Thoughts on Creative Nonfiction

Ever since Submitit started handling creative nonfiction a few years ago, I’ve acquired the uncomfortable notion that many writers of this form think that content—that is, message, meaning, subject, etc.—is everything, and that the sound and quality of their prose is a mere vehicle— and nothing more—to convey this content. Basic English competency is enough. Another way of putting this: content (we could call it function) doesn’t just precede form; it obliterates it. Leave formal aspects of writing to the fictionists (so, it seems, think many nonfictionists).

But we’re not writing nonfiction per se. We’re writing creative nonfiction.

As with great literary fiction, the sound of the creative nonfictionist’s prose is not just important; it is, at least in my opinion, most important. I don’t care if you’re talking about politics in America or the end of a love affair or the shape and texture of a pebble in your flower garden: the quality of your prose is what will determine the success or failure of your piece. Most writers have good ideas. Few writers put them down on the page in a way that makes us want to read about them.

Not everything I’ll be discussing below is about prose sound, but consider sound my leitmotif, my throughline. Even when creating scenes, writing dialogue, and adding details (topics not, prima facie, about prose quality), sound matters. 

What Is Creative Nonfiction?

I used the term “creative nonfiction” (CNF) above. This is the form that literary journals publish (and, thus, that we submit). CNF is different from other forms of nonfiction, mainly because it incorporates elements of literary writing. Here’s a definition from Lee Gutkind (editor of Creative Nonfiction Magazine). The “creative” part of the moniker

is indicative of the style in which the nonfiction is written so as to make it more dramatic and compelling. We embrace many of the techniques of the fiction writer . . . except, because it is nonfiction—and this is the difference—it is true. —“The Creative Nonfiction Police?” in In Fact, xix

In other words, CNF is storytelling. It’s just true storytelling.

So what are these “techniques of the fiction writer”? Here’s a (without doubt, partial) list:

• scenes

• characterization

• dialogue

• concrete details and imagery

• concern for sentence construction and variation

• figurative language

• sound, diction, and wordplay

• intentional repetition

• formal experimentation

Importantly, not every piece of CNF will include all of the above (nor, for that matter, will every piece of fiction), but most published works of CNF I’ve read include many, if not most, of them.

And yet, I often receive nonfiction work from my clients that includes, well, none of them! (Which is why I’m writing this post.)

In Fact

The aforementioned Lee Gutkind edited a wonderful anthology of CNF called In Fact (W. W. Norton, 2005). I will be using this book for examples below. I strongly recommend it for all writers of CNF (really all writers, period). It includes a wide range of different styles and subject matter, written by a number of excellent authors. (It also includes an introduction from literary master Annie Dillard; it’s worth the price of admission for that alone.) 

Scenes

Writing scenes means having things happen in time and place. Yes, you can go on tangents, explain things (beyond the scene), explore history, quote others, abstract, philosophize, theorize, etc., but you should do this infrequently, and you should have an internal clock running, telling you that sooner or later (probably sooner) you need to return to the concrete language of a scene.

Let me stress, when I say that CNF essays need scenes, I’m not suggesting you slap down some words (Here’s my scene! Look at the pretty trees!), check a box, and move along to your Grand Ideas. Always, always write with eloquence, creativity (there’s that word again), and style. Crafting your scenes should not be rushed.

Here’s an example from In Fact:

Where there was once farm land, horses spitting sand as they galloped, wide willow trees I sat under when the nurses let me out on passes, there are now squat houses dotting the hills. —Lauren Slater, “Three Spheres,” 8

It’s hard to pick just a few In Fact essays that display exemplary scene development (since they all do it), but note Meredith Hall’s wonderful use of details below (more on details soon):

I hadn’t spent time with my father since he had remarried six years before. He and Dorothy lived in a large old colonial in Epping, fifteen miles from home. They were renovating the house themselves, and Dorothy was a terrible housekeeper, so it was crowded with Sheetrock panels and five-gallon buckets of plaster and boards and crushed boxes of nails and screws and tiles for the bathroom and old magazines and piles of mail and clothes strewn over chairs. . . . —Meredith Hall, “Shunned,” 59

Again, take your time with your scenes, and make them interesting. In the following scene, McPhee comes across the world’s first geyser:

