2. Creative non-fiction
Also referred to as:
Personal journalism
Literary journalism
Dramatic non-fiction
The new journalism
Parajournalism
The new non-fiction
The non-fiction novel
The literature of fact
3. Creative non-fiction (Cheney, 1991)
Requires the skill of the storyteller and the
research ability of the reporter
Doesn’t just report facts; delivers facts in ways
that move people toward a deeper
understanding of the topic
Creative non-fiction writers must see beyond
facts “to discover their underlying meaning”; they
must “dramatize that meaning in an interesting,
evocative, informative way.”
4. Why creative non-fiction?
Conventional thought: non-fiction’s purpose
was not to entertain, but to inform, to teach, to
lecture
Research findings: we learn best when we are
at the same time entertained, when there is joy
and pleasure in the learning; the strongest, most
lasting memories are those embedded in
emotion
Insight: Creative nonfiction writers inform their
readers better by making the reading experience
vivid and enjoyable
5. The new journalism, though often reading like fiction, is
not fiction. It is, or should be, as reliable as the most
reliable reportage, although it seeks a larger truth than
is possible through the mere compilation of verifiable
facts, the use of direct quotations, and adherence to
the rigid organizational style of the older form.
The new journalism allows, demands in fact, a more
imaginative approach to reporting, and it permits the
writer to inject himself into the narrative if he wishes,
as many writers do, or to assume the role of a
detached observer, as other writers do, including
myself.
- Gay Talese (one of the first and best practitioners of
creative non-fiction) in his book Fame and Obscurity
6. There is a definite advantage to the newspaperman in
recreating reality if he uses every conceivable literary
avenue open to him; for his job, depending on the
intensity of his sense of mission, is to penetrate ever
more deeply into the truth of every story – and this can
only be done if he has the instruments of language,
narrative know-how, character-development, etc., that
until now have always been associated with fiction.
- Seymour Krim (a newspaperman) in
Reporter as Artist
7. “…Of late, journalists have begun to pay more heed to
the theories and techniques of the creative writer. The
result has been the infusion of the drama and tension of
fiction into the veracity of fact…. You can give your own
writing extraordinary power by applying some of the
fundamentals of dramatic literature to writing factual
articles….
“The advantages of writing nonfiction in ‘story’ form are
many. You get the reader involved. You make the reader
want to know what happens next. You get the reader
closer to the action or the personalities you portray. And,
perhaps, you even come a little closer to ‘truth’”
- Ken Metzler (a professor of journalism) in an article “Show, Don’t
Tell: How to Write Dramatic Nonfiction” for the Ragan Report
8. Creative non-fiction uses vivid
language.
Richard Zelzer’s The Discus Thrower describes a man physically in
very vivid language, one that gives us unexpected images,
unexpected metaphors.
9. I spy on my patients. Ought not a doctor to observe his patients
by any means and from any stance, that he might the more fully
assemble evidence? So I stand in the doorways of hospital rooms
and gaze. Oh, it is not all that furtive an act. Those in bed need
only look up to discover me. But they never do.
From the doorway of Room 542 the man in the bed seems deeply
tanned. Blue eyes and close-cropped white hair give him the
appearance of vigor and good health. But I know that his skin is
not brown from the sun. It is rusted, rather, in the last stage of
containing the vile repose within. And the blue eyes are frosted,
looking inward like the windows of a snowbound cottage. This
man is blind. This man is also legless – the right leg missing from
midthigh down, the left from just below the knee. It gives him the
look of a bonsai, roots and branches pruned into the dwarfed
facsimile of a great tree.
- Dr. Richard Seltzer in “The Discus Thrower”
10. Remember the vinegar ads years ago, in which contestants
were asked to make mukhasim or mukha-asim faces, and they
responded with grimaces and contortions? Funny and
effective, yes, but the planners did not take into account the
fact that many, if not most, Filipinos show faces of pleasure in
reaction to the sourness of sinigang, manggang hilaw,
sampalok, and many other gifts of our landscape.
We like sourness; it is a true pleasure. We squint, we sip, we
smile, we hum “saraaap!” We describe the perfect point as
katamtaman, being on the exact edge of sourness versus
saltiness, not too much (which brings mukhasim), not too little
(matabang), but just right.
- Doreen G. Fernandez in “Sour is Super”,
Food Magazine, September 1998
11. Creative non-fiction uses
emotions to arrive at the truth.
George Will’s On Her Own in the City mentions concrete, realistic
details about life in an East Harlem tenement to make a commentary
about poverty and the welfare system. He utilizes conversation to
provide “emotion”, i.e. to make the article more human, more
understandable, and more memorable.
12. When police, responding to her call, arrived at her East
Harlem tenement, she was hysterical: “The dog ate my
baby.” The baby girl had been four days old, twelve
hours “home” from the hospital. Home was two rooms
and a kitchen on the sixth floor, furnished with a rug, a
folding chair, and nothing else, no bed, no crib.
“Is the baby dead?” asked an officer. “Yes,” the mother
said, “I saw the baby’s insides.” Her dog, a German
shepherd, had not been fed for five days. She
explained: “I left the baby on the floor with the dog to
protect it.” She had bought the dog in July for
protection from human menaces.
