Hi all, I am taking a graduate-level creative writing class at the university where I work. I don’t write creative non-fiction, but I believe I can learn techniques that will be applicable to my fiction work. (This was the only class available this fall that I could take, so I went with it.)
What are your experiences with creative non-fiction?
I don’t know if this would be creative non-fiction or not. Would this be better to put under a new topic, or does it belong here? I’m fourteen chapters into a narrative about how our family navigated the world of parental dementia. It reads like fiction, but every word is true. I’ll have to change the names before even thinking of publishing it. It occurred to me that it would make a great novel, if only I knew how to write one. I’m a journalist.
My CoffeeHouse group has a creative non-fic writer who journals her sabbatical year(s) in Europe when she briefly considered taking vows as she traveled through northern Italy. From my understanding, anything can be literary non-fiction–as creative non-fiction was once called after we stopped calling it literary journalism–as long as it has an appreciable degree of “literary” devise, or some element of novel structure.
I’ve written a 2-book ‘duology’ based on a woman’s extraordinary life in the mid-nineteenth century. I obtained a lot of information from the newspapers of the time but I had to fill in the blanks from my imagination. Is that Creative Non-fiction or is that Fiction based on a True Story? I have not published it yet. (Pardon the capitalization!)
In the first class meeting last week, the instructor said that creative non-fiction sticks to the truth. If you filled in the blanks with fiction, I would say that’s a work of fiction based on a true story. But others may have different opinions. (I haven’t even written my first assignment for this class, and I’m already struggling with what to write. Making stuff up is so much easier!)
That’s definitely memoir. Why do you need to change the names?
To protect the innocent!
Sounds like Creative Non-Fiction to me. My experience with True Crime, the story is as factual as possible based on the resources the writer can muster. But, and this is where “good” true crime diverges from the not so good . . . where there are holes in the fact-sheets, or data is in limbo or not fully procured, the author finds other sources that fill-in the blanks with supposition current to the time. About ten years ago, I read about a surgeon who killed a number of people, including family members, but something that was always at odds in the investigation was the scientific - the forensic material - aspects they couldn’t jibe. Ultimately, he(the killer) was found to have been manipulating . . . blah, blah-blah, but the author had found retired detectives and other doctors who could offer an opinion. So, I don’t know if that answered anyone’s question, but I think as long as the writer isn’t contradicting the facts as they are known, they can offer insight and opinion as to what is/was possible.
Thanks, Gwenetteg, and Daniel_0227 for your differing views. I became interested in the story (yes, there is a murder) because there were psychological aspects to it, including mental illness, and I am a psychologist (maybe the equivalent of the retired detective and other doctors in your story, Daniel_0227) with clinical experience that includes working with severely ill hospitalised patients. However, when I had people speaking in dialogue, or, in the case of the woman in question, her thoughts, I treated those aspects as I would when writing a novel. Guidance came from both how people behave (psychology again) and what readers expect from a protagonist. (Plus a heavy dose of logic and plain old common sense.) I’d like to think this was creative non-fiction…
I’ve been noticing similar patterns between fiction and none fiction lately. I’m not really sure what makes the two different beside one being real and the other being fictional content.
A wonderful insight. When in dialog . . . the story can fit a little looser.
That is also definitely creative non-fiction.
I will be publishing a creative non-fiction work in December. Although I prefer the term narrative non-fiction. It is a true story about the experiences of a twenty-year old boy in Kansas as a prisoner of war in Nazi, Germany. It is a completely true story. Where it diverges from a biography is in the story-telling.
For example, there is no transcript of what was said in the Gestapo-run interrogation center. Only memories of what took place. So dialogue fills that gap in the story, and creates a more realistic setting. It helps move the writing from telling to showing.
To rephrase the disclaimer from movie credits about animals, “No truth was hurt or killed in the telling of this story”. The telling is simply enhanced, for a fuller more impactful truth.
Good luck with it, JohnHornbeck! Keep us (I mean me, of course!) informed. I haven’t published mine yet - it’s languishing on my hard drive after submitting it to a big publishing house which was not interested. Time to dust it off for a last (hopefully) re-write. BTW, where did you get your details? Mine came from a huge amount of research. I do love the old way trials were reported in the newspapers of the nineteenth century with verbatim questions and answers taking up column after newspaper column - even the questions about tiny details of ordinary life. A couple of pertinent questions could result in a whole scene for me.
As you know Tannis, books like these require an interesting balance between extensive research and strong story-telling. The research came from a wide range of sources. Everything from declassified mission reports to military training records, from prisoner mail and prison camp newsletters to personal interviews.
When you talk about small things leading to much more, you are completely correct. There were times that a note written in the margin of a book, or a scrap of paper with some notes on it, would lead to much more. That part of it was almost like being a detective – and I loved it.
However, the key was to make this more than a historical record. To make it a strong story, with a thread running through it that increases its importance beyond a detailed account of life as a POW. Hopefully, I’ve succeeded with that.