Creative nonfiction is a type of writing that uses storytelling methods to share true stories. This style of writing has also been called "belles lettres," "literature of fact," "literature of reality," and "verfabula." The term "creative nonfiction" was first used by a major publication and the first graduate program for this type of writing, but no one knows where the name came from. Unlike academic, technical, or journalistic writing, which also share true facts, creative nonfiction uses writing styles meant to entertain. Some writers believe creative nonfiction is closely related to essays.
Characteristics and definition
Creative nonfiction is a type of writing that tells true stories accurately while using literary techniques to make the writing engaging. Lee Gutkind, who started the magazine Creative Nonfiction, said that the main goal of creative nonfiction is to share real information, like a reporter does, but to present it in a way that feels like a story. A simple definition from Creative Nonfiction is: "True stories, well told." This genre includes many forms, such as memoirs, diaries, travel writing, food writing, narrative journalism, chronicles, personal essays, and mixed-style essays. It also includes some types of biography and autobiography. Critic Chris Anderson says the genre can be divided into two types: personal essays and journalistic essays, but there are no strict rules for how it should be written.
Literary critic Barbara Lounsberry wrote in her book The Art of Fact that creative nonfiction has four important features. First, the topics and events in the writing must be real and can be proven to exist. Second, writers must do thorough research, which helps them share new ideas and make their stories believable. Third, writers should describe the setting and context of events in detail, rather than just reporting facts objectively. Fourth, the writing should use strong, artistic language. Lounsberry explains that real facts and research show the writing is nonfiction, while the storytelling and style show the writer's creativity. Essayist Phillip Lopate says that reflection, or thinking deeply about ideas, is an important part of creative nonfiction.
Creative nonfiction can be written like a story, as seen in works like Geography of the Heart by Fenton Johnson and Rescuing Patty Hearst by Virginia Holman. When longer works follow a story-like structure, they are called narrative nonfiction. Other books, such as This Is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs by Daniel Levitin, use storytelling, rhythm, and poetic language to create a literary feel. Sometimes, creative nonfiction moves away from traditional storytelling, as in the essay "He and I" by Natalia Ginzburg, John McPhee’s In Search of Marvin Gardens, and Ander Monson’s Neck-Deep and Other Predicaments.
Creative nonfiction writers often use new methods, including online tools, because the genre encourages experimentation. Many new print and online publications now focus on creative nonfiction. However, the rise of AI has created challenges for writers, as noted in an article from Duke Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. The article says that relying on AI to create ideas, images, and language means giving up creative control to a machine, which can reduce the value of human creativity.
Ethics and accuracy
Writers of creative or narrative non-fiction often explain how much creative invention they use in their work and how memory can limit their ability to tell true stories accurately. Melanie McGrath, who wrote Silvertown, a book about her grandmother’s life, uses a writing style similar to that of a novelist. In her later book, Hopping, she explains that the known facts in her stories are like a "canvas" onto which she adds details. Some facts are unclear or cannot be verified, so she reimagines scenes or events in a way she believes captures the true feeling of those moments. She says these creative choices do not change the deeper truth of the story.
This idea of balancing fact and fiction is discussed in Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola’s book Tell It Slant. Nuala Calvi, authors of The Sugar Girls, a book based on interviews with former sugar-factory workers, share a similar view. They say they tried to stay true to the stories their interviewees told, but many memories from over 50 years ago are incomplete. When needed, they used their own research and imagination to fill in missing parts. They emphasize that the core of the stories remains true, as they were shared by people who lived through them.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, some memoir writers have been criticized for exaggerating or making up details in their books. While traditional and literary journalists have also been known to falsify stories, the ethical standards for creative nonfiction are the same as those for journalism. The truth must be preserved, even if it is presented in a literary style. Essayist John D’Agata explores this issue in his 2012 book The Lifespan of a Fact. The book examines the relationship between truth and accuracy, and whether it is acceptable for writers to replace one with the other. D’Agata and fact-checker Jim Fingal debate the limits of creative nonfiction, or "literary nonfiction."
Literary criticism
Creative nonfiction is often published in respected magazines like The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harper's, and Esquire. However, there is not much published literary criticism about these works. Some well-known writers in the genre, such as Robert Caro, Gay Talese, and others, have had some criticism about their most famous works. Critics have usually focused on just one or two works by each writer to support their points.
As the genre becomes more popular, many nonfiction writers and some critics are asking for more detailed literary analysis. The personal essay is sometimes said to be dying, even though it remains an important part of the genre.
If these four features define an important art form of our time, then serious critical attention is needed. This includes formal criticism, historical, biographical, cultural, structuralist, and deconstructionist analysis, as well as reader-response and feminist criticism.
Barbara Lounsberry, in her book The Art of Fact, says that nonfiction should be studied using many different methods. Chris Anderson, in Literary Nonfiction: Theory, Criticism, Pedagogy, explains that poststructuralist theory helps understand how we create meaning and establish authority in language. This is important for understanding literary nonfiction.