A Look At Creative Nonfiction Writing

Two things that you may not equate with one another are creativity and nonfiction. However, creative nonfiction writing is alive and well. Most every type of nonfiction is creative in some way. Some exceptions would be technical writing, textbooks, manuals and the like. Pieces like essays, articles, nonfiction books and other works can be very creative even if the subject matter is nonfiction. Many of the very same principles of fiction writing are used, as well as other techniques to make nonfiction an interesting thing to read.

First let's look at the creative writing essay. An essay is a piece of prose centered around a true event, person, idea or concept. An essay can be anything from what you did over the summer to how you dealt with the death of a family member. Essays can be comedic, tragic, informative, literary, all the things fiction can be. As a writer, my first published essay was a humorous look at surviving a stomach virus while caring for a baby and a toddler. Other essays may focus on activism, calling attention to a certain cause through the power of the prose.

The article is another piece of creative nonfiction. Articles can be about anything, depending on who you are writing for and what your assignment is. Some writers work for magazines or ezines and are told what to write about, others write on speculation then submit their articles to appropriate periodicals and/or websites. There are so many different slants you can take on one topic. Your own unique voice will come out even when writing factual information and the way you organize and structure the article is a work of creativity itself. Articles are like essays, they can be light, heavy, informative, entertaining, however you choose to write them.

Then of course there is the book. Nonfiction books can be the most creative of all, as the author has pages and pages in which to let their creativity run wild within the subject matter. For example, consider the many biographies of Marilyn Monroe. Each one contains factual information, often the same information, however each book is different because the authors are. Creative nonfiction writing can be just as fulfilling as writing fiction, if not more so for writers who have a soft spot for writing nonfiction. For some writers, nonfiction is more enjoyable and easier for them to write than fiction.





 



Creative Writing News:

 

Area parents back higher benchmarks for MEAPs - Port Huron Times Herald

Area parents back higher benchmarks for MEAPs
Port Huron Times Herald
Ronald Jeffery, 10, Kyaira Price, 11, Maurice Powell, 10, and Teegan Talley, 10, work on writing an article for their school newspaper Wednesday at Cleveland Elementary School in Port Huron. The exercise helps them with writing skills, organization and .

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Are Writing Skills More Important Than Ever? - International Business Times (blog)

Are Writing Skills More Important Than Ever?
International Business Times (blog)
However, if the company is asking for writing samples, it wants to know that you have the education, grammar and skills to be a suitable representative of the company. When I was a manager in a market-research company, one of my employees resigned to .

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Egan not afraid of a little bad writing
By Mark Hinson Democrat senior writer -- Nearly 30 students from Florida State's Creative Writing Program gathered in a basement classroom on a rainy Friday afternoon to pick the brain of visiting Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and New York Times Magazine writer Jennifer Egan...


Stephanie Vanderslice: Creative Writing Can Be Taught: Creative Writing Professors Answer More Important Questions
On January 11th, 2012, Anis Shivani published a screed called "Can Creative Writing Be Taught? Therapy for the Disaffected Masses." He's not accurately portraying what we do in creative writing. We invite him and others to take a closer look at the exciting things happening in our field...


Children with autism likely to have poor motor skills - HealthJockey.com

HealthJockey.com
Children with autism likely to have poor motor skills
HealthJockey.com
Some kids face difficulties in grasping skills related to writing, running, throwing a ball and so on. The hidden cause behind poor motor skills is autism, claim scientists from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

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Chicago Creative Lands at Grey L.A.
Five months ago, an out-of-work creative director from Chicago packed up his car, popped in Hank Williams Jr.'s Long Gone Daddy CD and headed to Los Angeles...


Vt students put creative writing skills to the test
Thousands of students across Vermont were tasked with putting their creative writing skills to work Tuesday. It was all part of Vermont Writes Day. At Essex Middle School, kids had just minutes to craft a wild tale...


Miles sharing her love of music - Standard Freeholder

Miles sharing her love of music
Standard Freeholder
COM MORRISBURG EUR Lynn Miles, who has EURhundreds and hundredsEUR of original songs filed away, is more than qualified to pass along some writing skills to emerging musicians. That's exactly what she'll do during a workshop at the St. Lawrence Acoustic .

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