what is the difference between creative nonfiction and creative writing

Creative Nonfiction: What It Is and How to Write It

Sean Glatch  |  March 31, 2024  |  8 Comments

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!

Sean Glatch

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

The Real Person!

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 🙂

I like how it is written about him”…When he’s not writing, which is often, he thinks he should be writing.”

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

So impressive

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’.

excellent guidelines inspiring me to write CNF thank you

[…] writing a “Spring” scene today. I’ve mentioned before that my memoir is a work of creative non-fiction. Since much of the story takes place 2-5 decades ago, I don’t remember a lot of the […]

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Creative Nonfiction: An Overview

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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.

What Is Creative Nonfiction?

By Lee Gutkind

I am often asked: “What is creative nonfiction?” Or, in some cases, “what the hell is creative nonfiction?”  The answer—or answers—can be complicated because creative nonfiction may mean different things to different people, a characteristic that makes this form so elusive and alluring.

On its very baseline creative nonfiction is a literary genre. Some people call it the fourth genre, along with poetry, fiction and drama. And it’s an umbrella term for the many different ways one can write what is called creative nonfiction. Memoir, for example, personal essay, biography, narrative history and long form narrative reportage may all fit under the creative nonfiction umbrella. Recently, as the genre has evolved, there have been offshoots to the genre like speculative nonfiction, auto(biographical) fiction, lyric essay, and the visual essay, to name only a few.

Writers who write creative nonfiction are very different in voice, orientation and purpose. But what they have in common is that they are, in one way or the other, writing true stories that provide information about a variety of subjects, enriched by relevant thoughtful ideas, personal insight, and intimacies about life and the world we live in.  And this scope and variety is exactly what makes creative nonfiction significant and, these days, so incredibly popular.

“Freedom” and “flexibility” are words I like to use when defining creative nonfiction, for the genre invites writers to push boundaries and open doors, offering them the opportunity to use all of the techniques of the fiction writer (or the poet)—dialogue, setting, description, inner point of view (seeing the world through the eyes of the person about whom they are writing)—in order to capture a reader’s attention and enlighten and intrigue them through nonfiction.

There are very few rules for writers of creative nonfiction. You can predict the future, speculate about the past, or imagine what could have happened or what someone might have been thinking, as long as you don’t violate the reader’s trust, and in the process your own credibility. There are, however, limits to the freedom and flexibility that make creative nonfiction so attractive and compelling—legal, ethical and moral issues that are challenging and, in many ways, impossible to clearly define. Freedom and flexibility—and daring—are governed by responsibility, not just to the people about whom we write, but to those who read and publish our work.

Nonfiction itself has had a bad rap in the literary world. For a long time, it was commonly believed that writing nonfiction was generally inferior to the writing of poetry and fiction. “Nonfiction is a pleasant way to walk,” Larry McMurtry once wrote, “but the novel puts one on horseback, and what cowboy, symbolic or real, would walk when he could ride?”

I remember reading this from McMurtry, who had written a great deal of nonfiction, in addition to his many novels and stories, and feeling more than a little annoyed and, at the same time, amused. He had to be joking, I thought. Or maybe he had just fallen off his horse. I pictured the comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who became rich and famous for the line “I get no respect,” which in many ways has been the story of creative nonfiction in a nutshell-up until present day.

The addition of the word “creative” to nonfiction was at first controversial, but it gradually reversed the belief that nonfiction was somehow second class, a cut below poetry and fiction. It liberated all writers, journalists especially, releasing them from longstanding rules and boundaries that had been so restrictive and inhibiting.  For novelists, poets and essayists, “creative” encouraged experimentation and offered new avenues of expression. Scientists, physicians, engineers (Atul Gawande, Hope Jahren, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Henry Petroski, to name just a very few) were intrigued by the notion of being creative and began to write true stories that humanized and revealed the behind-the-scenes intimacies of their professions.  

The interest in true stories motivated and opened doors for others who were not writers by trade to share their life experiences, finding meaning in the process and fulfillment in the connections they forged with readers.

This transition—an awakening to the potential and power of nonfiction that allowed and encouraged creativity—did not happen overnight and was not without resistance and often bitter infighting. Change was difficult for the literary, journalistic and academic communities, steeped in tradition and long resistant to new ideas, to accommodate. Indeed, the resistance in some corners far exceeded the scale of the change itself.  The change was hardly drastic and was not really, when one looks back over the history of nonfiction, much of a change at all. Writers had been writing nonfiction that was creative and imaginative for centuries, familiar and famous names you will recognize–Daniel Defoe, George Orwell, Charles Dickens and many others—for centuries. The change, the adjustment that it precipitated, had much more to do with the approach or attitude toward nonfiction rather than its content and, of course, the idea that creative and nonfiction were not mutually exclusive. 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.

“What is Creative Nonfiction” has been adapted from Lee Gutkind’s new book, The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting: How a Bunch of Rabble-Rousers, Outsiders and Ne’er-do-wells Created Creative Nonfiction,  to be published later this year by Yale University Press.

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About Lee Gutkind

Lee Gutkind is the author and editor of more than thirty books, including  You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction–from Memoir to Literary Journalism and Everything in Between ,  Almost Human: Making Robots Think, The Best Seat in Baseball: But You Have to Stand, Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather,  and the award-winning , Many Sleepless Nights: The World of Organ Transplantation.

Lee's Latest Book

My Last Eight Thousand Days

This revealing, candid, and vivid portrait of one man’s view of aging written by the man who played a crucial role in establishing literary, narrative nonfiction in the marketplace and in the academy, examines male aging in a way we’ve not seen before.In

A Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction

by Melissa Donovan | Mar 4, 2021 | Creative Writing | 12 comments

Try your hand at writing creative nonfiction.

Here at Writing Forward, we’re primarily interested in three types of creative writing: poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

With poetry and fiction, there are techniques and best practices that we can use to inform and shape our writing, but there aren’t many rules beyond the standards of style, grammar, and good writing . We can let our imaginations run wild; everything from nonsense to outrageous fantasy is fair game for bringing our ideas to life when we’re writing fiction and poetry.

However, when writing creative nonfiction, there are some guidelines that we need to follow. These guidelines aren’t set in stone; however, if you violate them, you might find yourself in trouble with your readers as well as the critics.

What is Creative Nonfiction?

Telling True Stories (aff link).

What sets creative nonfiction apart from fiction or poetry?

For starters, creative nonfiction is factual. A memoir is not just any story; it’s a true story. A biography is the real account of someone’s life. There is no room in creative nonfiction for fabrication or manipulation of the facts.

So what makes creative nonfiction writing different from something like textbook writing or technical writing? What makes it creative?

Nonfiction writing that isn’t considered creative usually has business or academic applications. Such writing isn’t designed for entertainment or enjoyment. Its sole purpose is to convey information, usually in a dry, straightforward manner.

Creative nonfiction, on the other hand, pays credence to the craft of writing, often through literary devices and storytelling techniques, which make the prose aesthetically pleasing and bring layers of meaning to the context. It’s pleasurable to read.

According to Wikipedia:

Creative nonfiction (also known as literary or narrative nonfiction) is a genre of writing truth which uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as technical writing or journalism, which is also rooted in accurate fact, but is not primarily written in service to its craft.

Like other forms of nonfiction, creative nonfiction relies on research, facts, and credibility. While opinions may be interjected, and often the work depends on the author’s own memories (as is the case with memoirs and autobiographies), the material must be verifiable and accurately reported.

Creative Nonfiction Genres and Forms

There are many forms and genres within creative nonfiction:

• Autobiography and biography
• Personal essays
• Literary journalism
• Any topical material, such as food or travel writing, self-development, art, or history, can be creatively written with a literary angle

Let’s look more closely at a few of these nonfiction forms and genres:

Memoirs: A memoir is a long-form (book-length) written work. It is a firsthand, personal account that focuses on a specific experience or situation. One might write a memoir about serving in the military or struggling with loss. Memoirs are not life stories, but they do examine life through a particular lens. For example, a memoir about being a writer might begin in childhood, when the author first learned to write. However, the focus of the book would be on writing, so other aspects of the author’s life would be left out, for the most part.

Biographies and autobiographies: A biography is the true story of someone’s life. If an author composes their own biography, then it’s called an autobiography. These works tend to cover the entirety of a person’s life, albeit selectively.

Literary journalism: Journalism sticks with the facts while exploring the who, what, where, when, why, and how of a particular person, topic, or event. Biographies, for example, are a genre of literary journalism, which is a form of nonfiction writing. Traditional journalism is a method of information collection and organization. Literary journalism also conveys facts and information, but it honors the craft of writing by incorporating storytelling techniques and literary devices. Opinions are supposed to be absent in traditional journalism, but they are often found in literary journalism, which can be written in long or short formats.

Personal essays are a short form of creative nonfiction that can cover a wide range of styles, from writing about one’s experiences to expressing one’s personal opinions. They can address any topic imaginable. Personal essays can be found in many places, from magazines and literary journals to blogs and newspapers. They are often a short form of memoir writing.

Speeches  can cover a range of genres, from political to motivational to educational. A tributary speech honors someone whereas a roast ridicules them (in good humor). Unlike most other forms of writing, speeches are written to be performed rather than read.

Journaling: A common, accessible, and often personal form of creative nonfiction writing is journaling. A journal can also contain fiction and poetry, but most journals would be considered nonfiction. Some common types of written journals are diaries, gratitude journals, and career journals (or logs), but this is just a small sampling of journaling options.

Writing Creative Nonfiction (aff link).

Any topic or subject matter is fair game in the realm of creative nonfiction. Some nonfiction genres and topics that offer opportunities for creative nonfiction writing include food and travel writing, self-development, art and history, and health and fitness. It’s not so much the topic or subject matter that renders a written work as creative; it’s how it’s written — with due diligence to the craft of writing through application of language and literary devices.

Guidelines for Writing Creative Nonfiction

Here are six simple guidelines to follow when writing creative nonfiction:

• Get your facts straight. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing your own story or someone else’s. If readers, publishers, and the media find out you’ve taken liberties with the truth of what happened, you and your work will be scrutinized. Negative publicity might boost sales, but it will tarnish your reputation; you’ll lose credibility. If you can’t refrain from fabrication, then think about writing fiction instead of creative nonfiction.
• Issue a disclaimer. A lot of nonfiction is written from memory, and we all know that human memory is deeply flawed. It’s almost impossible to recall a conversation word for word. You might forget minor details, like the color of a dress or the make and model of a car. If you aren’t sure about the details but are determined to include them, be upfront and include a disclaimer that clarifies the creative liberties you’ve taken.
• Consider the repercussions. If you’re writing about other people (even if they are secondary figures), you might want to check with them before you publish your nonfiction. Some people are extremely private and don’t want any details of their lives published. Others might request that you leave certain things out, which they want to keep private. Otherwise, make sure you’ve weighed the repercussions of revealing other people’s lives to the world. Relationships have been both strengthened and destroyed as a result of authors publishing the details of other people’s lives.
• Be objective. You don’t need to be overly objective if you’re telling your own, personal story. However, nobody wants to read a highly biased biography. Book reviews for biographies are packed with harsh criticism for authors who didn’t fact-check or provide references and for those who leave out important information or pick and choose which details to include to make the subject look good or bad.
• Pay attention to language. You’re not writing a textbook, so make full use of language, literary devices, and storytelling techniques.
• Know your audience. Creative nonfiction sells, but you must have an interested audience. A memoir about an ordinary person’s first year of college isn’t especially interesting. Who’s going to read it? However, a memoir about someone with a learning disability navigating the first year of college is quite compelling, and there’s an identifiable audience for it. When writing creative nonfiction, a clearly defined audience is essential.

