroying Orcs or battling demons, you can show them how to live a better life, make more money, or scale up their skills to create that dream job of living as an entrepreneur.

5. Your Book is Professionally Formatted

Nothing can ruin a good book like bad formatting. A well-formatted book enhances your reader’s experience and keeps those pages being turned. Be sure that you have clear chapter headings and that, wherever possible, the chapter is broken up into subheadings.

Use a combination of bolded fonts and italics. Keep paragraphs short, between 4-8 sentences. Occasionally have one sentence stand alone to add impact when delivering a statement you want to stand out. Stay consistent with the font style and size.

Make sure your chapters have clear page breaks and that the paragraphs are not indented. If you are not skilled at formatting you should really consider outsourcing the formatting of your book. You have spent so much time writing it that it would be a crime to let it go to ruin because of a sloppy appearance.

We wouldn’t recommend you do your own formatting unless you really know what you’re doing. You can check out the services at Archangel Ink or Happy Self Publishing to get a professional formatter for your book.

6. Include Loads of Actionable Content

As authors we don’t just want readers to “browse” through the book. You want them to take action. By getting your readers involved in the journey, they are not just sitting back and enjoying the ride but they are involved in creating the changes that are promised in the book.

While reading a book on weight loss is fine, it means nothing if people just toss its side and move onto the next thing. In fact, without actionable content they might not even finish the book to begin with.

You can include actionable content in your book several ways:

1. Action Steps “Wrap Up” : At the end of the chapter create a summary of 3-5 action steps readers can implement right away. You can find many examples of this in The 10-Minute Digital Declutter by Steve and Barrie. Action steps or a chapter recap at the end of each chapter can keep readers motivated and encouraged to continue reading. It also helps them with the “transformation” promise of your nonfiction book.

2. Chapter Upgrades : This is additional content not included in the book that readers have to opt in to download. It is a great way to gather email addresses but, from a reader’s perspective, they are getting free access to more content they can take action with. Chapter upgrades adds great value to your book. Check out this article by Kevin Kruse on chapter upgrades and this strategy doubled his conversion rate.

3. Checklist : You can include a short checklist of actionable steps at the end of the chapter or, wrap up with a large checklist at the end of the book to consolidate everything. Take a look at Nick Loper’s book The Small Business Website Checklist where he walks readers through a step-by-step checklist of how to set up a website.

7. Include Your Personal Experiences Through Transparency

Reader’s love an author who is real. If there is any method for writers to sell readers on authority it’s by providing examples of their own experiences. People can relate to your strategies and lessons in a more emphatic way if you show them that you’ve “been there” and “done that” too.

Related: Things to Write About For Your Next Nonfiction Book

If you are writing a book on investing, instead of just feeding people generic information or advice they could get by doing a quick Google search, show them the trials and errors you made along the way. Be open and share one of your biggest failures. Show them that you are in fact “human” through personal transparency.

In Steve’s book Bad Habits No More he does a good job of this by providing a step by step process of how he reduced the amount of time he was spending with his smartphone. Your lessons in the book will carry much more weight and resonate with readers if you can provide your own experiences.

Here is what you can do:

Work on telling your story. Author and blogger Jeff Goins does a great job of this. In his books and blogs he tells people how he started out with a dream to become a writer. Patrick King was once a corporate Lawyer and in his books he refers to the life he had before becoming a full time writer.

Take time out to write down or speak your story. Get into the habit of being a storyteller. Telling a good tale isn’t reserved for just fiction. We are all storytellers. Get good at weaving personal plot through experience into your books and you’ll keep readers interested until the end. And then they’ll want to know even more about you!

8. Proven Case Studies to Broaden the Content

Articles, research and case studies are powerful ways to add credibility to your topic. Although you are the authority on the subject, adding links to case studies or articles you have researched to broaden your subject matter adds significant value to your nonfiction book.

Professional blogger James Clear , who writes about behavioral psychology and habit transformation, creates killer articles every week through a unique blend of using inspirational stories and case studies to support the lessons in his articles.

