![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Creative nonfiction as a blogging style
Apr. 6th, 2009 11:58 pmCreative nonfiction is applying fiction techniques to create a compelling factual narrative.
I spent the weekend wrapping up and archiving a couple of old writing projects in a vain attempt to keep myself from relapsing back into old bad projects rather than focusing on old salvageable projects.
Someday, I'll grow up and start focusing on new projects...eventually...maybe...when I've run out of old projects to hide behind.
At any rate, I was combing through EverNote, looking for mistagged and mistyped notes so I could add them to the files being archived, and I stumbled across my notes on three creative nonfiction books I read two years ago.
And it's not that I ever meant to lose track of creative nonfiction, but by the time I was tired of reading about it (roughly a book and a half before I stopped), I really couldn't see how it applied to my writing at all. It seemed hokey and buzzword-ish.
Reading back over my pathetic excuse for notes, though, I realized it really isn't. Creative nonfiction actually has some relevance for someone who blogs, and it holds relevance for someone working on educational material. (And we'll all ignore that I was intending to work on the inverted pyramid style next.)
Creative nonfiction uses scenes to explore what has happened and how the people involved or affected responded to it. It's action-reaction, motivation-action-response. It involves beats to paint a clear picture for the reader. It presents the information, but does it in a narrative way that has the better chance to stay with people.
Think about it. The oral tradition, in part, is creative nonfiction. History and science passed on through storytelling. Creative nonfiction passes on information through storytelling.
I spent the weekend wrapping up and archiving a couple of old writing projects in a vain attempt to keep myself from relapsing back into old bad projects rather than focusing on old salvageable projects.
Someday, I'll grow up and start focusing on new projects...eventually...maybe...when I've run out of old projects to hide behind.
At any rate, I was combing through EverNote, looking for mistagged and mistyped notes so I could add them to the files being archived, and I stumbled across my notes on three creative nonfiction books I read two years ago.
And it's not that I ever meant to lose track of creative nonfiction, but by the time I was tired of reading about it (roughly a book and a half before I stopped), I really couldn't see how it applied to my writing at all. It seemed hokey and buzzword-ish.
Reading back over my pathetic excuse for notes, though, I realized it really isn't. Creative nonfiction actually has some relevance for someone who blogs, and it holds relevance for someone working on educational material. (And we'll all ignore that I was intending to work on the inverted pyramid style next.)
Creative nonfiction uses scenes to explore what has happened and how the people involved or affected responded to it. It's action-reaction, motivation-action-response. It involves beats to paint a clear picture for the reader. It presents the information, but does it in a narrative way that has the better chance to stay with people.
Think about it. The oral tradition, in part, is creative nonfiction. History and science passed on through storytelling. Creative nonfiction passes on information through storytelling.
