Differentiating the

Types of Creative
Nonfiction
ACTIVITY 1: JOHARI WINDOW

Use the four sides of the Johari window to

evaluate, how open you are to others. Are
you fond of expressing yourselves? Or you
are a person that is very secretive? Let us
find out as you do this activity. Write your
answer on your activity notebook.
Learning Competencies:
1. Compare and contrast the different forms and types
of creative nonfictional text. (HUMSS_CNF11/12-Iia-
16)

2. Deliver an artistic presentation on one of the types of

creative nonfiction text. (HUMSS_CNF11/12-Iib-c-
17)
ACTIVITY 1: WHO AM I?

Try to recall episodes from your childhood

and teenage life that are worth sharing and
which you may include in a possible
autobiography. Indicate dates, places, and
other details. The incomplete table below
serves as your example and guide.
 DATE PLACE EVENT
February 1990 Valencia City, Birth
Bukidnon
 LITERARY JOURNALISM

- a type of creative nonfiction that is closely

related to magazine and newspaper writing. It is
journalism but it deviates from the traditional
journalism because it has touch of literature. It is
journalism with a twist.
Before a writer can
compose an essay about
politics, human trafficking,
poverty, unemployment or
drugs, the writer needs
factual information to write.
These facts must be
verified first and reliable.
PLEASE REMEMBER!
• Before writing a literary journalism you need to
consider the following:

 Select a topic of your interest

 Conduct a research about your topic
 Write a dramatic story that will catch the reader’s
attention.
 Include a lead, facts/content, and dramatic ending.
BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE: IT SHOULD HAVE
THE FOLLOWING DETAILS
 Scene must takes place at a particular time.
 Place a scene happens in a specific place
 Details a scene always include important details. These
details are the sensory details which help the reader picture
out the event.
 Action it includes the information about the event.
 Dialogue it includes conversation, however, this may not
always the case but it is also considered one of the most
important aspect of journalism.
Editor, Mark Kramer echoes these
characteristics in his 
‘breakable rules’ for literary journalis
ts, which he penned for Harvard Univ
ersity. 
His rules are as follows.
Literary journalists immerse themselves in subjects’ worlds
and in background research.
Literary journalists work out implicit covenants about
accuracy and candor with readers and with sources.
Literary journalists write mostly about routine events.
Literary journalists write in “intimate voice,” informal, frank,
human and ironic.
Style counts, and tends to be plain and spare.
Literary journalists write from a disengaged and mobile
stance, from which they tell stories and also turn and
address readers directly.
Structure counts, mixing primary narrative with tales and
digressions to amplify and reframe events.
Literary journalists develop meaning by building upon the
readers’ sequential reactions.
It is only because of this that the starved countries of
Asia and Africa are accepted as tourist resorts. No
one would think of running cheap trips to the
Distressed Areas. But where the human beings have
brown skins their poverty is simply not noticed. What
does Morocco mean to a Frenchman? An orange-
grove or a job in Government service.
Orwell isn’t writing a reflective, personal essay about
his travels through Marrakech. Neither is he writing a
memoir about what it was like to be the son of a
colonial officer, nor how that experience shaped his
adult life. He writes in a descriptive way about the
Jewish quarters in Marrakech, about the invisibility of
the “natives,” and about the way citizenship doesn’t
ensure equality under a colonial regime.
 Elements of Literary Journalism

Immersion reporting, sophisticated structures,

character development, symbolism, voice, and an
emphasis on everyday people are all shared
elements of literary journalism and accuracy.
EXAMPLES
 Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, 2012
 The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, 2010
 Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, 2017
  Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, 2003
 The Passage of Power by Robert Caro, 2012
Background of
Literary
Journalism
This distinct version of journalism owes its beginnings
to the likes of Benjamin Franklin, William Hazlitt,
Joseph Pulitzer, and others. "[Benjamin] Franklin's
Silence Dogood essays marked his entrance into
literary journalism," begins Carla Mulford. "Silence,
the persona Franklin adopted, speaks to the form that
literary journalism should take—that it should be
situated in the ordinary world—even though her
background was not typically found in newspaper
writing." 
Literary journalism as it is now was decades in the
making, and it is very much intertwined with the New
Journalism movement of the late 20th century. Arthur
Krystal speaks to the critical role that essayist William
Hazlitt played in refining the genre: "A hundred and fifty
years before the New Journalists of the 1960s rubbed
our noses in their egos, [William] Hazlitt put himself into
his work with a candor that would have been
unthinkable a few generations earlier."
Robert Boynton clarifies the relationship between literary
journalism and new journalism, two terms that were once
separate but are now often used interchangeably. "The
phrase 'New Journalism' first appeared in an American
context in the 1880s when it was used to describe the blend
of sensationalism and crusading journalism—muckraking on
behalf of immigrants and the poor—one found in the New
York World and other papers... Although it was historically
unrelated to [Joseph] Pulitzer's New Journalism, the genre of
writing that Lincoln Steffens called 'literary journalism' shared
many of its goals."
Boynton goes on to compare literary journalism with
editorial policy. "As the city editor of the New York
Commercial Advertiser in the 1890s, Steffens made
literary journalism—artfully told narrative stories about
subjects of concern to the masses—into editorial
policy, insisting that the basic goals of the artist and
the journalist (subjectivity, honesty, empathy) were the
same."
 Literary Journalism as Nonfiction Prose

Rose Wilder talks about literary journalism as nonfiction prose

—informational writing that flows and develops organically
like a story—and the strategies that effective writers of this
genre employ in The Rediscovered Writings of Rose Wilder
Lane, Literary journalist. "As defined by Thomas B.
Connery, literary journalism is 'nonfiction printed prose whose
verifiable content is shaped and transformed into a story or
sketch by use of narrative and rhetorical techniques generally
associated with fiction.'
The difference between literary journalism and
objective journalism is very clear and easy to
understand. Literary Journalism is the nonfiction form
of literature which deals with the newspaper and
magazine etc. All types of writings under this genre
come under literary journalism. Immersion journalism is
also a very common term for literary journalism.
Literary journalism has a direct link with the people or the
subject matter. In literary journalism, the writing always
considers both aspects of an argument. On the other hand,
objective journalism usually reports or deals with one way of
the argument. On the contrary to literary journalism,
objective journalism provides purely the informational stuff to
the readers.   
ACTIVITY 1: IT TAKES GUTS TO ASK….

Ask randomly on persons you

met on the street about the
following. Try to elicit three (3)
answers from them.