New York Times bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell , in his book Blink , used several powerful stories to deliver his message about those moments when we ‘know’ something without knowing why.

The bottom line : make references to real people, stories and case studies to expand on your content and ‘power up’ your content. This adds greater depth to your nonfiction book, builds better trust with readers and delivers content that exceeds customer expectations.

9. A Great Title and Subtitle That Sells

Next to the cover, the title and subtitle is critical to getting noticed. You definitely want to spend time crafting the best title and subtitle possible. When it comes to book purchasing decisions, the first thing customers see is: THE TITLE.

So make it great.

The title is the hook that draws readers in; the subtitle is your elevator pitch that tells them what they can expect to learn, or the benefits they’ll gain by reading this book.

Check out these great titles :

  • The Now Habit: A Strategic Program For Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play [Neil Fiore, Ph.D]
  • Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want [Michael Hyatt & Daniel Harkavy]
  • The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do [Jeff Goins]
  • Break Through Your BS: Uncover Your Brain’s Blind Spots and Unleash Your Inner Greatness [Derek Doepker]

For a ten-step process on creating good book titles, just check out this post How To Write An Unforgettable Book Title That Screams “Buy Me!”

10. Written in a ‘friendly voice’ that readers can relate to.

Crafting your next book with these 10 key elements is going to create a quality book that customers will love and establish your authority as an indie author that creates quality books. One of the best ways to connect with readers is to write your book in a way that speaks to them.

Write in a friendly tone as if you were hanging out with some friends at a baseball game or having a good old chat over coffee.

First of all, when you talk to your audience instead of down to them, or if you try to sound too smart or clever, readers will be turned off right away. They want someone who understands their pain point and can deliver advice and suggestions in an authoritative yet empathetic tone.

  • Use simple, modern language; avoid big, long words that people haven’t used since the fifteenth century. Just keep it simple.
  • Keep the tone consistent: don’t switch from a casual speaking tone to a more formal one. Keep the tone consistent with the theme of your book.
  • Avoid sounding like you are “preaching” or angry at your readers. Keep the language in a caring and supportive tone. Be patient and caring, the same way you would talk to a friend who needed your help with something.

Integrate these ten methods into your book and you’ll create a reading experience that people will love and TELL all their friends about. When you include all the right elements into your writing, you’ll be creating a string of bestsellers that changes lives.

Author Bio: Scott Allan is the author of several bestselling books. He has a passion for teaching, building life skills and inspiring others to take charge of their lives. You can find Scott’s books here:   Scott Allan

Wondering the different elements of a good nonfiction book? In this post discover the 10 elements of good nonfiction writing.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Claudia Ann Seaman Award

Polyphony Lit logo, black typeface

Celebrating 20 Years as the  global online literary platform for high school students

Interested in all things polyphony.

  • Sep 4, 2023

Your Life as a Narrative: A Guide to Creative Nonfiction

Updated: Sep 19, 2023

By Erin Yoo

Creative nonfiction can sometimes be a difficult genre to pinpoint. It requires the use of traditional narrative elements as seen in any sort of creative writing, while also needing to stay true to real events from the author’s lived experiences. To write in this genre, you must simultaneously be an author and a character, and striking the right balance can be a difficult task when starting out. Below are some aspects of creative nonfiction that you might want to keep in mind as you make your foray!

Character Development

Especially in creative nonfiction, character development is critical, as it is often what drives the plot. One of the trickiest parts of writing creative nonfiction is character development. From a submissions standpoint, it can be what bridges the divide between a piece’s acceptance or decline. When employing the “Show, Don’t Tell” strategy of writing, writers might forget to provide sufficient background information or context as well as humanize the character. This may cause the primary character to seem like a “flat” character, instead of a “round” character, when well-developed narrators are foundational in exemplary creative nonfiction writing. Remember that in nonfiction, you’re sharing a part of your story, but readers won’t know everything that has affected your perceptions and identity up to that point—giving them a layout of the “before” part of your narrative can help make sure everyone is on the right page to go forward.

