Creative Non-Fiction

This is a misunderstood and growing genre, so I thought I'd share this small piece which includes some explanation.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/waiting-for-reality-to-strike-20100716-10dvb.html

Waiting for reality to strike
JANE SULLIVAN
July 17, 2010 - 7:24AM

I've had an audience with a godfather. It took place in St Kilda, in a grand 19th-century salon crowded with devoted followers. He didn't quite make us an offer we couldn't refuse, but he told us what he did and what we should do, and we were full of respect, and we went away all fired up to do his bidding.

No, he wasn't Don Corleone or Tony Soprano. He was white-bearded, bespectacled and laid-back. He was Lee Gutkind, teacher, editor and prize-winning author of more than a dozen books, and he was having a chat with Peter Bishop, creative director of Varuna, The Writers' House, at Glenfern writers' studios last month.

Vanity Fair dubbed Gutkind "the Godfather of creative non-fiction" — a term so new in Australia that not many people recognise it, even when they are writing or publishing it. But in the US it's a big deal.

Creative non-fiction, Gutkind told us, is the fastest-growing genre in the American publishing and academic world. Since he began the first teaching program at the University of Pittsburgh 15 years ago, more than 70 master's degree courses have sprung up.

What do creative non-fiction writers do? Two things, Gutkind says: "We reflect on our own lives and try to record what happened to us that made us what we are today; and we have special personal experiences to make ourselves part of someone else's world for long periods of time, so we can understand these worlds and show them to other people through our eyes."

The first path leads to memoir. The second path leads to books such as Gutkind's Many Sleepless Nights, the inside story of organ-transplant patients; or on a more personal level, Truckin' with Sam, his story of trekking around America in a pick-up truck with his son.

How do you write such books? You don't swoop in and out like a journalist, hustling for the story. You hang out, don't ask questions, wait for something to happen and remember it until you have a chance to write it down. Then write it as if you were writing a novel. Make it dramatic and suspenseful, so your reader can't put it down. Then figure out what that experience means.

It strikes me that a good creative non-fiction writer is going to need tremendous patience. You can't make up scenes, as a novelist can: you have to wait for them. Gutkind had to wait four years to understand what was going on with his organ-transplant patients. And perhaps the hardest thing is to grasp the meaning of your experience. What Gutkind would really like to do is teach his students creative thinking.

Fortunately, he thinks Australia is a great country for creative non-fiction: "People are still sharing stories about their lives in a way that people in the US are no longer doing." Peter Bishop named several recent Australian books he thought were fine examples of the genre (including Exposure, by Joel Magarey; Bruce and Me, by Oren Siedler; Piano Lessons, by Anna Goldsworthy; The Weight of Silence, by Catherine Therese; and Knockabout Girl, by Pip Newling).

In Melbourne, we've been lucky to have some close encounters with US creative non-fiction gurus. Varuna also brought us Robin Hemley, director of the non-fiction writing program at the University of Iowa, who is now working with the writers' house and Griffith Review on an essay competition and masterclass. May these collaborations inspire even more great Australian non-fiction.

Austen marketed to vampire market

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw an advertisement for Pride and Prejudice in the Scholastic Bookclub brochure that the kids bring home from school. The new edition is being marketed to lovers of the Twilight series. It has a black cover, with a red and white rose, with the promo: 'Love isn't always at first sight', and the trivia alert: 'This is Stephanie Meyer's favourite book!'

Of all the teenage girls I know who've read Twilight (and yes, I read the first book) I've asked if they have read Bram Stoker's Dracula, and they all said no.

An approach worth trying, I suppose.

Advice about writing

Over the years I've read quite a few tips from writers. Advice like, avoid adverbs (it means you have chosen the wrong verb, says Stephen King), be careful using metaphor and similes, report dialogue with the word 'said', rather than anything more descriptive (eg, complained, whined, exclaimed, blurted). The Guardian has published quite a list of tips from writers of fiction.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one

Their advice seems to be in direct contrast to what children are taught at school. Be descriptive. Never use 'got' or 'said'. Use metaphor and simile. Use adverbs.

I must say I see the consequences of how writing is taught in school, mostly in children's books, and find it jarring, and frankly, try hard. Poor writing.

It seems that to write well as an adult we need to unlearn all we learnt at school, and say what we mean as simply and accurately as possible.

A favourite classics teacher I had a university said good writing requires brevity, a voice, and something else I can't remember.

What do you think are the rules for good writing? Should these rules be taught at school? Or do we need to know the terms, then learn to use them sparingly?

I'll have a think and reply to my own questions.

2010 Topic List

Month Topic and Question

Jan
Romantic Poetry
Are these poems about romantic love or the romance of ideas?

