The True Meaning of Creative Nonfiction

For those of you who do not know, literature is divided up into many different genres. Two popular genres which most of you are familiar with are fiction and nonfiction. Fiction is invented by the imagination which basically means that the narrator can make up fake characters along with a fake story. Novels and short stories are two great examples of fiction. Nonfiction is the narrative’s opinions or facts and reality. The events or characters do exist in nonfiction it is based on a true story. Some examples of nonfiction are newspaper articles, technical writing or journalism. To make non fiction a little more exciting and interesting another genre came into play that being creative nonfiction. It is a known fact that creative nonfiction was and still is the first largest literary magazine to publish high quality nonfiction memoir, literary journalism, and personal essays exclusively. Creative nonfiction had become very popular and still is as the days go on.

Creative nonfiction is also known as “literary journalism” or “new journalism”; it was not official until 1983. This genre really shows the whole picture of the subject which is great because it catches the reader’s full attention. In creative nonfiction the facts seem so real they come alive through the setting or well developed scenes. That is exactly what every author should focus most on; it keeps the reader on their toes and makes them want to keep reading on. Creative nonfiction also presents details which is very helpful to the reader. It makes it a lot easier for the reader to understand the main point which the narrator is trying to convey. It “shows rather than tells” real world facts and issues.

Now that I have a better understanding of what creative nonfiction really is I can relate this genre to previous books that I read. In All Around the Town by Herbert Asbury I realized that it conveyed creative non fiction, especially in “A Lady of Fashion”. The reader learns a lot about the attire in the 1900’s. Not only is the reader grasping all this information but they could even picture themselves sporting these fashions. The author explained in such great detail how the woman did there make up and it focused a lot on the styles of the dresses. It also discusses how expensive all of it was. Creative nonfiction is great because the reader is so interested but at the same time they are taking in so much information. It is as if the author is taking you back in time.

For the most part, even though many people have different ways of defining creative nonfiction it all comes down to the same meaning. It basically is a technique used to catch the reader’s attention but at the same time understand the information provided by having “the author in the work”. It gives the author’s personal opinion as well as giving facts of the outside world. For instance In Bruce Dobler’s Creative Nonfiction Compendium he describes it as “a branch of writing which employs literary techniques and artistic vision usually associated with fiction or poetry to report on actual persons and events.” According to Lee Gutkind, it is “writing which strives to communicate real-life stories dramatically.” As you can tell they both ended up with the same overall meaning just put in different words.