Are you looking for inspiration? Check out these creative nonfiction writing ideas.

Ten creative nonfiction writing prompts and projects.

The prompts below are excerpted from my book, 1200 Creative Writing Prompts , which contains fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction writing prompts. Use these prompts to spark a creative nonfiction writing session.

1200 Creative Writing Prompts (aff link).

• What is your favorite season? What do you like about it? Write a descriptive essay about it.
• What do you think the world of technology will look like in ten years? Twenty? What kind of computers, phones, and other devices will we use? Will technology improve travel? Health care? What do you expect will happen and what would you like to happen?
• Have you ever fixed something that was broken? Ever solved a computer problem on your own? Write an article about how to fix something or solve some problem.
• Have you ever had a run-in with the police? What happened?
• Have you ever traveled alone? Tell your story. Where did you go? Why? What happened?
• Let’s say you write a weekly advice column. Choose the topic you’d offer advice on, and then write one week’s column.
• Think of a major worldwide problem: for example, hunger, climate change, or political corruption. Write an article outlining a solution (or steps toward a solution).
• Choose a cause that you feel is worthy and write an article persuading others to join that cause.
• Someone you barely know asks you to recommend a book. What do you recommend and why?
• Hard skills are abilities you have acquired, such as using software, analyzing numbers, and cooking. Choose a hard skill you’ve mastered and write an article about how this skill is beneficial using your own life experiences as examples.

Do You Write Creative Nonfiction?

Have you ever written creative nonfiction? How often do you read it? Can you think of any nonfiction forms and genres that aren’t included here? Do you have any guidelines to add to this list? Are there any situations in which it would be acceptable to ignore these guidelines? Got any tips to add? Do you feel that nonfiction should focus on content and not on craft? Leave a comment to share your thoughts, and keep writing.

12 Comments

Shouldn’t ALL non-fiction be creative to some extent? I am a former business journalist, and won awards for the imaginative approach I took to writing about even the driest of business topics: pensions, venture capital, tax, employment law and other potentially dusty subjects. The drier and more complicated the topic, the more creative the approach must be, otherwise no-one with anything else to do will bother to wade through it. [to be honest, taking the fictional approach to these ghastly tortuous topics was the only way I could face writing about them.] I used all the techniques that fiction writers have to play with, and used some poetic techniques, too, to make the prose more readable. What won the first award was a little serial about two businesses run and owned by a large family at war with itself. Every episode centred on one or two common and crucial business issues, wrapped up in a comedy-drama, and it won a lot of fans (happily for me) because it was so much easier to read and understand than the dry technical writing they were used to. Life’s too short for dusty writing!

I believe most journalism is creative and would therefore fall under creative nonfiction. However, there is a lot of legal, technical, medical, science, and textbook writing in which there is no room for creativity (or creativity has not made its way into these genres yet). With some forms, it makes sense. I don’t think it would be appropriate for legal briefings to use story or literary devices just to add a little flair. On the other hand, it would be a good thing if textbooks were a little more readable.

I think Abbs is right – even in academic papers, an example or story helps the reader visualize the problem or explanation more easily. I scan business books to see if there are stories or examples, if not, then I don’t pick up the book. That’s where the creativity comes in – how to create examples, what to conflate, what to emphasis as we create our fictional people to illustrate important, real points.

Thanks for the post. Very helpful. I’d never thought about writing creative nonfiction before.

You’re welcome 🙂

Hi Melissa!

Love your website. You always give a fun and frank assessment of all things pertaining to writing. It is a pleasure to read. I have even bought several of the reference and writing books you recommended. Keep up the great work.

Top 10 Reasons Why Creative Nonfiction Is A Questionable Category

10. When you look up “Creative Nonfiction” in the dictionary it reads: See Fiction

9. The first creative nonfiction example was a Schwinn Bicycle Assembly Guide that had printed in its instructions: Can easily be assembled by one person with a Phillips head screw driver, Allen keys, adjustable wrench and cable cutters in less than an hour.

8. Creative Nonfiction; Based on actual events; Suggested by a true event; Based on a true story. It’s a slippery slope.

7. The Creative Nonfiction Quarterly is only read by eleven people. Five have the same last name.

6. Creative Nonfiction settings may only include: hospitals, concentration camps, prisons and cemeteries. Exceptions may be made for asylums, rehab centers and Capitol Hill.

5. The writers who create Sterile Nonfiction or Unimaginative Nonfiction now want their category recognized.

4. Creative; Poetic License; Embellishment; Puffery. See where this is leading?

3. Creative Nonfiction is to Nonfiction as Reality TV is to Documentaries.

2. My attorney has advised that I exercise my 5th Amendment Rights or that I be allowed to give written testimony in a creative nonfiction way.

1. People believe it is a film with Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson and Queen Latifa.

Hi Steve. I’m not sure if your comment is meant to be taken tongue-in-cheek, but I found it humorous.

My publisher is releasing my Creative Nonfiction book based on my grandmother’s life this May 2019 in Waikiki. I’ll give you an update soon about sales. I was fortunate enough to get some of the original and current Hawaii 5-0 members to show up for the book signing.

Hi, when writing creative nonfiction- is it appropriate to write from someone else’s point of view when you don’t know them? I was thinking of writing about Greta Thungbrurg for creative nonfiction competition – but I can directly ask her questions so I’m unsure as to whether it’s accurate enough to be classified as creative non-fiction. Thank you!

Hi Madeleine. I’m not aware of creative nonfiction being written in first person from someone else’s point of view. The fact of the matter is that it wouldn’t be creative nonfiction because a person cannot truly show events from another person’s perspective. So I wouldn’t consider something like that nonfiction. It would usually be a biography written in third person, and that is common. You can certainly use quotes and other indicators to represent someone else’s views and experiences. I could probably be more specific if I knew what kind of work it is (memoir, biography, self-development, etc.).

Dear Melissa: I am trying to market a book in the metaphysical genre about an experience I had, receiving the voice of a Civil War spirit who tells his story (not channeling). Part is my reaction and discussion with a close friend so it is not just memoir. I referred to it as ‘literary non-fiction’ but an agent put this down by saying it is NOT literary non-fiction. Looking at your post, could I say that my book is ‘creative non-fiction’? (agents can sometimes be so nit-picky)

Hi Liz. You opened your comment by classifying the book as metaphysical but later referred to it as literary nonfiction. The premise definitely sounds like a better fit in the metaphysical category. Creative nonfiction is not a genre; it’s a broader category or description. Basically, all literature is either fiction or nonfiction (poetry would be separate from these). Describing nonfiction as creative only indicates that it’s not something like a user guide. I think you were heading in the right direction with the metaphysical classification.

The goal of marketing and labeling books with genres is to find a readership that will be interested in the work. This is an agent’s area of expertise, so assuming you’re speaking with a competent agent, I’d suggest taking their advice in this matter. It indicates that the audience perusing the literary nonfiction aisles is simply not a match for this book.

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What is Creative Nonfiction?

Creative nonfiction sounds like an oxymoron, along the lines of jumbo shrimp or old news. But it isn’t. Creative nonfiction is a genre unto itself where the author incorporates techniques and styles from creative writing to tell a truthful story. Often, these techniques and styles focus on story, tone, and emotion than on the “just the facts” style of journalistic, academic, or prescriptive nonfiction writing. 

Lots of memoirs have earmarks of creative nonfiction, but it’s not limited to just that kind of storytelling. If you have a true story to tell, today’s article will help you know whether or not creative nonfiction is the best way to tell it, and how to write it the right way. 

Without further ado, consider these ten commandments of writing creative nonfiction.

1. Everything Must Be True

The “creative” part in creative nonfiction doesn’t mean you get to play fast and loose with the facts. This is not a chance to rewrite history to better suit your moods. Instead, you get creative with the voice, structure, and style of how you tell the truth. Everything you say must be factually accurate. 

Some writers of creative nonfiction will keep the broad strokes true but take liberties with small details. For example, when describing a key conversation they might not look up what the participants were wearing and fill in the details of small talk. This is common, and most readers will forgive that kind of license. Don’t go too far with it, though, and never make up or omit important details. 

2. Retain Your Objectivity

Readers of nonfiction must be able to trust their narrators to really connect with the material. You don’t have to be “just the facts, ma’am” objective if you’re writing a memoir or autobiography, but you should also avoid any overt bias.

Look at the negative reviews for biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs and you’ll find a lot of dings for cherry-picking data or skewing the writing to cast somebody in an unfairly good or bad light. Avoid this by maintaining your objectivity, even if it means telling the truth about a mistake you made, or putting forward a viewpoint that doesn’t match your own.

3. Use Storytelling Techniques

How you tell your story is what makes the difference between creative nonfiction, straight nonfiction, and journalism. This is where you get to have fun. An incomplete list of techniques you can incorporate into your creative nonfiction includes:

• Metaphors and extended metaphors
• Foreshadowing
• Creative imagery

Creative nonfiction is a unique opportunity to play with how you present the facts. Have fun in this literary playground. 

4. Include a Disclaimer

If you want to get more creative with your nonfiction, you can include a disclaimer in your introduction. This can be as simple as the classic movie “based on a true story”, or a detailed description of what you changed and why. 

Nonfiction readers want facts, but they are also patient. If they know where to expect some creativity, they will usually accept it. Just be completely honest with yourself and your readers.

5. Think About Innocent Bystanders

One of the risks with writing nonfiction is you’re dealing with real things, real situations, and real people. If your creative nonfiction project includes anybody who’s still alive, you need to consider how the book will impact them. 

You’re usually protected from libel and slander suits if you can prove what you said is true. Beyond that, though, it’s important to consider what level of privacy or publicity any given subject wants. Consider how telling this story in a particular way will impact the people involved. This might mean leaving some things out, or changing how you narrate them, so you don’t damage any undeserving individuals. 

6. Know Your Audience

You can make a surprising amount of money writing creative nonfiction, but you still need to know your audience. Take this into account both while writing your project and while selling it. 

