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Writer's pictureAlyssa Witbeck Alexander

What Creative Nonfiction Isn't

Updated: Apr 7, 2021

I tend to blush when I tell people that I'm a creative nonfiction writer, specifically when they learn that that means I write personal essays and memoir. The response is usually the same: "Wow, I'm not interesting enough to write that," or "Nobody would care what I have to say." Which, of course, insinuates that I think I have something interesting to say that people care about. That sounds a bit narcissistic.


But nonfiction writing isn't narcissistic. Or maybe it is, but not in the way that it's portrayed.


If a reader tells a writer, "Wow, I can't imagine that happening to me!" after reading their work, it's not a compliment. The goal of creative nonfiction usually isn't to push the reader away or create distance between reader and writer. It's not a form that's meant for a writer to humbly brag about how impressive/difficult/shocking their life experiences are. Nonfiction writing explores what it means to be human, often the universality of it. Ironically, the more specific the writing is, the more readers are able to connect and relate to the emotions and experiences.


Memoir is not the same thing as autobiography. An autobiography is a text of someone's life--starting from the beginning and moving to the present. Memoir, on the other end, is much more specific. It centers on a few years, a few events, a few ideas. For example, my master's thesis is the beginning of a memoir, and I focus on two main themes: perfectionism and sacrifice. Within this realm, I explore a few events: divorce, abuse, anorexia, and a crisis of faith. My life as a mother and what that means to me is something that is extremely important, but not something that I would include in THIS memoir, because it doesn't relate to the themes or events of that writing. Whereas in an autobiography, all of a person's life is included. Simply put, an autobiography teaches the reader about a person, while a memoir causes a reader to think about an idea.


Creative nonfiction is also not synonymous with a college research paper. It doesn't follow a "five paragraph essay" style and it rarely includes in-text citations. However, creative nonfiction can definitely include research. Oftentimes, nonfiction weaves research with the personal to talk about a larger idea. Eula Biss discusses various ways pain is medically documented and tracked in her essay "The Pain Scale" while also talking about her own physical pain. Her essay is ultimately about what it means to be validated in our pain, how society constructs pain, and what it means to be a patient trying to turn a subjective feeling into numerical data. Research in creative nonfiction propels the deeper question in a way that only telling a personal narrative cannot.


Creative nonfiction has only relatively recently been viewed as its own genre. It's nicknamed the fourth genre, following fiction, poetry, and traditional/journalistic nonfiction.


Creative nonfiction is a versatile genre, and there's a lot of discussion within the community about what creative nonfiction is and isn't--the ethics of telling one's story, when personal writing becomes navel gazing, how a writer can utilize form, what does and does not constitute Truth.


Despite the miscommunications around and within the genre, creative nonfiction is becoming more and more prevalent, and I look forward to learning, writing, and reading more of it.

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Shaun Anderson
Shaun Anderson
Apr 15, 2021

Thank you for creating such a clear definition of creative nonfiction (or rather a clear anti-definition, maybe.?) I love your thoughts when state, " Nonfiction writing explores what it means to be human, often the universality of it. Ironically, the more specific the writing is, the more readers are able to connect and relate to the emotions and experiences. " It's something I love so much about your work. You ground your work in the specific, in the desire to foster connection.

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Thank you, Shaun. That means a lot coming from you.

I think it was Dinte who said something about how nonfiction is an interesting genre because it is defined by what it is not. I think about that a lot.

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