Defining "Creative Nonfiction," the Genre of Just About Everything

The occupants of the blank, flat room, all experts on the subject of my inquiry, proceeded to deafen me with their answers. They couldn't even agree on the term "creative nonfiction." Bruce Dobler, Associate Professor of English at the University of Pittsburg, asked, "Do you mean 'literary nonfiction?'" or Phil Druker, Senior Instructor of English at Idaho University, thought I must be inquiring about "new journalism." Apparently several names exist for this genre of literature, and experts argue about its definition. I just ignored the fact that several of the people spelled nonfiction with a hyphen, "non-fiction," while the rest did not. Carol Bly, author of Beyond the Writer's Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction, rudely stood up, and in front of everyone said, "Nobody knows what creative nonfiction is, and therefore it can be nearly anything" (xvii).

Next, these experts clamored to explain that my question was too broad. Creative nonfiction was actually made up of many differing types of writings. There were memoires, biography, autobiography, nature writing, travel writing, food criticism, movie reviews, book reviews, speculative essays, personal essays, investigative reporting, gonzo journalism, feature writing, and the nonfiction novel. The list extends even beyond that, but I knew what all those types of writing were, and what they meant as individual forms. Most of these experts on creative nonfiction wanted to teach me one form or another, pushing the differences in subject matter and style.

But I didn't want to do that. As a creative writer who intends to write in several of these subgenres, I needed to know just what a food critic's review of a local ethnic eatery had to do with an investigative reporter's story on L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology or why a mother drowned her own children. Due to the fact that both subgenres are under the umbrella of creative nonfiction, I knew that there must be some core traits uniting all these forms into a unified super-genre. I believed these traits were the keys to unlocking my own ability as a creative nonfiction writer. And with them I should be able to write competently in a broad spectrum of forms. But it took some investigation of my own in order to find these keys.

Not Just the Facts, Ma'am

The most obvious characteristic that all creative nonfiction subgenres have in common is that they are based on fact. That seems elementary, but is important to note. An old-fashioned "hard news" story covering the facts of a bank robbery is not creative work. Beverly Lowry, who wrote "Not the Killing but Why," says that "news is plot, event, what happened last night, this afternoon, or is in the process right now" (97). Lowry describes one of her feature stories, written about a small-town murder two months after the incident, is attempting to analyze the event, and what kind of impact it had on the little town. Her story is not about the crime scene, but about her interactions with the locals, who are sick of journalists. What Lowry means is that "a family was murdered" is just a news fact. Why the family was murdered, or how that effects the town makes a good feature-creative nonfiction. The owner's manual of my car is not a creative work, even though it is, indeed, nonfiction. However, the factual story of me, trying to use the owner's manual to figure out why my Ford Escort wouldn't start just before Thanksgiving dinner, back in 2002, which then led me to steal my roommate's truck and endanger our friendship-now, that could be worked into a very entertaining, creative nonfiction essay.

The Great Authorial "I"

This leads us to the second, and indispensible, characteristic of all creative nonfiction work: It incorporates the author's personality as it relates to the subject matter. Back in that two-dimensional room of experts, Phillip Lopate, editor of The Art of the Personal Essay, whispered to me that "the writer seems to be speaking directly into your ear" (xxiii). While his book is focused on just one subgenre, the personal essay, I would argue that this is a universal quality found (in some degree) throughout all of the subgenres. We can easily see this element at work in food criticism. Here is the opening paragraph of a restaurant review by Terry Kirts, who also teaches creative nonfiction at Indiana University-Purdue University of Indianapolis:

"Sometimes a new restaurant makes it hard to root for the little guy. The first time I stopped in at TaTa Cuban Café, a wee Cuban sandwich shop just steps from the Indiana Statehouse on Market Street, things were, to say the least, a little rough. Sure, they had only been open a couple of weeks, but the largely Spanish-speaking staff seemed baffled by our orders, indicating we should select our lunches by number, not by the names of the sandwiches - even when we really tried to use our high school Spanish (forgive us, Señora Fernandez!)." (Kirts)

While the goal of Kirts's piece is to write about the restaurant and its food, the process is done through the reader's acquaintance with the "I" of the author. Not only does he focus on his personal experience, but does it in a conversational voice, "to say the least." Kirts relates himself to the reader by mentioning his poor "high school Spanish."

Although "I" is overwhelmingly used in creative nonfiction, in some cases it could overwhelm the reader, and make for bad writing. Many personal essays, and one can imagine a large nonfiction novel, are written to consciously avoid saying "I" in every sentence. This can be done through narrative distance. The writers are still obviously talking about their own experience, but can change the focus to a more broad vantage point: I loved living in that little bungalow on Main Street, so close to downtown, could be changed to The little bungalow on Main Street was close to the town's heart. This not only eliminates the "I" pronoun, but can be more inclusive to the reader's experiences.

Earlier, I mentioned that I wanted to know what food criticism has in common with investigative reporting (which I was initially shocked to hear described as creative nonfiction). This same focus on "I," now an investigative reporter, and I's experience with the accused or corrupt subject of investigation, is the medium through which the report is told. Creative nonfiction is not necessarily objective. Its nature is subjective, which is why those who want to read only the "hard news" often criticize investigative journalism for being biased-because it is bias.