When choosing and writing your project, write for a specific audience. For example, WWII stories can be compelling but the market is full of them. It’s hard to find a general audience for yet another tale of the Pacific War. But most stories have a unique hook: the stories of three brothers in different places during the war, how a gay soldier managed to become accepted, how your grandfather’s fluent German impacted his part in liberating France…find the unique story-in-the-story to identify your audience. 

While selling your story, audience identification and engagement are a must. This is no different than doing so for any other genre, which we write about in articles like this one on building reader personas , and this one about tropes and publishing trends (and this live training here ). 

7. Follow the Emotions

One of the biggest, most important differences between straight nonfiction and creative nonfiction is how large a role emotion plays. Most readers expect a more facts-oriented presentation with straight nonfiction, or at least reporting where emotions and opinion are called out as such and easy to differentiate. 

Creative nonfiction often starts with emotion, and writes the story from that foundation. This gives you an opportunity to connect more deeply with your readers, and in turn lets them connect more deeply with the material. It’s an opportunity you can’t afford to miss. 

8. Play With Point of View

If you are writing about something close to you emotionally, it can help to write from the third-person point of view. This helps you keep your close connection from overriding the story with bias and perspective, and can help you write through the parts that are heavy emotional lifting. 

Likewise, if you are writing about something you’re personally distant from, assuming a first-person point of view can create a connection your writing might otherwise lack. It forces you to view the material from the perspective of a participant, and brings readers along for the ride. 

9. Go Deep on Location

Location can be very powerful in creative nonfiction for three different reasons. 

First, it provides context for the nonfiction. By telling not just what happened, but when and where, you can’t help but tell a more vibrant story about this topic that fascinates you. 

Second, it allows you to approach things from a wider perspective. This can especially help if the material is close to you, or even traumatic. Writing about how something impacted Boston is easier than dealing with how it impacted you. 

Third, it gives you more to write about. You can research the impact of your story on the city, the region, the country, or however wide you want it to go. This gives the material more importance and helps you understand its scope better as you write. 

10. Reflection is Key

Before and during your writing, reflect about your experience with the topic and your place in the story. This is vital in creative nonfiction because there’s more temptation to let your personal perspective run free. 

Since this is nonfiction, it’s your responsibility to keep things more factual and less opinion-based. The only way to accomplish this is to spend time in your own head. Know how you feel about things, so you can accommodate for that inherent bias as you write. Even more important, know how your readers might feel so you can aptly capture that emotion and imagination with your prose. 

Build it Before They Come

Another thing to keep in mind with creative nonfiction is how to market the book prior to publication. This means going deep in online communities that celebrate the main topic of your creative nonfiction project. Often, this will be easier and more direct than doing the same for a fiction book, because people interested in a topic tend to be more clearly labeled than fans of a genre or subgenre. 

Incorporate your marketing and publicity plan into your work on the book, so that when the book is ready the audience is, too. 

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Last updated on Feb 20, 2023

Creative Nonfiction: How to Spin Facts into Narrative Gold

About the author.

Reedsy's editorial team is a diverse group of industry experts devoted to helping authors write and publish beautiful books.

About Savannah Cordova

Savannah is a senior editor with Reedsy and a published writer whose work has appeared on Slate, Kirkus, and BookTrib. Her short fiction has appeared in the Owl Canyon Press anthology, "No Bars and a Dead Battery". 

About Rebecca van Laer

Rebecca van Laer is a writer, editor, and the author of two books, including the novella How to Adjust to the Dark. Her work has been featured in literary magazines such as AGNI, Breadcrumbs, and TriQuarterly.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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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

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 .

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What is creative nonfiction?

Alessandra Torre October 5, 2023

On a recent edition of First Draft Friday, I talked with Lynne Golodner about creative nonfiction, her journey from a journalist to a novelist and her new book A Woman of Valor.

Here are some key takeaways from my conversation with Lynne:

Understanding creative nonfiction

Creative nonfiction involves writing truthful stories with the techniques of fiction. It emphasizes descriptive, immersive storytelling while staying true to real events. This genre blends the factual rigor of journalism with the narrative flair of fiction.

Transitioning from nonfiction to fiction

Lynne shared that people often assume her fiction is autobiographical due to her nonfiction background. However, she emphasizes that fiction requires significant creative freedom and research.

Research in both genres

Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, thorough research is essential. For her novel set in Chicago’s Orthodox Jewish community, Lynne conducted extensive research despite her personal experiences as an Orthodox Jew. Similarly, for her upcoming novel set in Scotland, she researched historical details and visited Scotland several times to create an authentic narrative.

Balancing creativity with facts

In creative nonfiction, it can be tempting to embellish facts for a more compelling story. Lynne advises maintaining a balance, ensuring that while the narrative is engaging, it remains grounded in truth. Fiction, however, allows for complete creative liberty, enabling writers to invent characters, settings, and plots freely.

Incorporate personal experience

Personal experiences often influence a writer’s work, but they should not constrain it. Lynne’s first novel draws on her knowledge of Orthodox Judaism, yet it is entirely fictional. Her next novel incorporates elements of Jewish culture and historical research, illustrating how personal knowledge can enrich storytelling without dictating it.

Marketing opportunities

Leveraging shorter pieces related to your novel can be an effective marketing strategy. Writing essays, op-eds, or articles that connect to your book’s themes can attract readers and establish your expertise. Publications and platforms like Medium and Substack offer opportunities to share these writings and reach broader audiences.

Set boundaries for research

To avoid getting lost in endless research, Lynne suggests setting time limits. Allocate specific periods for research and then return to writing. This approach helps maintain focus and productivity, ensuring that research enhances rather than hinders the creative process.

It was a great discussion, one you won’t want to miss! Click below to watch our 30-minute recording and hear the questions we answered from the live audience. Keep scrolling if you’d prefer to read the transcript.

Try out Marlowe, our A.I., for a critique of your novel: authors.ai/marlowe/

Find out more about Lynne Golodner at LynneGolodner.com

Enjoy the show? Check out our past  First Draft Friday episodes.

TRANSCRIPT:

Alessandra Torre: Hello everyone, and welcome to another First Draft Friday brought to you by Authors AI. I am your host, Alessandra Torre, and today I’m joined by Lynne Golodner, who is going to be talking about the differences between creative nonfiction and fiction. And how you can make that transition or straddle both of those worlds and the creative processes that go along with that. So welcome, Lynn. It’s fantastic to have you here. And huge congrats, because this is the release week of your debut. You’ve released lots of books, but this is your first novel. Is that correct? 

Lynne Golodner: Yeah. 

Alessandra Torre: So huge congrats on that front. And do you just want to introduce yourself to the audience? Tell us a little bit about you and your background. 

Lynne Golodner: Yeah, sure. Thank you so much for having me. So I am a Detroit-based writer. I’ve always been a writer. I’ve had a journalistic career and a career in marketing. I’m an entrepreneur. And I have been writing for all of my life, really. My first book came out as I graduated from my MFA program when I was 25. It was a collection of poems. And since then I have had two collections of poetry, six nonfiction books and then this week, my first novel was published. But I have written thousands of articles and a lot of creative nonfiction essays for journals, magazines, and newspapers all over the world. So writing is my first love. 

Alessandra Torre: And with those articles and things like that, what was typically the length of an article? 

Lynne Golodner: Well, when it was a journalistic endeavor, it could be 500 words. It can be a thousand words, 2000 words, whatever. But when it’s creative nonfiction essays I usually write between, I’d say, 1,000 – 3,000 words. 

Alessandra Torre:  So that’s meaty but not the length of your novel. So. And your first novel is about what? 

Lynne Golodner: I think it was 82,000 words. Yeah. 

Alessandra Torre: And what’s the topic? 

Lynne Golodner: So it’s called Woman of Valor, and it is a story about a young woman who lives in Chicago. She chooses to become Orthodox in Judaism. Everything’s great. She’s married to the love of her life and has three kids. Life is grand. And then her son is abused at his school, and she and her husband respond differently to this. They’re both outraged, but they want to take different actions. At that same time, her ex-boyfriend pops back into her life on Facebook and says he made a huge mistake breaking up with her. And I won’t release anymore because that’ll give some spoilers. But, what did he do, and how does it play out? 

Alessandra Torre: So what genre is this? Is that women’s fiction or something else? 

Lynne Golodner: And it’s fiction. It’s got a literary bent to it. Even though it’s about an Orthodox Jewish woman and it’s in that Orthodox community. I’ve had non-Jewish readers say that they love it and they’ve learned a lot, so I think it has a broad appeal. 

Alessandra Torre: I love that. So if you’ve spent years, decades potentially, writing, you wrote. Now, to be honest, I don’t know a lot about creative nonfiction. So is nonfiction a top-level genre and then creative nonfiction is memoirs? What is creative nonfiction? 

Lynne Golodner: Yeah. So we have all these different genres and you can define them however you see fit. But the way I look at creative nonfiction is that you are writing truthful stories, but using the techniques of fiction to be creative. And so that’s evoking the senses, writing great details, really descriptive, immersing the reader in the scene and the characters, but it’s all based on real events. And of course, even when you’re writing a memoir, you’re not going to remember every single word spoken or every single moment. So it’s to the best of your memory. Same thing in creative nonfiction. You’re doing your best to tell a true story, but you’re doing it creatively instead of straight reporting, which I would say is the difference between journalism and creative nonfiction. 

Alessandra Torre: Yeah, I love that. So because we do get some nonfiction and our company is based on an artificial intelligence that is a developmental editor. And so a lot, but it’s fiction. It’s trained on fiction, and fiction is what it knows. And, and so a lot of people say, oh, well, I have nonfiction. So oftentimes you say, well, it depends on the kind of style in which your story is told. If your story is told similarly to a fictional read in that storytelling style, then. Yeah. Let’s see, let’s see how Marlowe does. So that’s what’s interesting. And your prior books. Now, I know you said you start with a collection of poems, but when your other books and stories were all truth-based. 

Lynne Golodner: Yes. 

Alessandra Torre: Were they different things? 

Lynne Golodner: Oh, no, they were all nonfiction. They were all based on real things. Most of them were reported. And so it was more straight nonfiction. Of course, I tried to bring a creative element to it, but it wasn’t a collection of essays that might be where it would be more creative in that way. My last book before A Woman of Valor was called The Flavors of Faith Holy Breads, and it’s about how every faith and every community has bread. And so this is something that we have in common. So why are we at odds if we have different beliefs or different belongings and there are recipes and that kind of thing? So, I interviewed people, I experienced different communities, and I wrote those stories, but it was really based heavily on gathering information and reporting other people’s stories. So I think it was more journalistic. I hope it’s creative, but I think it has more of a journalistic approach. 

Alessandra Torre: That makes sense. And so when you did decide to say, okay, I’m going to create a story from scratch, I’m going to invent a world. First of all, did you have any pushback from real life because you spent so long writing true things that now you’re moving into fiction? Was there some, was there some explaining that you had to do, or was there a transition for both you as a writer, but there’s also your audience? Was that even an issue?

