Writing Creative Nonfiction

Great book. I'd recommend it to anyone who want to write interesting free flowing articles be it stories or anything. This book offers you with knowledge you'd need to write a good essay, story or book. I love this book it has really helped me improve my writing skills. Writing Creative Nonfiction

The book was well known before I ordered it. It is all I looked for and it is on my principal bookshelf.

This book may not be 100% comprehensive (a tad redundant, perhaps), but if there is any other one out there that has more to offer on addressing the varieties of style, structure, form and the creative nonfiction process, I haven't seen it. Being new to the business in 2003 when I began working on Waiting for Westmoreland in earnest, I found the instuctions and insights illuminating, inspiring and confusing all at once. How to choose?! I felt like Alice on her journey after the rabbit. Still, it gave me plenty of techniques to consider--that would not have been as readily discernible had I simply tried to read every book of actual creative nonfiction I could get my hands on.

whilst one can not expect every chapter to be directly relevant, i found each of them thought provoking. this book has enabled me to view the genre, and my writing attempts, in a new light.

an essential read for anyone interested in writing narrative non-fiction.

Over the past several years there has been quite a controversy as to what exactly is creative nonfiction.
In fact, there are some who even go so far as denying its existence and claim there is no such animal!
If we are from the school that accepts that it is alive and kicking, we must then be able to describe what exactly is creative nonfiction.

Carolyn Fauché and Philip Gerard, editors of Writing Creative Nonficton, perhaps best sum up what it is all about when they state: "creative nonfiction has emerged in the last few years as the province of factual prose that is also literary-infused with the stylistic devices, tropes, and rhetorical flourishes of the best fiction and the most lyrical narrative poetry. It is fact based writing that remains compelling, undiminished by the passage of time, that has at heart an interest in enduring human values: foremost a fidelity to accuracy, to truthfulness."

In order to support their belief in creative nonfiction, Fauché and Gerard have presented more than thirty essays that examine all of above key ingredients inherent in writing creative nonfiction.
Divided into three sections, the reader will receive tips pertaining to such topics as researching ideas and structuring the story, reportage, personal reflection, developing powerful observation techniques, awareness of the filters that put you between yourself and the world, shaping the lyric essay, creating biography, war writing, using humor, and taking yourself out of the story.

What is quite noteworthy about the book is that the reader receives valuable advice from over thirty well- known writers such as: Terry Tempest Williams, Allan Cheuse, Phillip Lopate, Carolyn Forché, and Philip Gerard, all of whom contribute immensely in convincing us that, yes, creative nonfiction does exist.
It may be true that it has undergone many name changes over the years- nonfiction novel, narrative non-fiction, literary journalism, literary non-fiction, and new journalism, however, they all lead us to the conclusion that no matter how confusing it sounds, creative nonfiction is still distinguishable from daily journalism, academic criticism, and critical biography.

The book also offers a primer on the practical business of drafting a business proposal as presented by Stanley Colbert, and a section about what happens after publication.
Finally, as the editors most aptly state: "as a final gift to the reader, we've included the `Creative Non-Fiction' reader offering the companion pieces and other exemplary essays to inspire, delight, reach, and simply to enjoy."

This review first appeared on the reviewer's own site: Bookpleasures.com