Dialogue is an essential aspect of the creative nonfiction genre, but is oftentimes overlooked by writers. Even if you are planning to utilize the “Show, Don’t Tell strategy,” it is still important to consider adding dialogue. Dialogue not only provides a humanizing and immersive atmosphere for the reader to be actively engaged in the piece throughout, but it also provides a means to introduce a character more effectively when utilized well.

Figurative Language and Literary Devices

Figurative language is often seen as an aspect of writing that is used strictly for poetry. However, that doesn’t need to be the case! Employing figurative language and literary devices – including metaphors, motifs, themes, personification, etc. – can be an equally effective tool for creative nonfiction pieces as well. A creative nonfiction author can compare their past experiences to any number of abstract things, and might even find recurring objects, location, or moods (such as a favorite food or a type of weather) to use as symbolism while staying true to themselves and their personal story.

The “Show, Don’t Tell” Technique

The common writing strategy of “Show, Don’t Tell” can be a difficult line to walk. If writers withhold too much information from the reader in favor of “showing” it, they might inadvertently make it harder for readers to catch onto the piece’s true meaning, arc, and intentions. However, it’s still worth it to try contextualizing your story in a subtle way. Making sure to “show” the reader background information and relevant context, rather than just stating it and moving on, can also be an excellent way of incorporating some elements of imagery and other literary devices.

Hopefully this advice might help you along your creative nonfiction journey! Good luck in telling your own stories, and thank you for reading.

Erin Yoo is a blogger at Voices and a Senior Editor at Polyphony.

Recent Posts

How to Write Concise Feedback

How Creative Writing and College Essays are More Similar Than You Might Think

"There's no such thing as a miracle, Maria said"

Our Programs

elements of creative nonfiction writing

Publish Your Nonfiction Book

Follow the proven publishing path that has helped thousands of people write bestselling books

elements of creative nonfiction writing

Author Accelerator

Grow your business, authority, and income with clear a roadmap for bestseller status

elements of creative nonfiction writing

Publish Your Fiction Book

Bring your story to life with 1:1 coaching, publishing guidance, & an inspiring community of authors

Author Accelerator Fiction

Gain access to the all-inclusive training and support system designed by full-time fiction authors

elements of creative nonfiction writing

Market Your Book

Unlock the true potential of your book and learn how to consistently sell more copies

elements of creative nonfiction writing

Author Accelerator Elite

Discover our most exclusive program with done-for-you editing and marketing services to fast-track success

Free Tools & Resources

Free Copy of Published

The proven path from blank page to 10,000 copies sold.

Publishing Path Assessment

Discover which path will be the best for you to succeed in your author goals.

Nonfiction Outline Template

25 pages of pre-formatted material structured to industry standards.

Weekly Live Trainings

Fiction outline template, author dna assessment.

Find out Which Famous Author You Are!

Companies Assessment

Discover which type of company can help you publish!

Character Worksheet

Make your characters feel REAL!

Learn About

Children's Book

Non-fiction.

How to Get An ISBN Number

A Beginner’s Guide to Self-Publishing

How Much Do Self-Published Authors Make on Amazon?

Book Template: 9 Free Layouts

How to Write a Book in 12 Steps

The 15 Best Book Writing Software Tools

Examples of Creative Nonfiction: What It Is & How to Write It

POSTED ON Jul 21, 2023

P.J McNulty

Written by P.J McNulty

When most people think of creative writing, they picture fiction books – but there are plenty of examples of creative nonfiction. In fact, creative nonfiction is one of the most interesting genres to read and write. So what is creative nonfiction exactly? 

More and more people are discovering the joy of getting immersed in content based on true life that has all the quality and craft of a well-written novel. If you are interested in writing creative nonfiction, it’s important to understand different examples of creative nonfiction as a genre. 

If you’ve ever gotten lost in memoirs so descriptive that you felt you’d walked in the shoes of those people, those are perfect examples of creative nonfiction – and you understand exactly why this genre is so popular.

But is creative nonfiction a viable form of writing to pursue? What is creative nonfiction best used to convey? And what are some popular creative nonfiction examples?

