Creative Nonfiction: Overview

Nonfiction in the Philippines

The field of nonfiction is incredibly varied, and it is located in the pages of newspapers and
magazines
The essay in the Philippines enjoyed a kind of “golden age” before World War II (1939).

Nick Joaquin
Biography, history, profile, memoir even an almanac (a handbook, typically published
annually, containing information of general interest)
His production is so voluminous that the whole of it has yet to be properly compiled
Filipino writer and journalist best known for his short stories and novels in the English
language

Carmen Guerrero Nakpil

Most distinguished of the postwar essayists
She was a Filipino journalist, author, historian and public servant.

Most of the creative nonfiction being published today still consists of essays (many of them
published as newspaper columns) and magazine feature articles

The columns range from serious political commentary to historical trivia, from music reviews
to cooking tips, from practical lessons on how to succeed in the corporate world to highly
personal reflections on a midlife crisis, losing a parent or flunking an exam.

Is creative nonfiction a new genre?

 It used to be called personal journalism or literary journalism or new journalism.

 These days it is labeled “creative nonfiction.”
 According to Theodore A. Rees Cheney, “Creative nonfiction requires the skill of the
storyteller and the research ability of the reporter” (1991)
 It combines the authority of literature and the authority of fact.
 It elaborates on the facts, interprets them and more significantly, presents them in an
interesting and engaging way.
 The key word is “personal”
 It is more imaginative approach to reporting.
 Fact-based writing that remains compelling, undiminished by the passage of time, that
has at heart an interest in enduring human values: foremost a fidelity to accuracy, to
truthfulness (Forche and Gerar 2001, 1)

Creative Nonfiction

 Non-fiction prose which utilizes the techniques and strategies of fiction

 It demands spontaneity and an imaginative approach, while remaining true to the
validity and integrity of information it contains. (Gutkind, 1997)
 The goal of nonfiction is to teach and share knowledge

Why did creative nonfiction develop?

 It addresses a new kind of reading public in the west a reasonably well-educated public
 It addresses a public interested in nonfiction, not only because it is truer than fiction,
 but because it is often stranger than fiction
 Reality itself has become so extravagant and weird that conventional fiction cannot do
it justice

Is creative nonfiction now a distinct field of study?

According to Lee Gutkind (“the godfather of creative non fiction”), when he first proposed
teaching a “creative” nonfiction course in the English Department of the University of
Pittsburgh in the early '70s, he was nearly laughed out of the room. (2001, 171)

Is creative nonfiction now a distinct field of study?

In October 2000, the Texas A&M University hosted an interdisciplinary conference on
“Autobiography, the Scholar and the Essay,” to investigate such issues as: “How does a
'scholar' and critic write the autobiographical essay that explores his/her identity while being
more than 'merely' confessional?

Is creative nonfiction now a distinct field of study?

 University of the Philippines, the first institution in the country to offer degrees in
Creative Writing on both undergraduate and graduate levels
 They began by offering workshop courses on the essay
 It is now established creative nonfiction as an area of specialization for Creative Writing
majors

Nick Joaquin has commented on his new interest in his foreword to a collection of essays by
Marra Lanot, Deja Vu and Other Essays (1999):

A great change in reading tastes is happening in our times: he decline in popularity of fiction
and a growing preference for nonfiction. The switch is from the novel and the short story to
the magazine article and new column...

The essay that used to be the literary Cinderella is now a star, rated more even financially
that short story or poem ... The modern essay ranges from reportorial and intimately
personal. (vii)
Writing a creative nonfiction
One must not deliberately misquote his sources, misconstrue their statements or mislead
the readers.
Compelling stories about real life

Writing a creative nonfiction

 Use devices and strategies available to the fictionist.
 Sometimes this involves imagining scenes or even conversations that did not actually
happen. This is tricky ground, and the writer would be well advised to tread softly here.

In “Was the Hero of Tirad a Hatchetman?” Nick Joaquin writes of Gregorio del Pilar:

He was famous, powerful, popular, elegant and good looking. The stay abroad had polished
him. He was the Lord Byron of the Revolution and he dressed the part, with a glitter of boots
and uniforms, diamonds on his fingers, a white horse for mount. When the first Filipino
governor of Bulacan was installed, Del Pilar presided at the rites dressed in frac, formal togs
made by “one of the best tailors in Hong Kong.” (1977,191)

Types of Creative Nonfiction

Essay and article- “Article” usually refers to a “feature” in a magazine or newspaper or e-zine

Profile - is an in-depth article or essay that concentrates on one person or place

 The profile is a biography sketch, providing details of the person’s character, an
overview of the person’s life story, and highlights of the person’s achievements and
accomplishments.
 When the writer crafts a profile, the writer makes “some person” the focus of the story.
 The writer can profile a stranger or someone he/she knows well. The writer can also
profile someone ordinary, such as a teacher, or priest, or police officer, or someone
extraordinary, like Margaret Atwood, David Hockney, or Steve Jobs.