- George Will (a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist) in
his Washington Post column “On Her Own in the City”)
13. Creative non-fiction stimulates
the reader’s imagination.
Gay Talese’s New York utilizes suggestive description. This kind of
description suggests (and only suggests) something to the reader’s
imagination, enabling it to bring to the description its own previous
similar experiences in order to understand.
14. Excerpt from “New York”
“New York City is a city of things unnoticed. It is a city
with cats sleeping under parked cars, two stone
armadillos crawling up St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and
thousands of ants creeping on top of the Empire State
Building. The ants probably were carried there by
winds or birds, but nobody is sure; nobody in New York
knows any more about the ants than they do about the
panhandler who takes taxis to the Bowery; or the
dapper man who picks trash out of Sixth Avenue trash
cans; or the medium in the West Seventies who
claims, ‘I am clairvoyant, clairaudient and
clairsensuous.’”
15. New York City is a city for eccentrics and a center for
odd bits of information. New Yorkers blink twenty-eight
times a minute, but forty when tense. Most popcorn
chewers at Yankee Stadium stop chewing momentarily
just before the pitch. Gum chewers on Macy’s
escalators stop chewing momentarily before they get
off – to concentrate on the last step. Coins, paper
clips, ballpoint pens, and little girls’ pocketbooks are
found by workmen when they clean the sea lion’s pool
at the Bronx Zoo.
- Gay Talese, using suggestive description in his
opening of the article “New York”
16. Creative non-fiction uses
rhetorical strategies.
Rhetoric is the art of using language effectively. It is also a means of
persuasion (e.g. reasoning through content or logic, through passion
and emotions, and through the merits and character of the speaker).
For the Greeks and Romans, it is the art of elocution.
17. Some rhetorical strategies
Narration or
storytelling
Description
Definition
Comparison and
contrast
Classification
Illustration or
exemplification
Analysis
Cause and effect
Argumentation and
persuasion
18. Deadma 101
Our word for the day is dedma.
Etymology. Dedma is the attenuated form of the English
words dead malice. Dead malice, in turn, is the literal
translation of the Tagalog expression, patay malisya. It
is conjugated thus: dedma, dinedma, dededmahin.
I remember my consternation at first hearing dedma used in
ordinary conversation. A friend was describing a chance
public encounter between one couple, A and B, and
another couple, Y and Z.
19. Now A had once been seriously involved with Z, and B had
been on the verge of marrying Y, not to mention that A
and Y had been the closest of buddies, so close in fact
that they were rumored to be having a homosexual
relationship. Plus B and Z were cousins, so you can
imagine the possibilities for going ballistic. The
spectators licked their chops and held their breaths in
anticipation of a juicy, scandalous scene, and then…
“Nagdedmahan silang lahat!” my friend exclaimed with glee.
In other words, they averted an ugly confrontation
through dedma.
- Jessica Zafra, in the article “Deadma 101”, Today (10
February 1994); Twisted (Anvil Publishing, 1996)
20. Applications of creative nonfiction
History
Travel essays
Character sketches /
profiles
Personal reflections /
memoirs
Journalism
Nature
Science and
technology
Business writing
Popular culture
21. Creative nonfiction in business?
Creative non-fiction is basically expressing facts
through storytelling.
Storytelling is an effective tool for persuading
people.
Persuasion is key in business dealings, i.e., with
customers, suppliers, employees, colleagues,
bosses, investors, and business partners.
Management gurus also utilize creative non-
fiction techniques to sell their books / ideas.
22. “Father came home from work, gave mother a hug,
and proudly announced that the Computing Tabulating
Recording Company, henceforth would be known by
the grand name International Business Machines. I
stood in the doorway of the living room thinking, ‘That
little outfit?’ Dad must have had in mind the IBM of the
future. The one he actually ran was still full of cigar-
chomping guys selling coffee grinders and butcher
scales.”
- Thomas J. Watson Jr., as quoted by Collins and
Porras (2002) in “Built to Last”
23. “[To] build a motor car for the great multitude…. It will
be so low in price that no man making a good salary
will be unable to own one – and enjoy with his family
the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open
spaces. …everybody will be able to afford one, and
everyone will have one. The horse will have
disappeared from our highways, the automobile will be
taken for granted.”
- Henry Ford, talking about his dream “to democratize
the automobile”, as quoted by Collins and Porras
(2002) in “Built to Last”
24. “The most important skills of the real-world management
researcher are not in the methodology or observation and
statistics but the novelist’s skills of imagination, sensitivity and
empathy with other human beings.
“His hypotheses are derived by insights from his experience,
broadened by scholarship and deepened by introspection. His
insights are finally validated by their conformity with the
human experience of his readers, across cultures and over
time. The “generalization” of his findings ultimately consists in
the breadth and depth of their acceptance.
“The great management theories, like the great novels, are
those that continue to be meaningful as the reader’s
experience and knowledge accumulate over the years.”
- Ramon K. Katigbak in Management Theory as
Creative Non-fiction (8 September 2005)
