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IWW
Practice-W Exercise Archives
Exercise: Creative Non-Fiction (Version 2)
These exercises were written
by IWW members
and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its
members.
You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that
you found
them at the Internet Writers Workshop
(http://www.internetwritingwor
kshop.org/).
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.
__________________
Exercise: In 600 words or less, write a creative non-fiction essay, not
a memoir, in
which you tell the reader about some part of the universe with which he
or she is not
likely to be familiar.
__________________
Critique: Does the narrator stay in the background, or take over the
story? Did you
learn something you didn't know about the world? Does the writer use the
techniques of fiction to tell the story?
Web site created by
Rhéal Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Gayle Surrette.
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