Getting Started in Creative Non-Fiction

 In 2013, I published a book-length work of creative non-fiction titled Rosina, The Midwife with a literary press out of Victoria, British Columbia. Since the publication of my book, I have been teaching creative non-fiction at university in my city.    

If you are curious about writing creative non-fiction, here are some of the notes that I share with students during the first few days of the course that may be a useful for exploring the genre.     

Getting started   

There are two goals we need to keep in mind as we draft a work of creative non-fiction. With these goals in mind, we can then employ basic storytelling techniques (some that work across genres and some that are creative nonfiction specific) to achieve them. As we read widely in the genre and compose our own works of creative nonfiction, we will also discover more specific techniques that we may wish to employ; some of these techniques may take us right into the boundary zone between fact and fiction.      

GOALS   

- Transcend mere documentation/record making and move into meaning making   

- Maintain a contract with the reader to tell the truth        

Some Basic Writing Techniques     

- Including both scene (showing) and exposition (telling). The ratio will depend on the content itself and your own choices. 

- Including concrete, significant images.  

- Incorporating literary devices such as extended metaphor and allusion.   

- Determining the focus. As you draft, ask yourself if all the material (each scene, each character, each conversation, any backstory, etc.) serves the story that you are telling. Have you written around the heart of the piece? Have you discovered the story itself through drafting (requiring a shift in focus in subsequent drafts)?   

- Including dialogue if it adds value. Dialogue can enhance both scene and characterization and push the plot forward. Remember to consider the contract with the reader.

- As in fiction, characterizing is important. Revealing a central character (i.e. real person) may be more useful than simply telling us about them; showing instead of telling can help to establish trust and reveal characters' complexity.   

- Conducting formal (library archives, newspapers, academic articles, interviews...etc.) and creative research (music, poetry, photographs...etc.) to gather material.      

Reading Suggestions 

Tell It Slant: writing and shaping creative nonfiction edited by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser

Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Truth edited by Bill Roorbach

The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts 

Good Prose, the Art of Nonfiction by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd  

Do you write creative non-ficiton? What would you add to this reading list? What are some of your favourite CNF writing techniques?