Today we will discuss all about this genre, including plenty of examples of creative nonfiction books – so you’ll know exactly how to write it. 

This Guide to Creative Nonfiction Covers:

Need A Nonfiction Book Outline?

What is Creative Nonfiction?

Creative nonfiction is defined as true events written about with the techniques and style traditionally found in creative writing . We can understand what creative nonfiction is by contrasting it with plain-old nonfiction. 

Think about news or a history textbook, for example. These nonfiction pieces tend to be written in very matter-of-fact, declarative language. While informative, this type of nonfiction often lacks the flair and pleasure that keep people hooked on fictional novels.

Imagine there are two retellings of a true crime story – one in a newspaper and the other in the script for a podcast. Which is more likely to grip you? The dry, factual language, or the evocative, emotionally impactful creative writing?

Podcasts are often great examples of creative nonfiction – but of course, creative nonfiction can be used in books too. In fact, there are many types of creative nonfiction writing. Let's take a look!

Types of creative nonfiction

Creative nonfiction comes in many different forms and flavors. Just as there are myriad types of creative writing, there are almost as many types of creative nonfiction.

Some of the most popular types include:

Literary nonfiction

Literary nonfiction refers to any form of factual writing that employs the literary elements that are more commonly found in fiction. If you’re writing about a true event (but using elements such as metaphor and theme) you might well be writing literary nonfiction.

Writing a life story doesn’t have to be a dry, chronological depiction of your years on Earth. You can use memoirs to creatively tell about events or ongoing themes in your life.

If you’re unsure of what kind of creative nonfiction to write, why not consider a creative memoir? After all, no one else can tell your life story like you. 

Nature writing

The beauty of the natural world is an ongoing source of creative inspiration for many people, from photographers to documentary makers. But it’s also a great focus for a creative nonfiction writer. Evoking the majesty and wonder of our environment is an endless source of material for creative nonfiction. 

Travel writing

If you’ve ever read a great travel article or book, you’ll almost feel as if you've been on the journey yourself. There’s something special about travel writing that conveys not only the literal journey, but the personal journey that takes place.

Writers with a passion for exploring the world should consider travel writing as their form of creative nonfiction. 

For types of writing that leave a lasting impact on the world, look no further than speeches. From a preacher's sermon, to ‘I have a dream’, speeches move hearts and minds like almost nothing else. The difference between an effective speech and one that falls on deaf ears is little more than the creative skill with which it is written. 

Biographies

Noteworthy figures from history and contemporary times alike are great sources for creative nonfiction. Think about the difference between reading about someone’s life on Wikipedia and reading about it in a critically-acclaimed biography.

Which is the better way of honoring that person’s legacy and achievements? Which is more fun to read? If there’s someone whose life story is one you’d love to tell, creative nonfiction might be the best way to do it. 

So now that you have an idea of what creative nonfiction is, and some different ways you can write it, let's take a look at some popular examples of creative nonfiction books and speeches.

Examples of Creative Nonfiction

Here are our favorite examples of creative nonfiction:

1. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

No list of examples of creative nonfiction would be complete without In Cold Blood . This landmark work of literary nonfiction by Truman Capote helped to establish the literary nonfiction genre in its modern form, and paved the way for the contemporary true crime boom.  

2. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast is undeniably one of the best creative memoirs ever written. It beautifully reflects on Hemingway’s time in Paris – and whisks you away into the cobblestone streets.  

3. World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

If you're looking for examples of creative nonfiction nature writing, no one does it quite like Aimee Nezhukumatathil. World of Wonders  is a beautiful series of essays that poetically depicts the varied natural landscapes she enjoyed over the years. 

4. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is one of the most beloved travel writers of our time. And A Walk in the Woods is perhaps Bryson in his peak form. This much-loved travel book uses creativity to explore the Appalachian Trail and convey Bryson’s opinions on America in his humorous trademark style.

5. The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

 While most of our examples of creative nonfiction are books, we would be remiss not to include at least one speech. The Gettysburg Address is one of the most impactful speeches in American history, and an inspiring example for creative nonfiction writers.