Personal Narratives or life stories

 autobiographical narratives (memoirs, travel narrative, journals, etc)
 biographical narratives
 A personal narrative essay is a story with a plot that includes a beginning, middle and
end.
 It also has a thesis statement explaining why this particular story is significant to you.
The narrative you choose for your essay should change the way you see yourself,
someone close to you, or the world around you in some big or small way.
 Everyone has a story to tell, and the goal is to make a connection with the reader
through shared experiences and common expectations.

Literary Journalism
 Literary journalism refers to the use of fictional techniques in writing a work of
nonfiction.
 The quality of the writing used to tell the story is just as important as telling the truth of
the story.
 It’s a true, well-researched, journalistically-sound story that might normally be written
in a dry newpaperly manner that has been instead written with style, vivid description,
and narrative flow that immerses the reader in the story.
 Other types of writing:
 magazine feature article
 newspaper column as cutltural commentary
 reviews
 interview story

Principles of Effective Writing

Unity
 Focus
 Paragraph should be united as a whole.
 It means that the sentences inside the paragraph should directly support the topic
sentence.
 The unity in the paragraph can be established when every sentences connect to the
main idea.
 Clear topic, sufficient materials or having an definite purpose
 In writing, some writers have no clear topic, have insufficient materials or have an
indefinite purpose which will result into a paragraph disunity.

Order
 coherence or logic
 every sentences in the paragraph sticks, together, linking together in a continues line of
thought that is establishing unity of idea.
 The topic sentence should be link by the support sentences.
 Paragraph coherence means that the main idea in the paragraph should be dominant.
The main idea should stand out against the supporting ideas.


There are some suggestions in order to establish coherence in the paragraph.

1. Formulate a clear topic sentence, the topic sentence should contain the idea of the main
paragraph.
2. Use question and answer pattern in formulating the topic sentence. The question and
answer pattern may be in the form of problem-solution or in general to particular to general
format.
3. Suggestion is by positioning the topic sentence in the paragraph.
Topic sentence might be place in the first sentence of the paragraph or it might be serve as a
transitional information before the paragraph. It is also possible to put the topic sentence in
the last sentence of the paragraph or the topic sentence is not explicitly stated but is being
implied.
4. Connect the sentences inside the paragraph using some ordering pattern such as the
question-answer pattern, the problem-solution pattern and the topic-restriction-illustration
pattern.
5. Use some devices to be able to established coherence in the paragraph.
These devices are may be in the form of logical order, parallelism, transitional expressions,
the use of pronouns, time or chronological order, repetition and statement and spatial
order.

Conciseness
 Economy
 Important when writing newspapers and magazines which usually have fairly rigid space
constraints
 excluding of unnecessary information
 Avoid wordiness

Cohesion
 Repeat words
 Transitional devices
 Smoothness
 cohesion of writing focuses on the “grammatical” aspects of writing
 link what’s familiar to the new information the writer has introduced

Remember: There is a difference between the two terms: cohesion is achieved when
sentences are connected at the sentence level, whereas as coherence is achieved when
ideas are connected.

Emphasis
 Force
 There are certain suggestions in achieving emphasis in the paragraph, these are the by;
establishing emphasis by position, establishing emphasis by repetition and establishing
emphasis by climactic order.
 In establishing emphasis by repetition, the idea is repeated in different words. This
strategy usually impresses the readers more forcefully with what the writer is trying to
say.
 The paragraph should be indeed with a relevant statement and not with minor detail.
To end the paragraph with a summary of recapitulation is also possible.
 In establishing emphasis by climactic order, it should be considered that the detail in
the paragraph must be arranged from simple or least important to the complex or the
most important detail of the idea.

These principles result in clarity, which means intelligibly and which should be the minimum
goal of all writers

Basic Modes of Writing

Description
the qualities or characteristics of something or someone
Used to describe or help form a visual picture – “Show not Tell”
Description
Uses sensory details to appeal to the senses
Spatial order (zoom out or zoom in)

Narration
 Narration has situations like actions, motivational events, and disputes or
 conflicts with their eventual solution
 Uses sensory details to help reader “experience” the event
 Chronological order (from beginning to end or end to beginning)
 Storytelling
 Tells a story as it happens
 Exposition
 Summarizing and explaining
 Informs, explains, or tells “how to”

Exposition
NO opinions – uses facts and examples
Logical order(most important to least, least important to most, detailed step-by-step
instructions)

Argumentation
persuasion through the use of logic
Persuades or convinces someone to believe what you believe
Argumentation
State your opinion and then support it with FACTS/DETAILS/EXAMPLES
Logical order (most important to least or least important to most)