Creative nonfiction sounds contradictory. Fiction is creative. Nonfiction is true. You make up fiction. It wasn’t there before. You’re telling a story about people who do not exist except in your mind. Nonfiction is the opposite. It is the truth. It is about people who do exist and about events that happened. For nonfiction to become creative nonfiction it must be the truth but told using the literary techniques of fiction.
So you tell a true story but in a way that can include dialogue. You may or may not wish to use dialogue but you can. You set scenes and build your characters. You give the story a structure that would create drama and suspense; a structure similar to that of a novel or short story. You use imagery and figures of speech – all the techniques of fiction writing. That is nonfiction told creatively.
We actually use creative nonfiction often. We would tell a friend about a disastrous first effort at making bread or the first time our article was accepted by a newspaper. We never tell the facts of such events in a flat, monotonous way. We inject excitement through dialogue, bring in characters and even set the scenes. Here is an example:
Girl, you know how the paths in the square are all buckled and cracked from the roots of those old trees. Well yesterday I stumped my toe against one of those bricks. The pain shot through my foot like an electric shock. Luckily I was close to one of the cement benches. I hopped over to it. When the pain eased I tried to get up. To my horror, girl I could not move. I sat there paralysed for about ten minutes. I just kept saying, “Please let me not have to call for an ambulance. Please don’t let me have to call the ambulance.”
There it is. I did not just say, “I stumped my toe while walking through the square. It was painful” Both accounts are true but the first is told with techniques used in fiction such as figure of speech, setting of a scene and even some internal discourse.
When did it begin?
Some people credit the origin of creative nonfiction as the 1960s with the adoption of New Journalism by some journalists who were giving their reported events a more subjective approach. Others point to earlier origins in the stories of pilgrims. They were telling true stories but writing them in interesting and exciting and narrative manner. It was not a genre at that time but it is the type of writing that we now call creative nonfiction. But you know some types of nonfiction such as memoirs and travel writing have always been told with a narrative manner. They were not labelled as creative nonfiction or narrative nonfiction though.
Jacob Garrett, is on a goal to walk from Melbourne to Sydney. He writes about this experience in “Desire Lines”. It is a travel story in literary style His descriptions of the landscape are vividly full of imagery. It certainly demonstrates that travel writing can be included in the genre of creative nonfiction depending on how the travel story is told.
Famous examples
Some famous examples of creative nonfiction include “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote. It is a true account of a crime, the murder of four members of a rural Kansas family, but it is written like a novel. Truman himself called it a nonfiction novel. The nonfiction aspect of the writing can require extensive and focused research. Capote did extensive research including interviews of investigators, and local people. He took six years to produce the book.
“Into Thin Air”, by Jon Krakauer is another famous example of creative nonfiction. It is the story of expedition to Mt Everest by Krakauer and others. The expedition is tragic as several climbers and guides die, the most of any climbing season on Everest. It is factual. The writer was there and participated in the events and successfully climbed to the summit of Mt Everest. He witnessed the events. He is a character in his own story. The book is written like a novel with a narrative structure, characters, definitely set scenes and even dialogue.
Recent writing
A more recent example of creative nonfiction is a short piece published in PREE an online literary magazine. The title of the piece is “Daffodils for E.R Worrell [aka Mister Double-Yuh aka WOW] by Linda M. Deane. The author definitely uses a narrative arc to tell the story of her father’s life as a West Indian immigrant in England. She uses dialogue, descriptive scenes and builds the character of her father and herself. Using this narrative technique the writer brings to life the man, her father in a vivid manner more effectively than she would have done in a strict report type account of the facts.
Though the name creative nonfiction may seem contradictory, the technique itself is not and the type of writing firmly holds its place as one of the literary genres.