6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Few have a way with words like Maya Angelou. Her triumphant book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , shows the power of literature to transcend one’s circumstances at any time. It is one of the best examples of creative nonfiction that truly sucks you in.

7. Hiroshima by John Hershey

Hiroshima is a powerful retelling of the events during (and following) the infamous atomic bomb. This journalistic masterpiece is told through the memories of survivors – and will stay with you long after you've finished the final page.

8. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

If you haven't read the book, you've probably seen the film. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is one of the most popular travel memoirs in history. This romp of creative nonfiction teaches us how to truly unmake and rebuild ourselves through the lens of travel.

9. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

Never has language learning brought tears of laughter like Me Talk Pretty One Day . David Sedaris comically divulges his (often failed) attempts to learn French with a decidedly sadistic teacher, and all the other mishaps he encounters in his fated move from New York to Paris.

10. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Many of us had complicated childhoods, but few of us experienced the hardships of Jeannette Walls. In The Glass Castle , she gives us a transparent look at the betrayals and torments of her youth and how she overcame them with grace – weaving her trauma until it reads like a whimsical fairytale.

Now that you've seen plenty of creative nonfiction examples, it's time to learn how to write your own creative nonfiction masterpiece.

Tips for Writing Creative Nonfiction

Writing creative nonfiction has a lot in common with other types of writing. (You won’t be reinventing the wheel here.) The better you are at writing in general, the easier you’ll find your creative nonfiction project. But there are some nuances to be aware of.

Writing a successful creative nonfiction piece requires you to:

Choose a form

Before you commit to a creative nonfiction project, get clear on exactly what it is you want to write. That way, you can get familiar with the conventions of the style of writing and draw inspiration from some of its classics.

Try and find a balance between a type of creative nonfiction you find personally appealing and one you have the skill set to be effective at. 

Gather the facts

Like all forms of nonfiction, your creative project will require a great deal of research and preparation. If you’re writing about an event, try and gather as many sources of information as possible – so you can imbue your writing with a rich level of detail.

If it’s a piece about your life, jot down personal recollections and gather photos from your past. 

Plan your writing

Unlike a fictional novel, which tends to follow a fairly well-established structure, works of creative nonfiction have a less clear shape. To avoid the risk of meandering or getting weighed down by less significant sections, structure your project ahead of writing it.

You can either apply the classic fiction structures to a nonfictional event or take inspiration from the pacing of other examples of creative nonfiction you admire. 

You may also want to come up with a working title to inspire your writing. Using a free book title generator is a quick and easy way to do this and move on to the actual writing of your book.

Draft in your intended style

Unless you have a track record of writing creative nonfiction, the first time doing so can feel a little uncomfortable. You might second-guess your writing more than you usually would due to the novelty of applying creative techniques to real events. Because of this, it’s essential to get your first draft down as quickly as possible.

Rewrite and refine

After you finish your first draft, only then should you read back through it and critique your work. Perhaps you haven’t used enough source material. Or maybe you’ve overdone a certain creative technique. Whatever you happen to notice, take as long as you need to refine and rework it until your writing feels just right.

Ready to Wow the World With Your Story?

You know have the knowledge and inspiring examples of creative nonfiction you need to write a successful work in this genre. Whether you choose to write a riveting travel book, a tear-jerking memoir, or a biography that makes readers laugh out loud, creative nonfiction will give you the power to convey true events like never before.  

Who knows? Maybe your book will be on the next list of top creative nonfiction examples!

elements of creative nonfiction writing

FREE EBOOK & AUDIOBOOK

The proven path from blank page to 10,000 copies sold

Related posts

How to write a book about yourself in 11 easy steps (includes publishing).

