This Week's IWW Practice Exercise

Exercise: Creative Non-Fiction (Version 2)

Prepared by: Patricia L. Johnson and Gary Presley
Posted on: March 21, 2004
Reposted on: April 4, 2005
Reposted, revised, on July 1, 2007

__________________

Exercise: In 600 words or less, write a creative non-fiction essay,
not a memoir, in which you inform the reader about some part of
the universe with which he or she is not likely to be familiar.

NOTE: In order to complete this exercise, most members will
have to interview someone involved in some project, business, or
agency, or at least a person who is engaged in doing something
people might want to read about. That could take time--one visit
or two, or sometimes just a long interview. That being the case,
you have two weeks to submit your entry for this exercise.
Next week no new exercise will be posted.
__________________

The definitions of creative non-fiction vary depending on the editor
and the publication, but in general CNF involves relating events
using the techniques of fiction (scene, character, dialogue,
foreshadowing, parallels, point of view, etc.) to send readers on a
journey of discovery of the human condition and the world around
them. The author is a part of the narrative, but the reader learns
something new about the way the world works.

Some consider memoir a form of CNF, but in this exercise think
instead of an essay. A memoir is about the narrator; an essay is the
narrator's effort to educate the reader. The narrator is a character
and may show feelings, but the story is about the subject. In his
book Uncommon Carriers, John McPhee tells of riding with a
cross-country trucker, but the story is not about McPhee, it's about
the trucking industry and the lives of truckers. Gay Talese is there
in his profiles of Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio, but those are the
subjects, not Talese. And Tom Wolfe, in The Right Stuff, visits the
astronauts and we learn about their lives, but not much about his.
Earlier writers like George Orwell and Ernie Pyle used similar
techniques. In an ordinary newspaper or magazine feature, the
narrator may be invisible, but in a CNF essay the person is present
to tell the story and show some reaction to it.

You don't have to interview astronauts or celebrities. How are
things at your local plant nursery? The city parks? A small
museum? A local hip-hop band or youth orchestra? The possibilities
are endless. If you can't talk to someone in person, there's always
e-mail and the telephone.

________________________________________________________________________

IWW PRACTICE Exercises are archived.