The Genre: Narrative/Creative/Literary Nonfiction--Which Is It?

Charles Mingus, Jazz Composer and Bassist

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; 

making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

                                                                                                 Charles Mingus

AS it has always been, our genre is named after something it's not, rather than something it is. It is not fiction. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the genre has evolved in the past fifty years into a blend: factual reporting enhanced with something like fiction (but definitely not fiction). 
     In the1960s and 1970s, along with much else in our world, cold, hard-news fiction transformed into a more human form. Called The New Journalism at the time, nonfiction was defined as writing that "not only seeks to explain as well as to inform; it even dares to teach, to measure, to evaluate."
     As a child and adolescent, I read only fiction--and biographies. Other nonfiction writing seemed distant and academic, news-oriented and analytic. But in the mid 1960s, Truman
Capote's In Cold Blood served, at least to me, to make nonfiction suddenly sexy, and completely compelling. Reportage became story.


What we're talking about is labeled, variously, narrative, creative or literary nonfiction. 
     It's narrative because it tells a story and has the general components of a story arc--rising action, climax, denouement. Children acquire a "story sense" around two years of age; by three they can tell a story--true or not--that has a beginning, middle and end. And a point. Composing life experience with the story arc of fiction allows us to engage our readers on a human level. Life experience doesn't occur, however, in neat story arcs. That's why writers craft life events into memoir.
     It's creative because--in addition to reporting facts--creative nonfiction writers employ the techniques of fiction writing: scene, dialogue, setting, characterization, interior monologue, for example. The creative nonfiction essay, story, or article appeals to readers because it reads somewhat like fiction. The facts are structured and organized in order to appeal to a reader's innate sense of story.
     It's literary because the writing has the definitive elements of literature: "excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest." It is literary when the writer composes the narrative using creative techniques with the intent of satisfying a reader's need to understand the world and human relationships more thoroughly. It's literature when the writer composes beyond mere plot, or, in the case of memoir, beyond mere life event. Life experience can be made into art, the angle of the writer's perspective highlighting significance. And when the writer simplifies the extreme complication of human life, her writing benefits everyone who reads it. 


This post is mostly thinking out loud, then writing to figure out what I think to see if it makes sense. Writing's good for that--composing forces us to clarity--at least for the moment. Let me know if it's clear and makes sense. Add your perspective here, your understanding of the memoirist's task, through your lens. I'd love to hear it.


Next week: Thoughts about deception in memoir writing.