Along the way we stopped at Geysir, where a great hole in the ground is the world’s eponymous geyser. The old geyser is no longer forthcoming. It is full of water but not of action. . . . —John McPhee, “An Album Quilt,” 73

You may choose to keep your scene setting short and simple:

The four of us at the table take turns uncorking new bottles. We drink out of water glasses the way they do in the old country. —Charles Simic, “Dinner at Uncle Boris’s,” 85

Demons flitter and play along the narrow hallways of the Jerusalem’s rabbinic court. —Judyth Har-Even, “Leaving Babylon,” 270

Three a.m. on a Thursday. I lie in bed in my own home obsessing over a stranger who told me she used to be a star on Hee Haw. —Leslie Rubinkowski, “In the Woods,” 324

The point again: things need to be happening somewhere and somewhen. As mentioned, all of the essays in In Fact set scenes. It’s as good a source as any fiction anthology for exploring the possibilities.

Characterization

The In Fact essays involve people saying and doing things. An essay without characterization is almost certainly not CNF (it may be any number of other things: an academic paper, a political treatise, a manifesto, an instructional manual for the disassembly and reassembly of matryoshka dolls).

Remember, CNF is storytelling. And I don’t read many stories without characters. As with scenes, all of the In Fact essays have characters, but to pick a few:

Veronica busies the pleats on her skirt. —Lauren Slater, “Three Spheres,” 3

Mrs. Taccetta played the small organ softly as I followed my mother and sister to seats up front. My shy brother was lighting candles on the altar with a long wand, his face shiny with embarrassment. —Meredith Hall, “Shunned,” 55

Ben Hopson Jr. stands on the frozen lake thirty miles north-east of Fairbanks and sweeps his hand across the scene. . . . —Sherry Simpson, “Killing Wolves,” 134

And so on and so on . . .

By the way, I’m not suggesting you describe your characters in great detail. Character description—what they wear, the style of their hair—makes me a little tired, mainly because the writing tends to be hackneyed or clichéd (how many ways can we describe a man’s suit, a woman’s hairstyle?). The greats these days often put a flower in a boutonniere or have a bra strap fall from a shoulder, and call it a day. What I’m trying to emphasize here is: you must have some characters! 

Dialogue

While there is no question that CNF (as with fiction) may lack dialogue (a single character wandering through the woods, for example), it usually includes it. It’s hard to have characters interacting with other characters without direct discourse. (I’ve noticed that other forms of nonfiction usually do not have dialogue, so dialogue turns out to be a pretty good indicator of whether a work is creative nonfiction or just nonfiction.)

Dialogue is an art (discussed in detail here), and writers of creative nonfiction, like writers of fiction, are careful with it. But they most certainly use it. I don’t think I need to share examples of actual dialogue in In Fact, but you might check out “Three Spheres” by Lauren Slater, “Prayer Dogs” by Terry Tempest Williams, “Mixed-Blood Stew” by Jewell Parker Rhodes, and “Why I Ride” by Jana Richman for especially strong dialogic writing.

Concrete Details and Imagery

Many of these topics (so far) overlap. For example, dialogue generally occurs among characters doing things in scenes. We can add details and imagery to the list. It’s hard to have vivid scenes and convincing characters without concrete language.

There is a spectrum of detail-writing. Some writers go to extremes (in In Fact, check out Lauren Slater, Philip Gerard, Floyd Skloot, and Madison Smartt Bell). Other writers are more minimal. But every writer in In Fact—indeed, every literary writer—is on the spectrum somewhere (so to speak). Where you reside on this spectrum will be up to you and your own tastes and preferences, but make sure you’re on it somewhere. Listen to this:

. . . I also recall the green and lovely dream of childhood, the moist membrane of a leaf against my nose, the toads that peed a golden pool in the palm of my hand. —Lauren Slater, “Three Spheres,” 17

Details!

Details and imagery often separate good writing from great. As you start to think more about details, strive to make them both beautiful and, especially, interesting. The masters are rarely frivolous or thoughtless with their details. Again, we’re not checking boxes here. Details, and the way they are presented in the text, become a part of a writer’s style. While, certainly, the first step is often simply adding any details, over time, try to make them exceptional.