Learning, Reviews

How Much Do Authors Make?: Average Author Salary in 2024

Learning, Publishing

How to Publish a Book in 9 Simple Steps

Library homepage

  • school Campus Bookshelves
  • menu_book Bookshelves
  • perm_media Learning Objects
  • login Login
  • how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
  • hub Instructor Commons
  • Download Page (PDF)
  • Download Full Book (PDF)
  • Periodic Table
  • Physics Constants
  • Scientific Calculator
  • Reference & Cite
  • Tools expand_more
  • Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

Humanities LibreTexts

2.4: Elements of Creative Nonfiction

  • Last updated
  • Save as PDF
  • Page ID 33648

  • Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
  • City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

IMAGES

  1. English 10 Elements of Creative Nonfiction

    elements of creative nonfiction writing

  2. Narrative Nonfiction Anchor Chart

    elements of creative nonfiction writing

  3. Chapter 4 Elements Of Creative Nonfiction

    elements of creative nonfiction writing

  4. ELEMENTS OF CREATIVE NONFICTION//THE TRICKS OF WRITING CNF

    elements of creative nonfiction writing

  5. Types Of Creative Nonfiction Ppt

    elements of creative nonfiction writing

  6. PPT

    elements of creative nonfiction writing

VIDEO

  1. Description of GLS: 542: Creative Nonfiction Writing from an autoethnographic perspective

  2. Fiction vs Nonfiction

COMMENTS

  1. What Is Creative Nonfiction? The 4 Elements of Creative Nonfiction

    In terms of structure, creative nonfiction borrows elements from fiction such as chapters, acts, nonlinear timelines, and pacing. In creative nonfiction, writers shape events into stories, in a way that flows naturally and keeps readers engaged from start to finish. But facts are still primary. Forms of creative nonfiction

  2. 2.2: Elements of Creative Nonfiction

    2.2: Elements of Creative Nonfiction. The main elements of creative nonfiction are setting, descriptive imagery, figurative language, plot, and character. The overarching element or requirement that distinguishes creative nonfiction from any other genre of writing is that while other literary genres can spring from the imagination, creative ...

  3. What Is Creative Nonfiction? Definitions, Examples, and Guidelines

    Creative nonfiction is a genre of writing that uses elements of creative writing to present a factual, true story. Literary techniques that are usually reserved for writing fiction can be used in creative nonfiction, such as dialogue, scene-setting, and narrative arcs. However, a work can only be considered creative nonfiction if the author can ...

  4. Creative Nonfiction: What It Is and How to Write It

    Other forms of nonfiction, such as the academic essay or more technical writing, might also fall under literary journalism, provided those pieces still use the elements of creative nonfiction. Consider this recently published article from The Atlantic : The Uncanny Tale of Shimmel Zohar by Lawrence Weschler.

  5. Creative Nonfiction: An Overview

    The first key element of nonfiction—perhaps the most crucial thing— is that the genre relies on the author's ability to retell events that actually happened. The talented CNF writer will certainly use imagination and craft to relay what has happened and tell a story, but the story must be true.

  6. A Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction

    Writing A Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction Written by MasterClass Last updated: Sep 29, 2021 • 5 min read Creative nonfiction uses various literary techniques to tell true stories. Writing creative nonfiction requires special attention to perspective and accuracy.

  7. Creative Nonfiction: How to Spin Facts into Narrative Gold

    Write a memoir focused on a singular experience Humans love reading about other people's lives — like first-person memoirs, which allow you to get inside another person's mind and learn from their wisdom. Unlike autobiographies, memoirs can focus on a single experience or theme instead of chronicling the writers' life from birth onward.

  8. 2: Creative Nonfiction

    This page titled 2: Creative Nonfiction is shared under a CC BY-NC license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap ( ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative) . This chapter covers the Creative Nonfiction genre of literature. It provides an overview, reading and writing guide, selection of readings, and a ...

  9. What Is Creative Nonfiction?

    That change in approach and attitude is ongoing. The scope of nonfiction today, most especially what we call creative nonfiction, continues to evolve, informing and inspiring readers with stories that are true, compelling, revealing and always surprising.

  10. Creative nonfiction (Chapter 7)

    Creative nonfiction deals with realities truthfully - experiences, events, facts - yet the drive of the writing is the author's involvement in the story, and writers use every literary device in the book to tell that story well. Carol Bly offers a precis in Beyond the Writers' Workshop: 'All you have to do is be truthful, tell things in ...

