CREATIVE NONFICTION

Creative Nonfiction
- According to Leo Gutkind, “Creative Nonfiction heightens the whole concept of essay writing. It allows
a writer to employ the diligence of a reporter, the shifting voices and viewpoints of a novelist, the
refined wordplay of a poet and the analytical modes of an essayist.”
- Carolyn Force and Philip Gerard states that the literariness of Creative Nonfiction distinguishes it
from deadline reportage, daily journalism, academic criticism, and critical biography. It is story telling
of a very order through the revelation of character and the suspense of plot, the subtle braiding of
themes and resonance, memory and imaginative research, precise and original language.
- The word “creative” in creative nonfiction refers to the use of literary craft in the writing of nonfiction
to produce factually accurate essays or narrative about actual events and people in a compelling and
interesting way.

GENRE OF FICTION AND DRAMA

Fiction – defined as “a series of imagined facts which illustrates about human life”. It is commonly called
“stories”, and can either be short (short story) or rather long (novella).

Drama – also uses the traditional conventions but has an additional distinctive characteristics of being
performed and mounted on stage.

COMPARISON AND CONTRAST OF THE CONVENTIONS AND DEVICES BETWEEN FICTION AND DRAMA

1. Fiction
- Generally classified as a short story or novel.
Short story – a brief artistic prose form that centers on a single main incident and intents to produce
a single dominant impression.
Novel – an extensive prose or narratives that contains chapters and interludes.
Plays – however, are generally classified into acts or major divisions.
One-act-play – has one unit of time, one unit of place, and one unit of action and play,
Three-act-play – showcases a longer exposition of the themes and conflict.

2. Point of view
- All stories must have a point of view. Point of view is the vantage point or the angle from which the
readers can see how the story unfolds.
First Person POV– uses the pronouns “I”, “me”, “we”, and “us”, in order to tell a story from the
narrator’s perspective.
Third Person POV– narrator exists outside the events of the story, and relates the actions of the
characters by referring to their names or by the third-person pronouns he, she, of they.
Omniscient POV – god-like or all-knowing because the narrator has access to all aspects of the story,
including each character’s knowledge, thoughts, feelings, actions and backstory.

• Drama also employs point of view but this is not apparent and evident in a play. What is visible is the
interplay of dialogue between and among the characters.

Exposition Introduces the characters and dramatic situation of the story or play

Rising action Introduces the conflict of the story or play.

Climax Introduces the central movement of crisis that defines the conflict.

Falling action Introduces the aftermath of conflict (whether it is resolved or not).

Introduces the movement of insight, discovery, or revelation of the character after
Denouement the falling action.
• More popular and modern types of fiction and drama divides the plot into three general parts: the beginning,
the middle, and the end.

NARRATIVE DEVICES

1. Foreshadowing – used in fiction and drama as a guide or hint at what is to happen next in the story.
2. Irony – is also used both in fiction and drama when words that are uttered, either by the author or
characters in the story, are opposite of what they really mean.
3. Flashback – employed by the author or playwright through the use of past events that will help the
readers understand the present.
4. Conflict – both present in fiction and drama. It provides and showcases the opposing objectives of the
protagonist and the antagonist, or inside the protagonist.
5. Deus ex machina – referring to the Greek practice of physically lowering a “god” to the stage at the end
of the play to solve all the problems, today it refers to a contrived element in the plot to solve a problem.

UNDERSTANDING THE GENRE OF POETRY

Poetry
- Uses a more intensified, focused, and intricate language than prise. In ancient times and periods,
poetry was the language of people. So poetry developed way before prose did.

Poetry is always characterized according to the following:

1. Poetry attempts to achieve beauty.
2. Poetry is imaginative, or makes use of strength of imagination.
3. Poetry is musical, melodic, and rhythmical.
4. Poetry makes use of language that is metaphorical or symbolic, not direct.
5. Poetry is more concentrated than prose.
6. Poetry makes use of brevity and conciseness.

• Poetry is categorized into different forms – from the ancient epic to the specific limerick-but generally there
are about three major categories of poetry: narrative, lyric, and dramatic,

Narrative Poems
- Short and simple while others are long and complex. Epics like Iliad, ballads like Lord Randall, and
prose poems like the metrical romance of King Arthur fall under this category.

Dramatic Poems
- Employ dramatic form or elements of dramatic technique such as dialogues or characters, instead of
just a single speaker or persona.

Lyric Poem
- Brief in structure and subjective in expressing the thoughts and emotions of the persona, the speaker
of the poem. Originally written to be sung to the accompaniment of a lyre.

UNDERSTANDING THE ELEMENTS AND CONVENTIONS OF POETRY

1. Imagery
- The use of images in a constant in poetry. It is the essential representation of an experience or object
that is perceived through the sense.

2. Figurative Language
- Are devices that help beautify or make the language more poetic than it already is.

3. Sound
- Poetry is as much an oral as it is a visual form; therefore, it is meant to be recited and read aloud. A
poem should be read aloud to reveal its true merit. The rhyme scheme and the meter that a poem
employs add to the sound of the poem.

