Essay On Creative Nonfiction

872 Words4 Pages

[Title]
Marianne de Guzman

Impo lifts her spindly hands away from her thin body and slowly, she opened her palm. It was a bursikos, a small pouch made from cheesecloth. Inside was a pair of earrings and a necklace made from the gold mines of Paracale and a tambourine chain. This is an excerpt taken from my first interview story from one of my writing classes. It was entitled “Grandmother’s Favorite”, a supernatural story about my mother’s strange encounter with her deceased grandmother’s soul. The writing process I went through in my is still fresh in my memory. Back then, I was a budding writer, with zero skills in prose styles and knowledge in literary devices. In writing prompts, I was always empty handed. So when the culminating activity …show more content…

The term nonfiction is defined as a fact-based writing or factually accurate stories. At the same time, the narratives are intermingled with poetic devices, dialogues, descriptive details, hence suggesting the concept of creativity in its definition. On the other hand, the definition of creative nonfiction becomes more clouded in confusion as some writers does not seem to embrace the term given its distorted character. Philip Lopate, an essayist, prefers to identify creative nonfiction as “literary nonfiction”. He said, “’Creative nonfiction’ seems slightly bogus. It’s like patting yourself on the back and saying, ‘My nonfiction is creative.’ Let the reader be the judge of that. “ According to Cristina Hildago, a writer of creative nonfiction should not alter the accuracy of the narrative but in order to write an interesting story, a writer must also use of “devices and strategies available to the fictionist.” Generally, writers conduct researches, interviews, and immersion to effectively maintain the validity of the factual elements on the subject