Feb
Ancient Roman Literature
Was the story more accessible than you expected? Did anything surprise you?

March

Fan Fiction (novels based on other novels)
Was the writer trying to copy the writing of the original, or do something else entirely?

April
Irish Plays
Did the dialect get in the way of the story? What did you learn about Ireland and the Irish?

May
Mothers Rights and Mothers in Fiction
How realistic is the portrayal of the mother in fiction? In the media?

June
J D Salinger
Does he deserve his cult status? Do you think his more recent works (unpublished) will continue in the 50s New York style?

July
Russian Classics
What makes them classics? Are their themes still relevant?

August
Revisiting books of your youth
Do they read the same? Has your impression of the books changed with time? What do you think now of your younger self?

Sept
creative non-fiction
How firmly is the writer in the story? Does this add or detract from the reading?

Oct
Short Story Collections
Are the stories long enough to be satisfying? Does the collection as a whole say something overall?

Nov
Magic Realism
Is the magic realistic?

Jan 2011
Rewriting Fairytales
Is this just having fun with fairytales or is something else going on?

Literary Terms

How many of these literary terms are you familiar with? Look up any you don't know.

allegory
alliteration
allusion
analogy
anti-climax
anti-hero
archetype
apology
argument
assonance
atmosphere
audience
ballad
black humour
Bloomsbury
Burlesque
Byronic
cadence
Canon
caricature
characterization
chorus
chronicle
classic
cliche
comedy
comedy of manners
conceit
conflict
convention
criticism
denouement
dialogue
drama
droll
elegy
eclogue
edition
epic
episode
epilogue
epistle
epithet
essay
exposition
fable
fantasy
fiction
figurative
flashback
foil
free verse
gallows humour
genre
gothic
humour
hyperbole
imagery
intertextuality
irony
journal
juxtaposition
lament
legend
lyric
magic realism
meaning
melodrama
memoir
metaphor
motif
mood
Modernism
monologue
mythology
narrative
narrator
novel
non-fiction
nemesis
ode
oxymoron
paradox
personification
plot
point of view
post - colonial
Postmodern
prologue
puns
purple prose
realism
rhyme
rhythm
satire
semiotics
setting
simile
slice of life
stream of consciousness
subplot
syntax
symbol
synesthesia - cross sensory metaphor
tableau
texture
theme
thesis
tone
tract
tragedy
trope
understatement
unity
utopia/dystopia
unreliable narrator
vehicle
verisimilitude
verse
vignette
Victorian
voice
wit

Considerations when reading a work of fiction

These questions can be asked of any novel you read.


1. The circumstance that sets the book in motion is called the inciting moment. What was the inciting moment of this book?     

2. Describe the character development. Who did you identify with? Did your opinions about any of the characters change over the course of the novel?     

3. How does the author use language and imagery to bring the characters to life? Did the book's characters or style in any way remind you of another book?     

4. What do you believe is the message the author is trying to convey to the reader? What did you learn from this book? Was it educational in any way?     

5. Why do you think the author chose the title? Is there a significant meaning behind it?     

6. Is there a part of the novel you didn't understand? Are you confused by a character's actions or the outcome of an event?     

7. Do you think the setting, both time and location, played a large role in this novel? Could it have happened anywhere, at anytime? If so, how would the novel have changed?     

8. In your opinion, is the book entertaining? Explain why or why not.     

9. What is your favourite passage?     

10. How did this book touch your life? Can you relate to it on any level?

11. How does the book leave you feeling?

12. How does the physicality of the book, ie, the size, weight, font, white space on the pages etc, impact on your reading?

13. What is the social and political context of the setting, and of the writer's time? How does this inform your reading?

14. How does the book compare to others by the same author or on the same themes or topic?

15. How was your reading informed by what you knew of the book beforehand?

July 2010 Russian Classics

July 2010 - Russian Classics

What makes them classics? Are their themes still relevant? Are there any characters, or situations, you can identify with?

Examples include:

Aleksander Pushkin - Eugene Onegin

Nikolay Gogol - The Government Inspector

Mikhail Lermontov - A Hero of Our Time

Sergey Aksakov - A Family Chronicle

Aleksander Herzen - My Past and Thoughts From the Other Shore

Ivan Goncharov - Oblomov

Ivan Turgenev - A Month in the Country, etc

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov

Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace, Anna Karenina

Nikolay Leskov - Tales

Aleksandr Ostrovsky - The Storm

Nikolay Chernyshevsky - What is to be Done?

Anton Chekov - The Tales, The Major Plays

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

Boris Pasternak - Doctor Zhivago, (My Sister Life - poems)