4. Persona
- The speaker of the poem is not necessarily the poet. In many cases, poets create a persona (a word
that comes from Latin which means “mask”) who speaks the poem in the first person.

USING ELEMENTS AS TECHNIQUES TO DEVELOP THEMES

Theme
- Refers to the central idea, the thesis, the message a story conveys, or a generalization or an
abstraction from it. Theme is not necessarily the moral or message of the story; it may be simply what
the story is all about.
- An article co-authored by Grant Faulkner (2020) states that a theme in writing is the underlying idea
behind an article or story that unifies the words into a coherent whole. The theme has been called
the “muscle” or the “vehicle” of a story.

PREPARING TO DEVELOP YOUR THEME

1. Understand the difference between “subject” and “theme”

2. Identify the purpose of your writing
3. Identify your audience
4. Consider the length of what you’re writing
5. Defining you’re theme
6. Weaving your theme into writing
7. Finalizing your theme

Common themes in literature

1. The individual in Nature
2. The individual in Society
3. An individual’s relation to the God’s
4. Human relations
5. Growth and initiation
6. Time
7. Death
8. Alienation

Principles, Elements, Techniques, and Devices of Creative Nonfiction

Textual Analysis
- Analysis of a text means decoding or interpreting information that is written in a text. It is examining
how the author presents his or her arguments within the text and a test if these arguments work or
not. This process is not just summarizing a text or restating an opinion but it is more than eliciting
ideas behind what is written in the text.
- Evaluating a text does not end in merely following the steps and creating a framework, but it must
be presented in a clear and structured paragraph.

Forms and Types of Creative Nonfiction

1. Biography – Autobiography
Derived from the Greek Words: “Autos” – self ; “Bios” – Life ; “Graphien/Graphein” – To write

Biography
- Tells about a real person.
- The writer knows a lot about the person.
- Describes the person’s environment
- Shows how the person affects other people
- Written in the third person point of view

Autobiography
- The main character is the author.
- Recounts the key incidents in the writer’s life.
- Written in first point of view
- Reveals the writer’s feelings, reactions, values, and goals.

Third Person Point of View

- The third person POV in nonfiction is when the author reports the facts.
- The author tells the story
- Pronouns: he, she, it, they, him, her, them, his, hers, its, their, theirs.
Example of Biography: The First Filipino by Leon Maria Guerrero III
Example of Autobiography: America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan

TIPS IN WRITING AUTOBIOGRAPHY

1. Write an outline of your life
2. Brainstorm a list of the major turning points of your life
3. Start with you childhood
4. Look at photographs, listen to songs, from the era you’re writing about.
5. Write a little each day.

2. Literary Journalism/Reportage

Literature – portrayal of human reality. Creative through oral, written, or visual.

Journalism – is the practice of gathering, recording, verifying, and reporting on information of public
importance. Writing to broadcast, straight presentation of facts.

Literary Journalism
• Reportage
• New Journalism
• Narrative Journalism
• Immersion Journalism

– A form of Creative Nonfiction that presents verifiable data, and well-researched information, like a film,
or TV documentary.
– It is a hybrid between responsible journalism and imaginative literature.
– It shares with responsible journalism in a way that it pays close attention to sociocultural reality, past
events, and current affairs.
– According to Tom Wolfe, it is a combination of indepth reporting, and literary ambition, and that new
journalists “wanted to make the nonfiction story shimmer ‘like a novel’ with the pleasure of detailed
realism”.
– “News that stays new” – Ezra Pound

HOW TO WRITE A LITERARY JOURNALISTIC ESSAY

• Select a topic
• Conduct Research
• Write a dramatic story
• Include a lead, facts/content, and ending

3. Personal Narratives
- A story that expresses your perception of yourself, others, and societ.
- Personal narratives are a creative approach to turn an ordinary experience into a meaningful
reflection about a particular part of your life.
- It is intimidate, informal, and candid. It is also dialogic; the writer is having a conversation mostly
with himself but also with the reader.
- You feel as if the essayist is talking to your ear.

4. Travelogue
- An individual work also called a travelogue
- A person’s account of a journey to a place
- It can also be a written report with factual details usually supported by images

The two basic sins in travel writing:

• not having a story
• and not having a unified tone or voice

5. Reflective Essay
- To express
- Concerns the authors introspection especially with respect to what he/she has learned from
individual experiences.
- Mixture of all goals of each style of essay
- Usually composed of 500-1000 words
6. Blogs
- Truncated version of “web log”
- Frequently (or regularly) updated journal or diary on the internet
- It becomes our digital footprint in the cyberworld.
- Blogsphere is a newly minted term for the community of all blogos.

7. Testimonio
- Witness to such case of abuse
- Can take in different forms such as letters, diary entries, incident reports, poetry, among others.
- Purpose is to call public attention to lived experiences of marginality than with modern literary
aesthethics.

Food writing – is all about passion, a passion for food, for tastes, and for the senses.