Lynne Golodner: I love this question and I’m so glad you asked it, but, so I spent ten years as an Orthodox Jew. I’m not Orthodox anymore, and that was a deliberate choice. But, I wrote about an Orthodox character, so I know that world, but I also did a ton of research to know it better. And I don’t live in Chicago, so I really needed to research and everything. So I cannot tell you how many people have said, well, is this an autobiographical novel, which I don’t think is a thing, but I said, no, it’s fiction. It is totally created. It is not me. And but people who know me, they said, oh, I see the young Lynne in this character. I said no, that is not me at all. And in fact, my kids have said that my ex-husband, who is Orthodox, has asked them if this book is about me. People in his community are asking, did your ex-wife write a novel about you? And I say, no, this is fiction. This is not you. This is completely made up. I don’t know if he believes it or not, but it’s the truth. It is not him. It’s not anybody. Any likenesses are coincidental. I will say. 

Alessandra Torre: I love that, and I can see how that would be. I think it’s hard for any debut author. My first book was super steamy, and I had to do a disclaimer with everyone I met. I am not like these characters. What they’re doing is not my life. But then as you write more and more books people say, oh, this one’s about a killer. Obviously, Alessandra isn’t a killer in her spare time. So, yeah, the more you write, the more. But you almost did the opposite. You almost reinforce that everything you write is true, and then, and then wrote it so I could see, I could see that. Yeah. That is a bit of an issue. 

Lynne Golodner: In my next novel, some of the characters are Jewish. That’s part of my author brand is I want to write compelling Jewish characters. But the story is not Orthodox. And it takes place both in Michigan and in Scotland, and it’s totally made up. And so if anybody comes to me and says, oh, I see you in this, I’m going to be, where? Because it’s totally different? So anyway. Yeah. 

Alessandra Torre: I have to say a lot of my characters have some of my traits. It’s easiest for me to write about characters that are similar personality-wise, which is bad because everyone goes, oh, your characters are so unlikable. So I don’t know what that says about me as a person. 

Lynne Golodner: oh, that’s terrible. 

Alessandra Torre: But my new goal is to write likable characters so that I can’t help myself. I like moving to the problem areas of people. But let’s talk a little bit about the creative arc or the creative things that are similar in creative nonfiction. I would think for me, the hardest with creative nonfiction is adding, I would want to add the juicy or fake stuff, especially in a moment when things might be getting a little dry and boring. Just talk about the differences and similarities between the two. 

Lynne Golodner: Between creative nonfiction and fiction? Yeah, yeah. So honestly, I feel that when you are a writer, you bring the same creativity, the same attention to detail, and the same observational skills to both genres. I find that with both I am doing research, even if it’s not that creative nonfiction. So it’s something that I experienced or that I or that happened to me, or a memory or whatever, something I’m curious about. But I always end up doing research. I wrote this essay, one of my favorites, called The Roads We Travel, and it’s about a relationship I had in my 20s, we were in different states, and we were driving across America together and all this stuff, and it was sort of a metaphor for finding yourself and the journey of your identity. But it was all based on experiences I had, and yet I ended up researching on what American roads are made of. And that was sort of the ending to the piece. And it was this big culmination. So while it was a nugget of an experience that inspired the essay, I really had to bring my writing skills and my research to it? And the same thing goes for fiction. So I’m writing about real places. I’m not making up worlds. I’m not writing fantasy or sci-fi. So if I’m writing about Chicago and I don’t live there, I have to research it. I have to have street names. I have to have stores that exist or did at that period of time that I’m writing about. If I’m writing about the Orthodox Jewish community, and this was even though I lived in an Orthodox community for a while, it wasn’t that one. And this character is way more religious than I was. So I have to research what she would wear and how she would look at things and different things like that. I mean, I’ve been Jewish my whole life, and I had to research some of the prayers that she would say and the translation. So I think you have to bring your writing skills to every genre the same way. I mean, even in poetry, I brought journalistic skills to my poems because it’s all the detail. It’s the reporting. It’s getting really specific. And yet I needed to make it artistic and beautiful for the genre. So I’m going to go out on a limb and say that your skills and your approach to storytelling are the same, no matter what genre you’re in, and you have to have these qualities across the board because that’s what makes great writing. 

Alessandra Torre: And having that research background I would think would be enormously helpful. For many authors, the research is what kills them. Not the act of doing research. It’s the distraction of the research. It’s writing a scene and saying, oh, I don’t know what Chicago was like in the 1950s. I don’t even know if that food or that product was invented then. And then they stop and they go and research it. And then before you know it, they’re looking at cat videos on YouTube and nothing’s been written for four hours. So I mean, any tips on juggling how much research is doing too much research or if there’s a way to avoid kind of the black hole or the just unending research, research, research, writing never gets done? 

Lynne Golodner: Yeah, I mean, I’m a big fan of setting boundaries. And so, and I teach this in all my classes too, that it can be a rabbit hole. And so you just need to set a time and stick to it. And I’m very impatient. So I want to get the book done. I want to make a better chapter. I want to get through it so I won’t let myself spend hours researching. I’ll say I’m going to do 30 minutes now or an hour, and that’s all I’m letting myself do. And I’ll take notes. I’ll put them in a document so I have them for later because I want to get back to writing. Writing is what I really love, but research and revision for sure are a huge part of writing. So you’ve got to do that. For my next book, since it takes place in Scotland and 2014 to 2016 is when it takes place. They’re at a pub and they’re drinking a beer and I say, well, what beer was new that year? And so I had a great time looking it up. And one of my critique partners was looking at a chapter and she said, what a cool name for a beer. I said I didn’t make it up. It was a thing. It won Beer of the Year in 2014. Same thing with names. I’m sort of obsessed with coming up with deliberate names for the characters, which I don’t think I did as much in Women of Valor, but I am doing for the next book. So I wanted to look at what these names mean. Scottish names, Jewish names, and American names at the time. And really be very specific. And so maybe the readers will never pick up on it, but I think it’s pretty cool that I’ve chosen this name for this reason. And that’s part of the research, too. So it can be really fun and then elevate your writing and make it more fun to do, too. 

Alessandra Torre: So I’m curious why your first book you just didn’t set it in Detroit. I don’t know if there’s something specifically about that community in Chicago, but it does seem that it would be easier. And maybe it was because you did want to distance yourself from the story a little bit in terms of you and the characters. But the same question I have also for book two. I mean, unless you. I’ve never been to Scotland, so I don’t know. But to me, the research would. I think I’d have to visit there. I don’t know if I could do that. It’s a big chunk. 

Lynne Golodner: Yes. So yes. For A Woman of Valor, I didn’t want it based in Michigan because it’s a little too close to home. But she’s originally from Michigan, just not the suburbs where I’m from. And, so it was a touchpoint. But a lot of Michigan young adults moved to Chicago because it’s the nearest big, big city. And so, to me, that was a natural progression. And I liked the idea of placing her in a city and just sort of making it a little different. I liked that she could. She’s a runner. I’m not a runner, but she runs along the shore of Lake Michigan, which I thought was a great landscape setting that I wanted to evoke. As far as Scotland. So I have this obsession with Scotland and I don’t know what it is. And I actually did ancestry DNA to see if there’s any smidge of Scottish ancestry in me or a former life or something. And it came back that I’m 98% Jewish, which is hilarious. But, there was 1% that was Scandinavia. They included England in that. So I’m going to say Viking blood in some way, that maybe was in Scotland, but my kids just said why did you even pay for this? You knew what the outcome would be. I just really love it. Last summer, 2022, I did a month-long writing sabbatical in the Scottish Highlands. And so I went for a month. I rented a house. It was amazing, one of the best months of my life. And I thought, well, what am I writing if I’m here on a writing sabbatical? And so I started searching for Jews in Scotland. And just because I want to write about something Jewish and I came across some historical figures and was going to do historical fiction and realized as I got into that project, I don’t write historical fiction. I like to read it, but I don’t write it. So I liked these characters and all this research I had done. So I made it contemporary women’s fiction and, with a historical element to it and even tried to reach out to the descendants of the people that I found. And they did not want me to write about their ancestors who were widely written about. So, I mean, it’s fine, but so I said, okay. no, not a problem. I don’t really want to deal with them. So I fictionalized those historical figures that I found and created a contemporary story. They’ll probably recognize some similarities to their ancestors, but the names are all different. And, so I went back this year because the book is set in places that I didn’t visit when I was there in 2022, just so I could get on-the-ground details and really learn a little bit about the area. And so yeah, that’s part of the fun of it too, is finding a place that I want to learn about and then spend time there so that I can write about it really well. 

Alessandra Torre: And you caught me off guard when you said I don’t write historical fiction. Okay. Your book that’s set in Scotland is present. Is. Well, you said 2014. 

Lynne Golodner: Yeah. Yeah. There is a historical element because one of the main characters is an archivist. And so she’s managing archives and she’s sort of learning that career. And she stumbles upon some old journals and letters buried in a cave. And so she has to figure out who wrote these and what is the story. And, there’s even a dream sequence where one of the historical figures comes to her in her dreams and talks to her and says, you’ve got to write my story and all this stuff. And so. So there’s that. But it’s, I mean, maybe it’s more magical realism, but it’s really a contemporary novel, with those aspects as part of it. 

Alessandra Torre: Being totally nosy, but I’m curious. Why 2014-16? Why not the present day? 

Lynne Golodner: I did very complicated math to figure out how old the character was and how old her father. He is the main character. And then there’s a love interest of his mother as a main character. And so I have. 

Alessandra Torre: Tten generations back?

Lynne Golodner: Well, no, in the present time. But where they were led to what’s happening today. And so I had to see, okay, well, if she’s 30 and then when did I want her father to be coming of age? Because that’s part of the story. And so he was coming of age in the 80s. And so I had to figure out what is the present like. So not too long ago, but not today. Yeah. Yeah. 

Alessandra Torre: That makes sense. 

Lynne Golodner: I needed them to be able to text, so it couldn’t be too far too late. 

Alessandra Torre: Yeah. Too long ago. Yeah, yeah. As a thriller writer, texting and cell phones have made everything much more complicated. I mean, it’s much harder for someone to get away with a crime now with DNA and everything else. So a lot of times when we’re talking to mystery thriller authors, a lot of times they do have things that are set in the 90s because back then when you got stranded on the side of the road with a broken down car, it was a much more dangerous situation. Yeah. Then it is nowadays when you can just sit in your car and call AAA and just wait for an hour and track their progress on your phone. But, that’s very, very interesting. Yeah. So one thing we were talking about pre-chat was, I guess being able to write essays or supportive pieces for your novel that might fall kind of in the creative nonfiction realm. So can you explore that a little more? What that means. And you have a marketing background. So where I’ve perked up, oh, there are so many marketing opportunities. If I could have a shorter piece that somehow supported my full-length novel. 