  11. What Is Creative Nonfiction in Writing?

    Jul 25, 2021 When I was younger, I often (foolishly) thought of writing genres in this way: Fiction was "creative" and nonfiction was "not creative." However, that's completely wrong. I now know from years of experience that even a list of instructions can be infused with creativity. Don't even get me started on copywriting and journalism.

  12. A Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction

    A Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction. Creative nonfiction is a genre that uses literary elements usually associated with fiction writing (e.g., narrative arc, character development) to tell true stories. Sometimes referred to as narrative nonfiction, creative nonfiction can range from tweet-sized stories to book-length memoirs.

  13. What is Creative Nonfiction?

    Creative nonfiction writing can embody both personal and public history. It is a form that utilizes memory, experience, observation, opinion, and all kinds of research. ... It is the mix of all these elements that make creative nonfiction an illuminating and moving form of historical documentary, as well as lovely literature.

  14. 6 Best Practices for Writing Creative Nonfiction

    Unlike academic and technical writing (and even objective journalism), creative nonfiction uses many of the techniques and devices employed in fiction to tell a compelling true story. The goal is the same as in fiction: a story well told. Some nonfiction narratives carry a literary flair every bit as beautiful as classic novels.

  15. 2.1: What is Creative Nonfiction?

    The best creative nonfiction tells a true story in an artistic -- or literary -- way. This means that the story has certain elements, such as descriptive imagery, setting, plot, conflict, characters, metaphors, and other literary devices. Usually, a work of creative nonfiction is narrated in first-person, though sometimes it can be written in ...

  16. The 5 Rs of Creative Nonfiction

    Creative Nonfiction provides a forum for writers, editors and readers interested in pushing the envelope of creativity and discussing and defining the parameters of accuracy, validity and truth. My essay below, "The 5 Rs of Creative Nonfiction," is dedicated to that mission.

  17. Elements of Creative Writing

    Elements of Creative Writing (0 reviews) No ratings J.D. Schraffenberger, University of Northern Iowa Rachel Morgan, University of Northern Iowa Grant Tracey, University of Northern Iowa Copyright Year: 2023 ISBN 13: 9780915996179 Publisher: University of Northern Iowa Language: English Formats Available Online Google Doc PDF eBook

  18. Best Elements of Nonfiction Writing

    10 components of a great nonfiction writing: 1. Provides a Solution to a Problem If a nonfiction book is a journey that you are taking your readers on, then there are going to be obstacles your readers face along the way. You can help them by providing the solutions to overcoming these barriers.

  19. Your Life as a Narrative: A Guide to Creative Nonfiction

    Updated: Sep 19, 2023 By Erin Yoo Creative nonfiction can sometimes be a difficult genre to pinpoint. It requires the use of traditional narrative elements as seen in any sort of creative writing, while also needing to stay true to real events from the author's lived experiences.

  20. 2: About Creative Nonfiction

    2: About Creative Nonfiction. define creative nonfiction and understand the basic features of the genre. identify basic literary elements (such as setting, plot, character, descriptive imagery, and figurative language). perform basic literary analysis. craft a personal narrative essay using the elements of creative nonfiction, using MLA-style ...

  21. 10 Examples of Creative Nonfiction & How to Write It

    Which is more likely to grip you? The dry, factual language, or the evocative, emotionally impactful creative writing? Podcasts are often great examples of creative nonfiction - but of course, creative nonfiction can be used in books too. In fact, there are many types of creative nonfiction writing.

  22. Creative Writing B

    Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like When is the drafting step in the writing process of creative nonfiction writing?, How are generative writing and drafting similar in writing creative nonfiction?, What are the clear and specific details of the tree in Merwin's essay, Unchopping A Tree, examples of? and more.

  23. 2.4: Elements of Creative Nonfiction

    This page titled 2.4: Elements of Creative Nonfiction is shared under a CC BY-NC license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap (ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative) .