Literary Meatloaf-I mean Motif

The third and final element of creative nonfiction is its use of literary techniques of fiction and poetry to polish the language into a work of art. All writers strive to write "well," but when your goal is to create a work of literature, only then can you use certain elements like setting, characterization, dialogue, and a highly stylized narration (Dobler; Druker). As Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard, editors of Writing Creative Nonfiction, put it, "Its very literariness distinguishes this writing from deadline reporting, daily journalism, academic criticism, and critical biography. It is storytelling of a very high order."

In Kirts's food criticism we see setting as a central element of his first paragraph (not to mention the rest of the piece). Ta Ta Cuban Café is set as a "wee" sandwich shop "just steps from" Indiana's State House. That type of language gives the reader a vivid, literary image of where this restaurant is and what it looks like.

Perhaps a better example of literary style is an excerpt from Frank McCourt's nonfiction novel, Angela's Ashes, that I found in an anthology of literary nonfiction. This takes place during McCourt's childhood confession of stealing food from a passed-out drunk. Little McCourt has been searching the pubs for his neglectful, alcoholic father, while the rest of his family is starving at home.

"I wonder if this priest is asleep because he's very quiet till he says, My child, I sit here. I hear the sins of the poor. I assign the penance. I bestow absolution. I should be on my knees washing their feet. Do you understand me, my child?

I tell him I do but I don't.

Go home, child. Pray for me.

No penance, Father?

No, my child.

I stole fish and chips, I'm doomed.

You're forgiven. Go. Pray for me."

(McCourt)

In that section, not only do we see the fictional construct of dialogue, but we see characterization of the priest as a sensitive, heartbroken man, choked up listening to little McCourt's confession. And we see the characterization of little McCourt, who is too innocent to know that his sins are not going to send him to hell. Is this dialogue one hundred percent factual? Probably not. But the writer of creative nonfiction is able to break the mold of historical fact, in order to emote in the reader the experience of the storyteller.

One of the most prolific writers on the topic of creative nonfiction itself, is Lee Gutkind. In his book, Creative Nonfiction: How to Live and Write It, he speaks of a "blurred gray line" that "carries the writer and reader into a deeper dimension of trust, truth and believability." Fiction writers don't want their story to be taken as truth, but if they write about Paris, they better do their research. And poets might be writing about a literal truth, but even when they aren't, the deeper message of every poem is meant to convey a truth.

Creative nonfiction is often compared to poetry (although never have I seen the reverse). Bly, who once claimed that nobody knew what creative nonfiction was, tells us that "since it ties meaning to anecdote, creative nonfiction is a little like poetry." But I wouldn't bet many poets think of themselves as anecdotal. Judith Ortiz Cofer, author of "But Tell it Slant: From Poetry to Prose and Back Again and Professor of English at the University of Georgia, uses writing poetry as a springboard to writing creative nonfiction. She makes her students begin (often grudgingly) by writing a poem on a topic in order to find the "diamond embedded in the carbon" and to clarify the more interesting subject of the prose (Cofer 12). This process changes the writing from egotistical self-expression to a more humanitarian self-discovery.

Conclusions

If you have read this much of my paper, you can, of course, tell that I have attempted to write this essay in creative nonfiction form. That must make this a meta-creative-nonfiction. (Again, I am not here to argue about hyphen usage.) The style of this paper is very informal. I used "I" liberally, which means I was talking directly to the reader. The sources of my research were lightheartedly characterized through some pretend dialogue. Although I may have missed my mark on the entertainment aspect of this (sorry), my other goal was to illustrate just how pliable the medium of creative nonfiction can be.

Having come to the end of my essay, I see that the white, two-dimensional room of subject and style, was not what it first appeared at all. It had little to do with subject, because subject matter has little influence on defining the larger genre, and only now could I see the depth behind its style. The white room had always been three-dimensional. Creative nonfiction is a life-story-not a news story-of "I," relating authentic authorial experience with the subject matter, in the most appropriate literary style.

And while no one expert could come out and tell me that directly, "I" figured it out.

Works Cited

Bly, Carol. Beyond the Writer's Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction. New York: Anchor Books, 2001.

Cofer, Judith Ortiz. "But Tell It Slant: From Poetry to Prose and Back Again." Writing Creative Nonfiction. Forché, Carolyn and Philip Gerard, eds. Cincinnati: Story Press, 2001.

Dobler, Bruce. Bruce Dobler's Creative Nonfiction Compendium. 30 May 2006. 22 November 2008 .

Druker, Phil. Creative Non-Fiction Defined. 22 November 2008 .

Forché, Carolyn and Philip Gerard, eds. Writing Creative Nonfiction. Cincinnati: Story Press, 2001.

Gutkind, Lee. Creative Nonfiction: How to Live It and Write It. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1996.

Lopate, Phillip, ed. The Art of the Personal Essay. New York: Anchor Books, 1995.

Lowry, Beverly. "Not the Killing but Why." Writing Creative Nonfiction. Forché, Carolyn and Philip Gerard, eds. Cincinnati: Story Press, 2001.

McCourt, Frank. "from Angela's Ashes." In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal. Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones, eds. New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1999.