Lynne Golodner: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for asking that. So I’ve had a marketing company since 2007, and now I really work a lot with authors trying to help them build their brand and then figure out how to market their books. And, if you’re a writer and that’s what you do, it makes sense that some of your marketing would be through writing. And so writing opinion pieces that relate to your book. I have a friend who’s writing a book about John F Kennedy Jr’s death. And so the anniversary is next year, and that’s when it’s coming out. So it’s perfect timing if she wants to write an op-ed or something that relates to that anniversary and in some way promotes her book. Op-eds are great ways to do that. And then essays that relate to the book that you’re writing, the topic that puts you out there so that people start to know you in this genre or in the subject matter. Then they might go and find your book since they enjoyed your essay. So it might become a sale for your book or somebody in your audience who’s going to follow you. And that’s the first way in, is because they read a piece you wrote on Medium or Huffington Post or wherever. And so it’s a snippet of your talent and your voice that they can get a taste of and say, oh, I’m really fascinated. Let me learn more. So it’s a gateway to your brand. So yeah, there are all kinds of ways to brainstorm the subject matter, the timeliness, and other things that relate to your book write essays about them and then market them to publications that will attract your ideal reader audience, too. 

Alessandra Torre: So that’s a world a lot of us don’t know about because we’re not in the journalistic or blogger space or that sort of thing. So if we just have a 1000 or 2000-word piece that we’ve written is Medium something that anybody can just create an account and post something on, or do you have to be vetted in some way? 

Lynne Golodner: Yes. Medium is open to anybody. So I always say it’s a great way to be discovered, but I am a big advocate for being paid for your talent. And so, if you can sell it somewhere and even make 100 bucks off it, do it. And also because then they’re going to want to promote you because they want the click. 

Alessandra Torre: Pay for this. Yeah. They wanted it to get seen. Right for sure. 

Lynne Golodner: So I never published on Medium, although I’ve read lots of Medium stories, a lot of people do. And it is a great place to be discovered. I think it might be even more worth it to start a Substack. To do a newsletter on Substack where you can be monetized and other people can promote you because then they’re going to drive readers to you. There are all kinds of channels and I think that we can look for publications that will look for that subject matter that might offer to pay. Op-eds are never paid unless it’s The Washington Post, The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. But, it is exposure to a huge audience. So the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press are places I’ve written op-eds for because that’s my community, that’s my local audience, and I know the journalists there. And if there’s something timely or local, then they’re going to want a local voice. And so, it’s just an opportunity to build your platform, build your exposure, and really have more people know you as a writer and want to read you. 

Alessandra Torre: So if I had an op-ed piece. I’m assuming there’s a learning curve and can they just hire a company and say, hi, I have this piece. Can you do something with this? You see, if there’s somewhere to put it before I just stick it on Medium or something else. Is that something that you do? 

Lynne Golodner: Yeah, I do a lot of writing coaching, and I’ve worked with clients where I actually help them write the piece, and then I place it for them. But there’s also a resource called the Op-Ed Project, which people can Google, and they can find all kinds of resources for writing op-eds and how to submit to different publications around the US. But it’s something that publications around the world are looking for daily. So I have friends who write for the Guardian in the UK. There are all kinds of Canadian outlets. Every place has some need for local commentary. And so, yes, I’m happy to help people, but they can also start at the Op-Ed Project and see what they find. 

Alessandra Torre: And so it made sense. Your friend had a book about JFK, Jr. that seems a no-brainer in terms of different things that could be written. But if someone has a normal story, similar to your second story, what are some examples of supportive content that could be created that is nonfiction? 

Lynne Golodner: Yeah. So I planned my book launch around the Jewish holidays this fall, which was stupid because that’s the busiest time of the year for me because I still observe them and I said, wait, the day after Yom Kippur I have a virtual launch. And then on Sukkot this Sunday I have an in-person launch, which is great, but it’s a lot of stress. But, I could write pieces for the Jewish News or other Jewish outlets around the holidays or around something that relates to something in the book. For the next book, I can think about writing essays about certain holidays that are observed in Scotland at that time of year because they are mentioned in the book. Or, I’m trying to think, she’s also from Michigan, so there’s that angle to it as well. But yes, Scottish heritage societies or websites or Jewish communities in Scotland. There are different ways to look at the different elements of your book and think about very narrowly focused topics that you could write about and market to those communities who are hungry for that kind of content. And it actually helps you create a niche audience, which is easier to market to than a big, broad audience that’s everybody. So I think, looking at the themes in your book and pulling them out so that you have different touch points throughout the year. <y book just launched. But the marketing is just beginning. I marketed the launch for six months, and now I realize I have to keep marketing as the book is going. And so I’m going to want to find different new angles in six months or a year so that people are discovering the book and reading it. That’s just an ongoing thing. 

Alessandra Torre: I love that. We’re in the final moments of the show. We just have 2 or 3 minutes left. Is there anything that we didn’t touch on that you wanted to cover? And, any commonly asked questions that you get from your writers? Just anything we need to cover before we sign off. 

Lynne Golodner: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for this opportunity. It’s been a great conversation. I think that what I would say is the best way to write a great story is to just write, is to sit down and write day after day, get your butt in the chair and create a habit of it, but also to take opportunities to connect with the writer community. I have a few that I’m a part of, and I also create a community with writers. So I offer a bunch of programs, but I also lead writers retreats. And anywhere you want to go in the world, you can find a writer’s retreat there. So, find a way to do it — to do the thing. And so, once you surround yourself with other writers, it just energizes you and it encourages you to keep going. And you realize that this is something you can do. So just doing the thing helps you to do the thing. 

Alessandra Torre: And when you went to that one in Scotland. How did you find that? Did you just search for 

Lynne Golodner: Well, when I did the writing sabbatical, that was just me. I just booked a house and did a vacation. 

Alessandra Torre: So the first one, you said I’m going to go on a writing sabbatical. You booked a house, and then just while you were there, you would tour the countryside in the afternoons, right? 

Lynne Golodner: Yeah. So in the mornings, I wrote every day, and then in the afternoons I hiked and went places. But I also really started to search for writers in the Highlands. And I found a ton of different groups and events. And I would go and meet them, sit and write with them. And I’d made great friends in the writing community there. In May when I went back, to do research for the next book, I did a writer’s retreat. I was a participant in it. It came up on my social media. I found that it was generative, which means you’re there to generate writing instead of having to critique everybody else’s. And that’s what I wanted. I just wanted to be around other writers but get my own stuff done, and I took extra days to go to the places that factor in the book. So I got my geographic research done. But just go. Just go places and then Google writers in this place. I mean, this summer I did a month-long sabbatical in Nova Scotia, and I met so many writers, I can’t even tell you. It was the best. It was awesome. 

Alessandra Torre: I’ve heard it is a writer’s haven. A lot of authors go there. Yeah, and then it’s gorgeous. I have a friend who’s there right now, and she said, you need to buy a house here. This is the perfect house for an author. She doesn’t write. But she said, I could just imagine you sitting here, right? 

Lynne Golodner: Yeah, it was great. I’m in that part of life now where I’m asking where can I go this year. What’s my next long trip? 

Alessandra Torre: Love that, I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. If they’re interested in your books or your courses or your community, where can they find out more? 

Lynne Golodner: So LynneGolodner.com is where you can find all the things. And my books are available everywhere books are sold. So, in the US, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells, whatever you can where you order your books from. But overseas too. I have lots of friends all over the world, and they’re finding the books in their local stores, so that’s great. 

Alessandra Torre: And your new book is called A Woman of Valor. Is that right? 

Alessandra Torre: And if they wanted to read something on the creative nonfiction side, what’s a book you’d recommend? 

Lynne Golodner: Oh, goodness. Well, I would say Mary Carr has a really good book, and I’m trying to think of the name of it. I think it’s called. 

Alessandra Torre: No! One of your books! 

Lynne Golodner: Oh, one of my books?! Oh my God. In terms of a book of mine to read, I would say, The Flavors of Faith, Holy Breads. It’s the most recent one, and it’s a great one. But also look for my essays, which you can find on my website and links to them. And I think in those creative journals, that’s a really good way to get your work out there. So it just sort of sparked some ideas for you too. 

Alessandra Torre: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to all the audience who are here today. And we’ll be back in another two weeks with another first draft Friday. So we’ll see you all then. Thanks, Lynne. 

Lynne Golodner: Thanks, Alessandra. 

Alessandra Torre

I’m a New York Times bestselling fiction author and the CEO of Authors A.I. and BingeBooks.

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Creative Writing

Creative nonfiction.

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Within the world of creative writing, the term creative nonfiction encompasses texts about factual events that are not solely for scholarly purposes. Creative nonfiction may include memoir, personal essays, feature-length articles in magazines, and narratives in literary journals. This genre of writing incorporates techniques from fiction and poetry in order to create accounts that read more like story than a piece of journalism or a report. The audience for creative nonfiction is typically broader than the audiences for scholarly writing.

The term creative nonfiction is credited to Lee Gutkind, who defines this genre as “true stories well told.” However, the concept of literary nonfiction has its roots in ancient poetry, historical accounts, and religious texts. Throughout history, people have tried to keep a record of the human experience and have done so through the vehicle of story since the invention of language. For more about the origins of the term creative nonfiction, see the article What is Creative Nonfiction ?

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Creative Non-Fiction: What is it?

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1. An Introduction to Creative Writing 2. How to Get Started in Creative Writing in Just Three Step s 3. Creative Writing vs. Technical Writing 4. Fiction Writing 101: The Elements of Stories 5. Poetry Writing: Forms and Terms Galore

Hence we advance to creative nonfiction. What is it? It’s just writing which is true, but which also contains some creativity. Creative nonfiction differs from other nonfiction because a certain amount of creativity is needed to write in it, as for example a biography. It uses literary styles and techniques to create factually correct narratives, says Wikipedia.

Let’s suppose you’ve got knowledge on a famous personality (it needn’t necessarily be famous, just for saying). But to cover a whole life in a single book is a pretty hard task. The purpose isn’t just to give information. It’s to show things, it’s to entertain and intrigue the reader, or show them accounts of the subject in a compelling and creative manner. That, in a nutshell, is the meaning of creative nonfiction.

There is high demand for biographies and autobiographies. But what else constitutes creative nonfiction? There are memoirs, published by famous business people. Some of them sell for over a million. Then there are essays. There can be short essays and there can be long essays. There are food and travel books. There is literary journalism. We’ll look at them in a while. First, let’s take a look at the autobiography…

An Autobiography is…

An autobiography is the book about the whole life of a person, written by the person itself. Hence the “auto” in autobiography. An autobiography is pretty much essential in some political fields. It is now expected for celebrities to produce autobiographies. Some people hire a ghostwriter to write their autobiography.

It is almost needless to say that in autobiographies people tend to portray themselves in a more positive light. In the same case, when people write unauthorized biographies, it becomes the opposite and all the negative qualities are brought to the light. The autobiographies and biographies of personalities, heroes, etc are nowadays sold like hot cakes (although perhaps not in our bookstore — excuse the cliché).