With its spatters, spots, rings from the bottom of a coffee cup, smudges of chocolate candy or lipstick , pages with turned-down corners, pages ripped out, torn covers, Jet was an image of the black world as I understood it then: secondhand, beat-up, second-rate. Briar patch and rebuke. —John Edgar Wideman, “Looking at Emmett Till,” 28

Here’s another example; beautiful, imagistic stuff:

[The poet teaches us] how green light sometimes flares up as the setting sun rolls under, the unfurling of a dogwood blossom, the gauzy spread of the Milky Way on a star-loaded summer night, or the translucent green of a dragonfly’s wings. —Diane Ackerman, “Language at Play,” 180–1

As you can see, these writers are writing! Since I’m trying not only to plead my case but also to inspire, here are a couple more:

You open your navigator’s tool kit—your magician’s bag of tricks: star finder, hand-bearing compass, chronometer, parallel rules, dividers, triangular protractor, nautical almanac, sight reduction tables, pencil, stopwatch, and the queen of all navigation devices, the sextant. —Philip Gerard, “Adventures in Celestial Navigation,” 246

At the Hôtel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince, a small green lizard walked the concrete balustrade outside Graham Greene’s old room, stalking a prosperous black house fly with infinite caution and infinite desire. —Madison Smartt Bell, “Sa’m Pèdi,” 351

That last one I hope to steal someday! It’s too good. 

Concern for Sentence Construction and Variation

As some of you know, in a series of essays I’m intermittently posting to Submitit’s blog, I’m slowly working my way through a general discussion of literary style, and it’s not a coincidence that my first topic was sentences. As we consider the quality and sound of our prose, sentences are often our starting point. Variations in length, fragmentary writing, the use of asyndeton and polysyndeton, and creative syntax—these are all tools writers use to create style with sentences.

Clearly, the writers in In Fact, as with basically all literary writers, are concerned with their sentences. I’m not going to get into too much detail on this (read my style essays), but below are some examples.

You could teach a writing course with the following paragraph, but focus on the sentences. There are some fine fragments here (the whole essay is filled with fragments, many quite long):

A bunch of boys loafing outside Bryant’s general store on Money’s main drag. Sho ’nuff country town. Wooden storefronts with wooden porches. Wooden sidewalks. Wooden signs. With its smatter of brown boys out front, its frieze of tire-sized Coca-Cola signs running around the eaves of its porch, Bryant’s the only game in town, Emmett Till guessed. —John Edgar Wideman, “Looking at Emmett Till,” 27

In the next example, note the variation in sentence length, the fragments, some repetition (to be discussed more later), and an instance of asyndeton (missing final “and”):

As a child in Hampton, New Hampshire, I knew husbands who cheated on their wives. Openly. My father. I knew men and women who beat their children. We all knew them. We all knew men who were too lazy to bring in a paycheck or clean the leaves out of their yards, women who spent the day on the couch crying while the kids ran loose in the neighborhood. —Meredith Hall, “Stunned” 49

Here are some wonderful sentences. Note how Gerard settles things in the last three:

Even I can tell from the surface of the sea when we’ve moved beyond [twenty] miles offshore, lost the continental shelf, or sailed into the Gulf Stream. Such information, the sensory residue of experience, is stored in your body—in your ears and stomach and eyes and probably even your blood, the way your immune system remembers diseases and how to survive them. The roll of the boat feels different. The color of the water turns from Atlantic gray to tropical aquamarine. The wave shapes are different, playing a different tune against the cut water, as is the way rain squalls form on the horizon.” —Philip Gerard, “Adventures in Celestial Navigation,” 254

Here’s one more (I could go forever with these). Note the sentence variation. And the fragments. Stylists use fragments all the time, especially to juxtapose longer compound sentences:

He complained about his truck and the lack of rain on his pecan trees, and I told him that the publishing industry was going to the dogs. Nice conversation. Incomprehension. About five minutes. —Andrew Codrescu, “Joe Stopped By,” 307 

Figurative Language

Figurative writing (especially metaphors and similes) is an important part of most literary writing. It is more or less ubiquitous among published writers. I once did a test, opening to random pages of several “great books” on my shelf, to check the prevalence of figurative writing. Not one page lacked a simile or metaphor. (I think I checked five books, so I won’t be sending this to any scientific journals, but you get the point.)

