Readings and Thoughts on Creative Nonfiction

Author: Christopher Buckley

This piece on writing creative nonfiction by Christopher Buckley seems like an article that would appear in some sort of textbook about writing. In addition to laying out the process of writing and giving advice as to what makes a nonfiction piece interesting, Buckley provides specific examples of work by successful nonfiction writers to support his points. I think that for people just beginning to write creative nonfiction, this piece helps to gain perspective on what makes writing good.

Below are a few select quotes from the piece, along with some of my thoughts regarding them.

Writers of creative nonfiction, however, write accurately about experience and do not invent. They may speculate and make use of fictive strategies to make the meaning of their experience clear and accessible, and interesting; among the facts, events, and details of their lives, they seek to discover a connection to the larger world.

I think it's interesting the way he compares creative nonfiction writers to both fiction writers and journalists. In a way creative nonfiction writers are a delicate mix of the two.

You are out to do what almost all writers are trying to do, regardless of genre-take account and make some sense of their lives and experiences.

Most writing seems to have a central theme, and once writers make some sense of their experiences a theme seems to appear. This sentence makes sense.

How do you choose your subject for a piece of creative nonfiction? You proceed like any writer, you pursue something that interests you.

I agree with this sentence. If you're not interested in the subject you write about, it may be nearly impossible to write about that subject.

Once you are "immersed," once you have the facts and are knowledgeable in the field, you need to find and present your view of it to the world.

Buckley keeps making this point of combining facts with the writer's view, which I guess is what defines creative nonfiction.

In just about all creative nonfiction, the writer, even if writing a "fact/immersion journalism" piece, is intimately involved, is the one conducting the events and shaping the experiences in time.

I think this is a very true statement. Although everything in creative nonfiction is factual, the way it is presented is entirely up to the writer.

The writer of a personal piece needs to do his/her research just as the writer of a fact piece. But one reason for the widening appeal of creative nonfiction is that what you are reading is a true story and there is a real person narrating it-there is something at stake.

This sounds like Buckley believes creative nonfiction is more popular and has a wider audience than fact pieces. Maybe this is true, but there are still many people out there who read fact pieces daily, such as those who read newspapers.

A significant portion of readers-those going into bookstores with the intention of buying nonfiction-are drawn to the autobiographical, for in its specificity, it is, if well written, an emblem and touchstone for their lives as well.

This makes sense. People like being able to relate to things, and if something is well written, there is a higher chance that more people will be able to relate to it.

I called up friends, had them over for dinner, opened bottles of wine and got them talking. Once their memories were lubricated and running along well, I pulled out a yellow pad and took notes.

The fact that Buckley used a yellow pad to take notes gives off the impression that he is like a journalist. I like that he used the word "lubricated" in the sentence after the part about his friends drinking wine. I think it's clever.

O.K., then, where does the "creative" part of creative nonfiction come in? It becomes part of the story in the editing and the later drafts, when you consciously employ some of the strategies of fiction writing and rely as best you can on your memory or the memory of others to fill in the narrative that can no longer be verified as 100 percent true or fully recalled.

It's interesting that you don't really need to worry about the creative part of writing until later drafts. It seems like if you wanted to writer creative nonfiction, you would want your writing to be creative from the start.

You need to decide what to include, what to convey in action or dialogue, and what to leave out. Simply reporting every detail of a true story will not make for interesting reading. This is why most writers work in scenes.

I think this is very true, and that this also is what makes creative nonfiction writing creative.