The History of Autobiographies

If I were to write the entire history of autobiographies, I would be merely repeating information that can be easily found on Wikipedia, and boring you all. If you do have an interest in how autobiographies came to be, click here for appropriate information.

The Difference Between Autobiographies and Other Similar Forms of Creative Nonfiction

An autobiography differs from a biography in the significant fact that it is written by the person of whom it is based on. The biography is written by a different person. Then there is the memoir. Memoirs, although written by the person of whom it is based on, does not cover the whole life of the period. They cover only a select time period or single experience.

The Types of Autobiographies

1. Diaries 2. Fictional (consider it as first person novel) 3. Sensationalist (mostly written by ghost writers) 4. Memoirs may be considered as autobiographies; but not all autobiographies are memoirs.

A Biography is…

Consider it same as an autobiography but in some ways vastly different (yeah I know, doesn’t make sense). A biography is a description or account of someone’s life and the times, usually published in a book or essay form, sometimes as a documentary using the new media (usually TV).

How to tell if a work is biographical or not? There’s one simple question to ask. It is: Does it cover all of a person’s life? If yes, then it is a biography. If not, then it does not deserve that title.

The Two Types of Biographies

There are authorized biographies and unauthorized biographies. You may have never heard the term before. That’s okay; even I didn’t know of it until a week ago. Authorized biographies tend to portray the positive sides of a person in their work (that makes human nature sense). Whereas unauthorized biographies tend to do the opposite. To be honest, I’ve never read a biography and wouldn’t really want to read an unauthorized one. It can be viewed as an intrusion of privacy in the subject’s life, or so some people say. Click here to know more about biographies .

A Memoir is…

I just saw the Wikipedia entry on memoir. Sounds interesting. I may try to write one when I grow up; my experiences have been pretty interesting…

Jokes aside, here is the Wikipedia definition (modified a bit):

As a literary genre, a memoir (from the French: mémoire from the Latin memoria, meaning “memory”, or a reminiscence), forms a subclass of autobiography – although the terms ‘memoir’ and ‘autobiography’ are almost interchangeable in modern parlance. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir. It only covers a select period of the subject’s life or a single experience. The author of a memoir may be referred to as a memoirist

. Have you ever tried writing a memoir? I used to think that they could only be written by politicians, famous personalities to write about their career, businessmen, military men and generally those that are, well, known. What an understatement. The vast of us don’t get the title famous. But recently…

Recently I discovered that absolutely anyone can write a memoir and if well written, can give pleasure to the reader because of its literary style. To be honest, I don’t really like the word ‘literary’, the words ‘stilted’ and ‘formal’ come to mind. But memoirs are bestsellers. In his memoir Palimpsest (heard of it? I definitely hadn’t), Gore Vidal defines a memoir as “how one remembers one’s own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked.”

Have Your Say

Yes, there is no mention of essays and food and travel writing in this post because it’s already gigantic enough. Perhaps some of you could fill it in the comments section.

Sources : Writing Forward’s Creative Nonfiction Category Wikipedia – Autobiography

This post is the sixth instalment in the Creative Writing 101 series.

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Further reading:.

• An Introduction to Creative Writing
• How to Write an Essay — Part I
• How to Get Started in Creative Writing in Just Three Steps
• An Introduction to Academic Writing
• POV: What it is and how it matters

20 thoughts on “Creative Non-Fiction: What is it?”

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I think im gunna subscribe. Impress me with great content in the future please.

*laughs* Well thanks for subscribing, and I’ll do my best to impress you with great content!

Don’t forget to check out the archives , there are some real gems there which should be enough to make you wildly impressed. 😉

Delightful AND informative!

Wow, thanks!

Wow! You totally got me hooked on your blog. I’m a bit surprised that your just 15 year old. I thought I was reading an old English professor’s blog. 🙂 Anyway, I really enjoy reading every bit of information here. Keep it up! 🙂

That’s such a nice comment! I’m now 16 years old, actually. Glad to hear that you liked the blog. Stay tuned for more great content.

Best regards Idrees

Wow… I have been reading through this for the past hour and then suddenly realised your age. I think you might be going places, keep up the good work!

Kind Regards

Glad to hear that, thanks! By the way, you say “I have been reading through this for the past hour”… do you mean one particular article or the whole website?

Just wondering if you know the difference between biographical fiction/novels and creative nonfiction?

Biographical fiction, to the best of my knowledge, is a part of creative nonfiction (as mentioned in the article). Creative nonfiction also includes memoirs, food writing, travel writing, etc.

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Wow….the best blog for creative writing!

I have a question if you kindly answer it: what is the difference between creative writing and descriptive writing?

Creative writing doesn’t really have any definition as such. You can refer to Creative Writing 101 for more details. As far as descriptive writing is concerned, its primary purpose is to describe a person, place or thing in such a way that a picture is formed in the reader’s mind.

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I had researching my passion for more than a year . I find out that I enjoy writing. And its been more than a week that I am reading stuff on wrting. Finding the way out to master my writing before i begin with . I come across your article. I had read most of your article. And just in the mid of reading your article I just thought of writing something, just to begin my writing. And I see that when I start writing , I did not know when did I finish writing 9 complete page. The story just keep on popping up one after another. I connect all the story. The plot, the subplot, the sets, the theme and so on. I use to write and tell story of my own imagination back than when I was in high school. I think I had found one more passion. Thank you buddy. Your article just boost me to do something new which ws my passion which i had not known for so long. Thank you once again. Keep the good work up.

best regards Krishna chhetry.

You write with clarity,simplicity and social intelligence not forgetting passion. Your responses are formal and very inoffensive. Keep the good work.

BRAVO!! Thank you!!!

Beautiful piece of article, so glad I found your website when I googled for Creative Writing. Will definitely be subscribing! Keep it up!

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Four top-notch ways to polish your writing skills with creative writing four top-notch ways to polish your writing skills with creative writing.

This is a guest post by Lucia Smith. If you want to write for Writers’ Treasure, contact me and send your ideas.

Don’t you love to read fictions and short stories? Don’t you get excited to read novels and epics? Of course you do so, but however, if you are asked to write any of these, will you be able to do so?

Probably, you would prefer to step back. So, why don’t you try creative writing and polish your creative skills? Sometimes, you just enjoy the dialogues of your favourite films. Do you know the source of these dialogues?

They are all written by professional scriptwriters who have acquired mastery in creative writing. So, if you know the little secrets of creative writing, you can emerge to be a primary figure in the world of media and entertainment.

But what are the little secrets? (more…)

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10 tips to help beginner writers get started in writing a book 10 tips to help beginner writers get started in writing a book

This is a guest article by Rachel Summers. If you are interested in submitting a guest article of your own, be sure to read the  guest article guidelines .

It’s said that everyone has at least one book in them. If you think you’re ready to get started on writing yours, that’s great. If the process of writing is putting you off though, don’t worry. These 10 tips will help you get started and help you achieve your writing goals.

• Read, read, read

The first thing you must do is read as though your life depended on it . Read in your genre, outside your genre, and everywhere in between. The more you read, the more you inform your own writing. Read other writers and see what they have to say. Blogs like Writing Populist can help you out a lot.

• Write for yourself

When you first start out, don’t worry about what other people want from you. For now, just write what you want to write. Get the words down on paper first, and you can polish it up once you’re done. Just concentrate on the story you want to tell.

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Pen and Paper vs. Computer – Which Do You Use? Pen and Paper vs. Computer – Which Do You Use?

There was a time when every notebook I used to buy I filled it up with words. Nothing but words. There were stories , information about sports I was interested in (at the time) and a whole lot of other idiotic stuff. Whole pages and pages were drowned in words, and I used to love my notebooks.

A year or two later however, we got a new computer. I improved my typing skills (and learned touch typing). I also learned to use programs like Microsoft Word for writing. Henceforth I was using this almost exclusively for my writing. My notebooks, which were once so full that there wasn’t even space to copy down a phone number, now were empty. What happened?

The thing that happened was that I had changed my writing medium from pen and paper to the computer .

But of them is better for your writing? Which is better – pen and paper or the computer keyboard ?

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10 Types of Creative Nonfiction Books and Genres and How to Write It

• June 15, 2024
• Script Writing

Table of Contents Hide

What is creative nonfiction, 1. scene setting, 2. character development, 3. narrative, 4. subjectivity, #2. personal essay, #3. travel writing, #4. literary journalism, #5. features, #6. cultural criticism, #7. ekphrastic essays, #8. lyric essay, #9. hermit crabs & other borrowed forms, #10. flash nonfiction, how to write creative nonfiction: the 5 r’s, recommendation.

People always thought creative writing was all about fiction. Take a wild guess, what can be creative about nonfiction? It is already nonfiction and factual, so, no form of creativity is entertained, right?

You are absolutely wrong!

Creativity goes into fiction as much as it does in nonfiction.

In fact, I can argue that the creativity involved in nonfiction may be similar when juxtaposed. Well, that’s not the basis of this writing.

Moving forward, learn all about creative nonfiction, including its types, elements, and how to write it.

Creative nonfiction (CNF) is a way of telling stories that uses literary elements like poetry and fiction to tell real stories in a new way.

Creative nonfiction writers don’t just tell funny stories; they use craft and technique to pull the reader into their own lives. Poetic and fictional elements, like conceit and juxtaposition, as well as story arcs and character growth, work together to make a story that makes sense.

See also: How Many Word Count Are in a Novel? Word Count by Genre

4 Elements of Creative nonfiction

The main difference between creative nonfiction and regular nonfiction is the use of literary tools and methods. Creative nonfiction should have people and events that are based on real events, but it should also be written in a way that draws the reader in on purpose.

The following are elements of creative nonfiction:

To completely immerse readers in a scene, writers focus on certain features of a time and place. Metaphor, simile, and imagery are examples of literary elements that might help with this.

Genuine people, like real people, have goals, backgrounds, and distinguishing features. Dialogue, vivid characterization, and flashbacks are all common literary themes used in creative nonfiction.

As with books, creative nonfiction works have a beginning, middle, climax, and end. The narrative of the story is the order in which these events occur. Using different narrative models, the author can guide the reader’s attention and set the pace of the story.

In traditional nonfiction, the author keeps personal opinion a bay from the topic. Creative nonfiction, on the other hand, can infuse the writer’s point of view, feelings, and insights into the story. This is especially true for personal essays, which are usually written in the first person.

Creative nonfiction uses fiction’s chapters, acts, nonlinear timelines, and pacing as structural components. Writers of creative nonfiction blend events into narratives that flow naturally and keep readers’ attention from start to finish. However, the facts remain the most important element.

10 Types of Nonfiction Books and Genres

What are the types of nonfiction? Let’s examine common forms of the genre in detail.

