Forms of creative non- fiction

References:
https://www.uvm.edu/wid/writingce
nter/tutortips/nonfiction.html

https://study.com/academy/lesson/li
terary-nonfiction-biographies-
autobiographies.html
 Biography

• A biography is a true story of a person's life

that is written by someone else. This true
story has all the elements of fiction:
characters, setting and plot. Those elements
all come from a real person's life, so the
characters are real; the setting is an actual
place, and the events truly happened.
•
• On the whole, biographies are written about
famous individuals or someone who has made
an important impact on society. This person is
known as the subject. The subject is the
person whose life is being described in the
biography.
• Another key trait of a biography is that it is
written by another person. The biographer is the
one who writes the biography. If you were writing
the story of Barack Obama's life, then Barack
Obama would be the subject and you would be
the biographer. Biographies are written in third-
person point of view, which means the narrator
is outside the story. Thus, the narrator uses
pronouns like he, she, her and him to refer to the
subject. For our example, you would be outside
the story of Obama's life and use the pronouns
he, his and him to refer to Obama.
• To write a biography, the biographer interviews
the subject and researches the subject's life. This
could mean reading various types of information
on the subject, or even interviewing other people
in the subject's life. The purpose of a biography is
to present an accurate account of the subject's
life, so any information the biographer can find
on the subject helps to meet this goal. The best
biographers try to include the strengths and
successes of the subject, as well as the
weaknesses and failures. In this way, most
biographers try to be unbiased towards their
subject.
 Autobiography

• Autobiographies are the same as biographies

except for one key difference: the story of a
person's life is told by that person. This means
that in an autobiography, a person tells the
story of his or her own life. Because of this,
autobiographies are told in first-person point
of view.
 The Personal Essay
A piece of writing, usually in the first person,
that focuses on a topic through the lens of the
personal experience of the narrator. It can be
narrative or non-narrative-it can tell a story in
a traditional way or improvise a new way for
doing so. Ultimately, it should always be based
on true, personal experience.
 The Memoir
A memoir is a longer piece of creative
nonfiction that delves deep into a writer's
personal experience. It typically uses multiple
scenes/stories as a way of examining a writer's
life (or an important moment in a writer's life).
It is usually, but not necessarily, narrative.
 The Short Short

• A short/short is a (typically) narrative work

that is concise and to the point. It uses
imagery and details to relay the meaning, or
the main idea of the piece. Typically it's only
one or two scenes, and is like a flash of a
moment that tells a whole story.
 Literary Journalism
•
It uses the techniques of journalism (such as
interviews and reviews) in order to look
outside of the straight forward, objective
world that journalism creates.

It uses literary practices to capture the

scene/setting of the assignment or the
persona of the person being interviewed.
• It can often be narrative or heavily imagistic.
Another important aspect of literary journalism is
that it often stretches the idea of "objective facts"
in order to better reflect real life and real people.
In other words, while journalism is about being
completely objective, literary journalism says that
people can't be objective because they already
have their own subjective views about the world.
Therefore, by taking the "objectiveness" out of
the journalistic process, the writer is being more
truthful.