A simple description of Creative NonFiction
Excerpt from the book, You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction from Memoir to Literary Journalism and Everything in Between. By Lee Gutkind.
In some ways, creative non-fiction is like jazz – it’s a rich mix of flavours, ideas and techniques, some of which are newly invented and others that are as old as writing itself. Creative Nonfiction can be an essay, a journal article, a research paper, a memoir, a poem, it can be personal or not, or it can be all of these. The goal is to make nonfiction stories read like fiction so that your readers are as enthralled by fact as they are by fantasy. But the stories are true…The word creative has been criticized in this context because some people have maintained that being creative means that you pretend or exaggerate or make up facts or embellish details. This is completely incorrect…
It is possible to be honest and straightforward and brilliant and creative at the same time…
Some people refer to creative nonfiction as the fourth genre – behind, drama, poetry and fiction. But creative nonfiction is also a second genre for some prestigious writers.
Famous Creative Non-Fiction Writers
Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Nelly Bly, George Orwell, James Baldwin, John Updike, Phillip Roth, Mary Karr, Daine Ackerman, and David Mamet.
Poetry and Creative Nonfiction
Poetry can be closer to nonfiction than you might imagine. Many poets contend that their poems are in essence, nonfiction – spiritual and literal truth – presented in free form and verse.
By Kimberley Pearson It is not every day that you take a roller coaster ride in a ball gown. By special arrangement, Sea World on the Gold Coast had been opened at night for my university’s Law Ball in 1995. The water shone in the moonlight, and the sound of light-hearted laughter and dance music filled …
By Kimberley Pearson In the darkness a celestial explosion occurred And God said, “Yehi ‘or” and light was. ***ACT 1: What is light? **Interlude: Time ** Different dimensions. One is heaven. One is earth. In heaven, the concept of time does not exist. Time is linear. But time itself does not exist. Days, nights, do …
By Kimberley Pearson If you look closely there is a tempest hidden beneath his eyes. I can read temperature from a distance. I can hear it in his tone or see it in his countenance. A cold front doesn’t always appear in the forecast. A hurricane can suddenly materialise on a whim. * From outside, …
Overhead the kalbun sings the song of the rainforest. Borrowing birdsong and melodies. Singing a song not its own, a mimic, an ever-changing soundtrack to the scenery below. * The mountain has three names. Dumburrin. Jambreen. Wongelpong. All are Tamborine. The mountain is viewed by some from the north, by some from the south and by …