As you’ll see below, In Fact is overflowing with figurative language—the cup runneth over (to speak figuratively). Some examples:

When such thoughts come to me, I pile them like sandbags along the levees that protect my sleep. —John Edgar Wideman, “Looking at Emmett Till,” 41

I use words as an instrument to unearth shards of truth. —Diane Ackerman, “Language at Play,” 179

For them the [Orthodox Jewish marriage] tradition is a prison. For me it is an ancient palace, rising out of a chaotic sea, a palace I visit at the most meaningful transitions of my life. —Judyth Har-Even, “Leaving Babylon,” 280

Figurative language need not be complicated or lengthy. Short synonyms and metaphors can color your prose in beautiful ways:

A pain grows like a plant . . . —Lauren Slater, “Three Spheres,” 9

. . . the earth whimpers . . . —Judyth Har-Even, “Leaving Babylon,” 285

The fear wandered patiently as a dog through the room till morning . . . —Madison Smartt Bell, “Sa’m Pèdi,” 332

I should add, figurative writing is an art. It is not something to rush (hackneyed or infelicitous figurative writing is much worse that no figurative writing). A writer (I think it was David Mitchell) said that you should rank all of your metaphors on a scale of one to five, and then kill your ones, twos, and threes. I think this is good advice. All of the examples above, I believe, are fours and fives.

I’ll have much more to say about figurative language in an upcoming style essay. For now, the main thing I want to emphasize is that CNF, like fiction, tends to filled with it. 

Sound, Diction, Wordplay

I talked about sound in the introduction above. This is my focus in what follows, with a specific emphasis on diction (word choice) and wordplay (call it the poetry in the prose).

Note the diction in this first example:

In the case of brown thought, though, I suppose experience becomes the pigment, the grounds, the mise-en-scène, the medium of refraction, the speed of passage of otherwise pure thought. —Richard Rodriquez, “The Brown Study,” 120

There are many more examples in Rodriguez’s dense and difficult piece. He is all in with language. Here’s one more:

And lately fashion photographers, bored with Rome or the Acropolis, have ventured further afield for the frisson of syncretism. —ibid., 127

Alliteration is a common, but rarely unwelcome, way of creating interesting sounds. You may have noticed “further afield for the frisson” above. Here’s another example:

. . . in the crisscrossing of the creamy branches . . . —Lauren Slater, “Three Spheres,” 15

Rhyming is not the sole domain of the poets:

. . . my mother’s side of the family was light, bright, and almost white . . . —John Edgar Wideman, “Looking at Emmett Till,” 27

I, of course, can only scratch the surface of the myriad ways writers may play with words. Here’s a lovely list from an appropriately titled essay:

He ardently weds himself to life’s sexy, sweaty, chaotic, weepy, prayerful, nostalgic, belligerent, crushing, confused vitality in as many of its forms as he can find, in a frenzy that becomes a [sic] homage to creation. —Diane Ackerman, “Language at Play,” 178

To summarize this topic: regardless of whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, if your aim is to write literarily, you should always be aware of the sound of your prose. Read your work—alone, aloud. Listen for music. Listen for poetry.

Intentional Repetition

While intentional repetition is clearly a kind of wordplay, I wanted to give it its own section. It’s amazingly common, in a broad range of styles, in the In Fact essays, and yet I come across it rarely among writers who aren’t thinking of their prose in a literary sense.

The most common form of intentional repetition occurs at or near the beginnings of a series of phrases or clauses. In the example that follows, I’ll mark the repetitions (there are two) in bold:

What Brian died of, the article does not say. Nor, for all the facts, does it say who he was. It doesn’t say who or how he loved. It doesn’t report the color of his eyes. It doesn’t show the shape of his ambition, the tenor of his mind, the color of his sadness, the bark of his laugh. It doesn’t say with what grace or gracelessness he bore his name, how he carved by it, how his character and personality and the bounce in his step were shaped and molded by its ten letters, how he learned slowly and painstakingly to write Brian Doyle . . . —Brian Doyle, “Being Brians,” 171.

The sentence goes on, with a shift. It’s wonderful, stylish stuff. Please check it out.