Memoirs, one of the most popular types of creative nonfiction, describe the author’s personal experiences. Unlike autobiographies, memoirs do not need to be encyclopedic. Memoirs are one of the most straightforward types of creative nonfiction to write!

Memoirs, which narrate the author’s personal life, are one of the most popular types of creative nonfiction.

Memoirs are narrative works that frequently connect the author’s personal experiences to universal human concerns such as family, youth, and sadness.

Check out Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, which explains the year she spent training a northern goshawk after her father died, to see what this means in practice.

But memoirs can be longer than articles. Memoir works are regularly grouped into essay collections and are a great starting point for a book project!

A personal essay, like a memoir, is based on the author’s own life and viewpoint and often provides the reader with a close-knit experience. However, personal essays are less narrative in form. Rather, the activity is usually inward-focused and mentally motivated.

Because of this, difficult-to-answer problems are commonly addressed in personal essays. The reader feels joy in watching the author attempt to handle difficult themes in a thought-provoking way. This is entirely in line with the meaning of “essay,” which is “to try.”

Personal essays are less narrative-focused. Rather, it is usually inward-focused and mentally motivated.

Memoirs hint at larger human themes, but personal essays create a direct link between societal narratives and the individual’s experience. In fact, personal experience is used as the stories and evidence. Personal essays use braiding, which is a structure that makes alternating from personal stories to a larger story possible when illustrating the connection between the person and society.

Nonfiction travel writing can take many different forms, including travel guides, blogs, journalism, and memoirs. Whatever the style, great travel writing allows readers to picture and interact with an unfamiliar environment.

Thus, travel writers employ sensory-engaging prose that transports you to a place you would not otherwise visit.

A well-written travel essay helps readers visualize and experience a strange place.

There are times when the writer’s mental trip takes precedence over the thrill of travel.

Literary journalism, sometimes known as “immersion journalism,” “narrative journalism,” or “new journalism,” is a type of nonfiction writing that combines reporting with creative writing methods and approaches, such as character development.

Literary journalists frequently write in the first or third-person limited viewpoint. Instead of simply delivering information, such works seek to spark a deeper conversation among their readers.

Literary journalism is a subgenre of nonfiction writing that blends reporting with creative writing methods and approaches, such as character development.

A feature is a longer style of journalism than a news story, with the main goal of informing the reader about recent developments in the story’s facts. Features can provide a different perspective on a current subject or more in-depth coverage. Most importantly, features do not need to cover breaking news. This style of writing is more interesting and usually incorporates different perspectives. The writer has more room to play with style and structure.

Literary writing does not always take the form of a feature, though it can. Feature pieces can take several forms, including news features, trend reports, profiles, immersive features, and “creative” features based on the author’s personal experiences. As a result, features appear in many media outlets, including literary journals and newspapers.

See also: Point of View vs Perspective: Differences and Examples for Writers

This type of nonfiction investigates and offers criticism on a cultural element or artifact.

Cultural criticism generally examines little things to draw connections between them and larger cultural contexts. This is not to say that writing about culture must be abstract or broad. In fact, many cultural critics use their personal experiences as a starting point for more in-depth cultural debate.

The Greek word for “description,” ekphrasis, is commonly used to describe poetry written about a work of visual art. However, in modern literature, ekphrasis can be used in nearly any type of writing, including poetry and prose.

Ekphrasis is the use of poetry or prose to explain another work of art .

There are many ways to write an ekphrastic essay. These could be analytical articles on art, memoirs on your experiences, or the more creative method of speculating about the components of an artwork.

The nonfiction prose used in the lyric essay is more poetic and concise.

The lyric essay is a relatively new genre that uses more poetic and condensed nonfiction writing. As a result, it is commonly referred to as a poetry-nonfiction hybrid. Although the definition of a lyric essay remains unclear, the following characteristics apply to this genre:

A focus on language and figurative means rather than argument.

a focus on experience and research rather than reporting. Even though lyric essays usually incorporate extensive research, they do so in a suggestive manner, leaving gaps for the reader to draw their own conclusions.

A tendency to meditate. Even though lyric essays frequently use study and direct experience, their emphasis is on contemplative writing skills rather than producing a coherent tale or storyline.

Examples of lyric essays include Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Amy Leach’s Things That Are, and Kathryn Nuernberger’s The Witch of Eye.

The hermit crab, introduced in 2003 by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola in their book Tell it Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, adds a wonderful variety to the nonfiction prose styles used in current creative nonfiction.

Coined in 2003 by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola in their book Tell it Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, the hermit crab adds a delightful variety to the types of nonfiction prose in contemporary creative nonfiction. The essay The Hermit Crab repurposes everyday forms—things we don’t usually conceive of as “literary”—as formats for creative nonfiction. A hermit crab, for example, may use the structure of a crossword puzzle, recipe, FAQ, or how-to manual.

Such texts generally discuss delicate or prickly issues (thus the allusion to the soft-bodied hermit crab that hunts for shells to live in).

See also: What Is a Narrative Arc (or Story Arc)? All You Need to Know

Flash nonfiction essays run from a few hundred to two thousand words in length, however most publications only allow one thousand words. Precision and compression are stressed in flash nonfiction. It pushes the limits of how much you can hint at or how much plot you can tell in a few hundred words..

Lee Gutkind created a structure called the “5 R’s” of CNF writing. The five Rs work together to provide a solid foundation for all creative writing tasks. They are as follows:.

Write about real life: In creative nonfiction, write about actual people, real places, and genuine events that have happened or are now occurring.

Conduct extensive research: Learn everything you can about the problem in order to improve and broaden your ability to express it effectively.

(W)rite a narrative: Use storytelling strategies drawn from fiction, such as Freytag’s Pyramid, to structure the narrative of your CNF piece as a literary tale rather than a straightforward recount.

Include personal reflection: Give the narrative you’re reciting your own voice and view.

Learn by reading: Reading excellent creative nonfiction is the best way to improve your own writing style. Consume as much CNF as possible, paying close attention to how the author’s choices impact you as a reader.

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• Writers.com – types and elements of creative nonfiction
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Creative Nonfiction and Literary Journalism: What’s the Difference?

Mar 21, 2017 by Kayla Dean published in Writing

When I was in high school, my AP English teacher had our class read essays from names like Annie Dillard, David Foster Wallace, and Virginia Woolf. Back then, I didn’t know who any of these people were. I fell in love with “Death of a Moth” when I had to write a one-page analysis of it back in the day, but it wasn’t until my last year of college that I really understood what these authors were doing: writing creative nonfiction.

Yes, I know. You’ve heard the term already. Everyone on the blogosphere seems to have something to say about it. All the articles you click on now almost always have a storied way of telling you basic information. Writing advice blogs mention the word here or there. And have you seen that Creative Nonfiction magazine at Barnes & Noble (i.e., one of THE DREAM magazines for our genre)?

This is the beginning of another endeavor: I’m going to explain creative nonfiction, its genres, and how you can write your own creative nonfiction essays in this new column.

Don’t try to tell me that you aren’t interesting enough. That you haven’t been to Venice yet, and you don’t think that at twenty-something years old you could possibly have enough life experience to write anything interesting. You don’t feel like enough of a person yet. I am all of the above. Your experiences are enough to figure out this whole writing-about-real-experiences thing. First stop? Let’s break down the difference between creative nonfiction and literary journalism.

What Creative Nonfiction Actually Means

Creative nonfiction was coined by Lee Gutkind in the ‘90s. Simply stated, it’s “true stories, well told.” At least, that’s the slogan for his magazine. Gutkind has written several books on the genre, like this one , which is incredibly helpful for getting started in the genre. But if you’re looking for a more precise definition, creative nonfiction is essentially a narrative that deals in factual events. Meaning that whatever you write about, whether in essays or long-form, must be based in reality.

But there’s also something unique about this genre: it’s extremely important that you tell a narrative that has a literary language about it. In other words, you want your prose to be compulsively readable because it’s real life told in a human voice that strays away from the technical or academic.

Some consider creative nonfiction to be an umbrella term for a genre that includes things like personal essays, memoir, travel writing, and literary journalism. You probably know what the first three are, but why is the last one different from creative nonfiction?

How Literary Journalism Fits In

Some people say there isn’t a difference. But here’s my take: literary journalism is often rooted in heavy research. For example, a biologist could write about the problems they see in an endangered population of turtles in the Pacific. A journalist could write about their experiences reporting in the Middle East, exposing a problem they encountered while in the field. Both of these are real examples. But they aren’t necessarily based on the storyteller’s life so much as the facts that they uncover on their journey. A writer can use figurative language to weave a narrative, but they can’t just engage in solipsism for 300 pages.

Not that creative nonfiction allows this. However, there’s a bit more freedom in the way that a writer can arrange facts. Some writers have even gotten in trouble when readers discovered they hadn’t told the story exactly as it had happened. You don’t want to stir up controversy, but there is a freedom in how you collapse or expand events. You can even re-order them to fit a narrative arc.

How to Pick the Right Non-Fiction Genres

Some writers object to writing this way. You may even find that there are two different camps of writers who completely disagree with one another’s prose. This may seem divisive. But there may be another option.

Literary nonfiction is another term I’ve seen thrown around, but not as often as the first two. It usually operates as a blanket term for both creative nonfiction and literary journalism. This one combines the essence of both into a style that works in many contexts. For a literary nonfiction piece, you’d do a bit more research than for a piece that is creative nonfiction. The latter form does allow you to simply write about your life. You may fact check dates or places, but many writers of creative nonfiction write things as they remember them. Implicit in some writing is even a type of subjectivity because the experiences are so personal that they’re more difficult to really verify.

Maybe this feels a little confusing. But if you’re looking to write about your own life, you’ll likely fall in the creative nonfiction camp. If you want some great essays to read on just about anything, check out online publications like Ecotone, Longreads, Literary Hub, or The Millions. These are great places to start if you want to read some creative nonfiction ASAP. And, if you’re a personal essay person, check out these tips from The New York Times on writing great creative nonfiction.

Those essays you read in high school English class can be a great start for your first foray into creative nonfiction, but they’re just the beginning. The realm of nonfiction may feel intimidating, especially if you’re not sure you have a shocking tale to put into a memoir just yet. That’s the great thing about creative nonfiction: you really can write about just about anything. The best part? No sensationalism required.

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What makes Creative Writing different from other forms of writing?

Interested in writing but don’t know where to begin?

Anyone can be a Creative writer!

Sure, Creative Writing is a skill, and you have to practice it to get better at it. But for that, you first need to understand what Creative Writing is. The goal of a creative writer should be to leave the audience with the pleasure of an emotional experience. As well as search for meaning and depth to invoke emotions.

The majority of the writers are creative. You can pretend anything and can help the potential readers believe the same. If you have a story to share, which you do, share it. It may be as simple as sitting down with a blank paper and letting all your thoughts flow.

What is Creative Writing?

Creative writing is the ability to create where your imagination, creativity, and innovation are at the forefront. It tells a story through strong written visuals and creates an emotional impact. It makes you step out of reality and into a new realm of your imagination.

