Principles, Elements, Techniques, and Devices of Creative Nonfiction
Principles, Elements, Techniques, and Devices of Creative Nonfiction
Principles, Elements, Techniques, and Devices of Creative Nonfiction
How to Begin:
Catchy and clever titles have an advantage.
Examples:
“The Wild Man of Green Swamp” by Maxine Hong Kingston
“ The Courage of Turtles” by Edward Hoagland
Titles should give the reader a quick idea of what to expect, without giving
away the whole story (Hidalgo, 56-57)
The First Paragraph
conclusion of the flow of your narrative or the development of your ideas. You
must constantly bear in mind that the reader should be left with a sense of
completion. However, satisfying the ending does not mean that you need to
answer or resolve the issues that you raised in the essay you may even wish to
“ a good piece of creative nonfiction has a personal voice, a clearly defined point
of view, which will reveal itself in the tone, and be presented through scene,
summary and description, as it is in fiction. All its strategies are designed to
reach out to the readers and draw them in –again, as in fiction- without losing
tract of the facts. ( Hidalgo 6)
First Person
Second Person
Third Person
Point of View in CNF
Setting refers to the place, time, where and when an event happens
Atmosphere or mood in creative nonfiction refers to the elements that evokes
certain feelings or emotions. It is conveyed by the words used to describe the
setting or reflected by the way the subject feels or the way he or she acts.
According to Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo:
“The most successful pieces of creative nonfiction are rich in details. Bare facts
are never enough. They need to be fleshed out; they need to be humanized. But
besides giving information, details serve other purposes. Details should be
accurate and informative first. And then must be suggestive or evocative. The
right details arouse emotions, evoke memories, help to produce the right
response in your reader. Details are extremely important in evoking a sense of
time and place. It must evoke a period as well as location. Descriptive details
are of particular importance for travel writing , the point of which , to begin
with , to literally transport the reader to the place to which the traveler has
been”
Let’s Read a CNF Example!
Baguio
(from Sojourns)
Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo
(Aguila, Ph.D 55-57)
Literary Concerns: Structure, Symbols or
Symbolisms, Irony, Figures of Speech