We might also see repetition near the ends of phrases or clauses, as seen in the next example (which also repeats “We” at the beginnings of clauses):

We ignore the picturesque origins of words when we utter them; conversation would grind to a halt if we visualized flamingos whenever someone referred to a flight of stairs. We clarify life’s confusing blur with words. We cage flooding emotions with words. We coax elusive memories with words. We educate with words. We don’t really know what we think, how we feel, what we want, or even who we are until we struggle “to find the right words.” —Diane Ackerman, “Language at Play,” 174–5

Repetition can also occur on a smaller scale. Here, the simple repetition of “know them” creates a musical sound to the sentence:

Still, even if we’ve never met, I feel I know them somehow, know them in a deep and private part of me. —Lauren Slater, “Three Spheres,” 13

Here’s one more example of short repetition. Listen to the music here:

I will go in, go down. Go back. —Lauren Slater, “Three Spheres,” 7

A word of warning: I’ve noticed that once writers discover how easy intentional repetition can be, they sometimes overuse it. As with all literary tools, overuse will likely ruin the effect. Similarly, knowing when to subtly change a repetition is something that will come with ear training (reading the right writers). Again, too much can be too much (that was repetition).

Also note that I’ve been using the word “intentional” above. The repetition must be absolutely clear in terms of authorial intent. Otherwise, the reader might suspect an error. Unintentional repetition is one of the most common problems I see when I edit. One common trick to ensure (perceived) intent is to repeat something at least three times (see the first two examples above). Another is to keep the repeated words or phrases relatively close together (see the last two examples above). 

Formal Experimentation

Finally, a writer can “literary-ize” an essay by playing with form. The most common formal experimentation involves the use of short sections (fragmentary writing). Check out John McPhee’s “An Album Quilt” for a great example of this. The piece is made up of seven relatively short sections (kind of like a quilt!).

Another example is “What Is It We Really Harvestin’ Here?” by Ntozake Shange. Shange uses short sections (in this case, with headings). She also includes sections of italics (playing with font is a kind of formal experimentation).

“Being Brians” by Brian Doyle includes short sections, letter excerpts (in italics), and an obituary notice.

Another great example of formal experimentation is “Notes from a Difficult Case” by Ruthann Robson. She uses something like forty-four short sections, containing numbered lists, Q & As, single-sentence sections, poetry-like line breaks, excerpts, and more.

Finally, what narratologists sometimes call “braiding” is another common approach to experimenting with form. Braiding, as the word implies, means mixing ideas and scenes (places and times) within the same paragraph or even sentence. It can create a wonderfully complex and interesting reading experience. Jo Ann Beard is my favorite practitioner of this form. Many, probably most, of the In Fact essays braid to some extent.

Playing with form is just one more tool of the creative nonfictionist. 

Plot (Maybe)

Note that I never mentioned plot above. As with fiction, none of the topics discussed above ipso facto requires plot. This is not to say CNF doesn’t usually have a plot. Unless you’re writing experimentally, it probably should, even if the actions, events, tensions, resolutions—you know, the “big picture” stuff—are presented subtly (literary writing is usually subtle). We don’t need a spy thriller or a coming of age story or whatever; but some narrative arc is typical. 

Conclusion

In an alternate universe, one in which we have no access to things like truth and facts, creative nonfiction and fiction would be nearly—if not completely—indistinguishable. (One may question the “truthiness” of CNF in any case, insofar as it’s based on memory, perspective, and so on, but we still expect a movement toward real things and real people with CNF that we don’t expect with fiction.) I’ll admit that, compared to fictionists, creative nonfictionists may more often, and for longer, stray from concrete scenes so they can abstractly discuss concepts and ideas. And CNF may, on average, be more intertextual and allusive (although many of my favorite fiction writers quote other texts and allude with glee). But, at the level of words, sentences, and paragraphs—that is, when we consider the shape and quality of the prose itself—a successful writer of CNF will be drawing from the same sack of literary tools as the writer of fiction.

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Erik Harper Klass is the founder of Submitit, the WORLD’S FIRST full-service submissions and editing company. He has published stories and essays in a variety of journals, including New England Review, Yemassee (Cola Literary Review), Blood Orange Review, Slippery Elm, Summerset Review, and many others, and he has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes. He has published a novella from Buttonhook Press.

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