Creative Non-Fiction

Creative non-fiction occupies a middle ground between fiction and non-fiction. Creative non-fiction stories are based in truth but have been so altered by fictional characters, plots, or situations that they can’t be called non-fiction, but aren’t quite fiction either

I was in a writing class in which several writers were writing biographies of their ancestors. There were great gaps in the genealogical and historical record that they decided that it would be more fun for them to write, and for their family to read, a mostly fictional account of what might have happened if . . . It’s a compelling question, but the answer is too horrible a thing to contemplate.

The famous historian, Barbara Tuchman, wrote a number of highly acclaimed books, but A Distant Mirror was of interest to me when I was a history graduate student. It focused on a 14th century knight, about which little is known, and whose name I can’t remember, to chronical the tumultuous century which included the bubonic plague. She had to speculate so much by introducing general information of the period, it became a history of the era rather than the biography of that particular knight. The fact that I can remember it 40 years later suggests that her account moved me. So, so what genre it fell within.  

Professional historians used to look askance at Tuchman, out of jealousy I suspect, because her books made a lot of money though she was not a professional historian. Her success made everybody else look bad, at least in some people’s mind. These days, David McCollough has had phenomenal success without being a professor anywhere. Ken Burns has become a terrific cultural historian through the medium of documentaries. His Civil War documentary on PBS is both tremendous story-telling and excellent history.  It’s actually non-fiction, but there’s so much added non-written material added, I thing it comes out as creative non-fiction.

But it only matters what you call what you’re writing so that you know how to proceed. I’m sure Burns doesn’t think it matters how anyone classifies his work so longer as people watch it. Mix genres all you want, just be judicious and intentional about it. What’s important is that you write from your heart and you convey it in a compelling way that draws people in and leaves them changed by what they read.

Next: Elements of Fiction I -- Narration