Creative writing uses senses and emotions to capture the reader’s mind, unlike other forms of writing, which has facts and information. Some examples of Creative Writing involve writing short stories, novels, poems, plays, blogs, non-fiction narratives, etc.

Creative writing doesn’t begin with the intellect. Rather it begins in the senses, where it creates images, stories, and feelings. And this kind of writing conveys and stirs emotions to arouse feelings in people.

Let us find out what Creative writing is and how it stands out from the others:

Creative writing and what makes it different from other forms of writing

Is Creative Writing different from other forms of writing?

Creative writing is art in its pure form. A major difference between Creative Writing and other kinds of writing is the use of language. It uses color, depth and is suggestive. It leaves the reader with factual information and language like other writing. But, at the same time is not just stating facts or information.

Creative writing involves a lot of creativity, much more than non-creative ones. Because it conveys information more powerfully. The intent of creative writing is not to inform the readers but to stir emotions.

Creative writing has a plot, a unique plot of some sort. In comparison, there could be or not be one for other forms of writing. Yes, remakes are considered creative writing, but they have their unique idea behind them.

Creative writing should have character when writing, unlike journalism, where you state plain facts on paper.

Creative writing always has an underlying message, even if the author did not intend for it. Other forms may not leave you with a theme or message.

Visual descriptions are part of creative writing. It keeps the audience connected with visuals and pictures in newspapers and magazines. Creative writing allows people to imagine themselves in the character’s shoes.

Creative writing has a dialogue to support the story. In contrast, non-creative writing can have dialogue like in interviews. But it is not used in the same way as the other.

All forms of writing need an audience, especially creative writing. Doesn’t matter what kind of audience, even if that audience is you!

Final thoughts:

If you want to write, don’t wait for the right mood to strike you.

At some point in our education, you will likely be faced with writing creative stuff. But, many people overlook that being a writer isn’t about how much you write. It is about challenging yourself as a writer and letting your thoughts flow. A good writer can turn any piece of writing into Creative Writing. Your writing should have an element of discovery and personal involvement in getting to the result.

Yet, if you relate to it, it is easy and enjoyable. It is not always easy, though. You suck when you start but keep getting better at it. Do you want to blog, write a page on social media or Twitter? Whatever that you want to do, start little by little, and you will get better.

Get Creative and start writing!

Afterall, there is an inner genius waiting to unleash!

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Nonfiction vs. Creative Nonfiction vs. Historical Fiction

Posted August 25, 2010

Thank you for visiting my blog. Please note that this post was published in 2010 —long before my first published book, and long before I pursued an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I dedicated half of my critical thesis to the murky nonfiction-fiction threshold and how the classification process adds to the ambiguity. As I revisit the post now, in 2020, it is like peeking at my early evolutions as a nonfiction writer. My terminology and sensibilities are slightly different today. For example, I’m no longer a fan of the term “creative nonfiction.” And “pure nonfiction” is not a helpful term. In the post, I also refer to library shelving decisions, which are individualized by each institution. Stay tuned for an updated post about this topic and an even longer journal article inspired by my critical thesis. Thank you!

Creative Nonfiction is such a nebulous term. A genre still in its youth, we often hear it referred to as literature of fact, narrative nonfiction, or literary nonfiction. So what does it mean? What determines if a story is pure nonfiction or creative nonfiction? And when is the line crossed, making a book historical fiction? Ultimately, the answers determine where a book will be shelved in the local library.

Editor/ author Lee Gutkind describes Creative nonfiction as “dramatic, true stories that use scene, dialogue and close, detailed descriptions–techniques usually employed by poets and fiction writers–to examine and explore a variety of subjects…”

Let’s see if I can break it down even more.

Pure nonfiction informs and instructs, sticking to the facts Creative nonfiction includes a/the story surrounding the facts by introducing place, scene, setting

Pure nonfiction describes the subject(s) Creative nonfiction adds characterization so that the reader becomes involved and can relate to the subject.

Pure nonfiction is journalistic and scholarly Creative nonfiction employs a literary voice-a tone- to the story

Pure nonfiction focuses on fact. Creative nonfiction allows the reader to hear the author’s perspectives

Pure nonfiction is thoroughly researched Creative nonfiction is thoroughly researched

Pure nonfiction never invents dialog, facts, or events Creative nonfiction shouldn’t either- theoretically

As Susan Taylor Brown states, “If you want to teach young read­ers about the Irish potato famine, the rain forest, or even math, tell them a story. Tell an interesting tale about interesting people doing interesting things and readers come back for more, sometimes not even realiz­ing they are reading about something that really happened. This is creative nonfiction.”

Okay, so let’s turn back to the subject of nonfiction picture books, keeping in mind that the term “nonfiction” is generalized in children’s literature. That is, until an author like myself decides to pick it all apart and point out inconsistencies most visible when perusing library shelves.

Once again, I’ve chosen a select few picture books that I have on hand. Let me preface this by stating that all of these books are admirable and worthy and so are the various genres. Honestly, I’m all for presenting true stories to kids in whatever way works best to entertain the young readers, as long as we don’t deceive them.

Today, I’m focused on the intricacies of classification and distinction.

FACE TO FACE WITH MANATEES by Brian Skerry, (National Geographic, 2010) Marketed and shelved as nonfiction. “You’ll learn all about these sea cows- and about the threats to their world and what you can do to protect it.”

STRONG MAN: THE STORY OF CHARLES ATLAS by Meghan McCarthy (Knopf, 2007) Marketed and shelved as nonfiction The true story of how small Italian immigrant, Angelo Siciliano, overcame bullies’ taunts to become a famous bodybuilder and promoter of fitness and exercise. Like Old Abe, this story is “showing” through narrative. Angelo was frustrated. He needed to think, so he went to his favorite thinking place- the zoo. There, he spent hours watching the animals. That’s when he noticed a lion stretching.” “Eureka! Angelo came up with a fitness routine.”

*There are a few lines of dialog that are not clearly attributed to Atlas’ documented words. If they are indeed invented dialog, can this title truly be classified as nonfiction? Hmm!  (EDITED in 2018: According to the Library of Congress, invented dialog is acceptable under the “juvenile literature,” (aka nonfiction) classification. Publishers, on the other hand, often have different opinions.

“Here’s the story “from soup to nuts”-delightfully embellished by Deborah Hopkinson- of how Fannie Farmer invented the modern recipe and created one of the first and best-loved American cookbooks.”

Ultimately, I think there’s a place for fictionalized stories about true events. As long as we’re honest with kids about what is fact and what is fiction. A few questions come to mind, as I pay closer attention to these kid-lit “true” stories:

1.) Will kids assume fictionalized details are true if a book, with invented dialog and events, is classified or shelved as nonfiction? Should there be better disclaimers in fictionalized accounts, about which aspects are fictional?

2.) How do libraries make shelving decisions between fiction and nonfiction? (I think it’s time to invite some librarians to this discussion.)

3.) On the author front, which is more marketable today, creative nonfiction or historical fiction?

4.) Do apprentice authors worry too much about fitting into one or the other?

Want to read more about the Creative Nonfiction genre? Check out some of these great Resources.

http://www.susantaylorbrown.com/creativenf.html http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6494166.html http://inkrethink.blogspot.com/ http://www.institutechildrenslit.com/rx/wt06/creativenonfiction.shtml http://www.darcypattison.com/picture-books/how-to-write-a-creative-non-fiction-picture-book/ http://www.creativenonfiction.org/thejournal/whatiscnf.htm http://www.edwardhumes.com/articles/narrative.shtml http://advicefromacaterpillar.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/would-a-nonfiction-picture-book-be-considered-creative-nonfiction-or-historical-nonfiction/

8 Responses to “Nonfiction vs. Creative Nonfiction vs. Historical Fiction”

You've separated the differences and similarities in the sub-genres of nonfiction with superb clarity. Great post! I look forward to hearing a librarian weigh in!

would you please tell me what is the genre of "Drumbeats and Bullets" by Jim Murphy?? is it a nonfiction or creative nonfiction??? thanks

would you please tell me what is the genre of "Drumbeats and Bullets" by Jim Murphy? is a nonfiction or creative nonfiction?? thanks

Thanks for chiming in, Somebody. I have not read Drumbeats and Bullets so I'm afraid I can't answer your question. Is this a book? Or, perhaps, a short story, essay, or article? I can assure you that Jim Murphy is an acclaimed nonfiction author and a master at connecting facts in a narrative form.

If Drumbeats and Bullets relates to the Civil War drummers, you might want to check out Murphy's book, THE BOY'S WAR: CONFEDERATE AND UNION SOLDIERS TALK ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR. Diaries and letters from Civil War soldiers form the foundation for this nonfiction book. I wonder if those same primary sources are the foundation for Drumbeats and Bullets.

Best of luck to you.

Hi.. Sorry still a bit confused. For example, for a book I am considering there are well documented events of the Second Great Awakening (NY State – 19th Century). My sources are many nonfiction books in addition to documented diaries. References for many of these facts are well documented and first hand. However, in the writing of a novel, at some point isn't it only pure creative speculation when a writer makes assumptions and builds dialogue about the characters thoughts, feelings and emotions. So the characters are made-up, the circumstances created, even though the general events surrounding your story is true. Can this be called creative non-fiction? It seems that unless everything is actually documented and then retold, all creative nonfiction can be argued to be historical fiction. Thanks

I am still not clear as to the difference between creative/narrative nonfiction and historical fiction. It appears that creative/narrative nonfiction sticks to the facts, but has a literary feel and structure. Whereas, historical fiction is based on an historic event, but may have many fictionalized elements. Is that correct?

Thanks for commenting, mscooper. I know this is a tricky area. To my mind, it breaks down like this:

Straight nonfiction is expository, even textbookish. Newspaper articles and most magazine articles and other texts that are recitations of facts are straight nonfiction. For example, I'm writing two nonfiction books for the educational market, about Native Americans.

Narrative nonfiction adds historically accurate connective tissues to turn nonfiction into a story, complete with a narrative arc. Nothing is fictionalized, but the author uses storyteller's tools. This is simply a stylistic choice by the author.

Historical fiction is fiction, but may feature a character, event, or setting from history to base the story around and in.

I hope that helps.

David, I'm sorry to have missed your comment earlier. For some reason, I've just discovered it. I think the big confusion is in the term "creative nonfiction" because there is no real definition for it. Many people think of narrative nonfiction as creative nonfiction. To me, narrative nonfiction is a style choice, whereby the author adds historically accurate connective tissues to morph nonfiction facts into a narrative arc. To do so, authors use a storyteller's toolbox. Though all details remain nonfiction, there is a bit of subjectivity on the part of the author who decides which angle or slant the narrative will take. But, that's a topic for another day.

What you've described is well-researched historical fiction. A fictionalized story inspired by actual events.

Does that help?

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