Principles,Elements,Techniques,and Devices in Creative Nonfiction

Principles, elements, techniques, and devices

1. 1. Principles, Elements, Techniques, and Devices of Creative Nonfiction Prepared by: Marrianne S. Ledesma, LPT
2. 2. Plot or Plot Structure 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)
3. 3. The First Paragraph Ways of Writing your First Paragraph for CNF  Passage of Vivid Description  Quotation  List  Dialogue  Little Scene  Anecdote  Question  Striking Statement  Reference to a current event which serves as the context of the action
4. 4. How to End? It is expected that the ending of a creative nonfiction piece is the logical 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 end by suggesting new problems or asking other questions. ( Hidalgo, 109)
5. 5. Character or Characterization Ways Of Revealing Your Characters In A Creative Nonfiction Piece  Direct Description  Action and Reaction  Other Character’s Opinion  Dialogue  Monologue  Focusing on a Character’s Distinct or Idiosyncratic Behavior
6. 6. Point of View “ 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) What does it suppose to mean?
7. 7. Approach/Angle First Person Second Person Third Person Point of View OBJECTIVE SUBJECTIVE The writer’s attitude towards the subject. Tone and Voice
8. 8. Point of View in CNF  First Person Point of View • This is used when you are relating an event that you experienced first hand.  Second Person Point of View • This is used when you decide to write a piece and you want to sound as if you are actually talking or addressing another person, yourself where “you” actually the writer, or something abstract like love, peace or justice or a place or location like the city , the nation, etc.  Third Person Point of View • This is used when you quote what a real person has said which results to “he said/she said” type of narrative or when you are describing someone in your creative nonfiction piece.
9. 9. Let’s Read a CNF Example! The Death of the Moth Virginia Woolf (Aguila et. Al 48-50)
10. 10. Setting and Atmosphere 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.
11. 11. 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”
12. 12. Let’s Read a CNF Example! Baguio (from Sojourns) Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo (Aguila, Ph.D 55-57)
13. 13. Literary Concerns: Structure, Symbols or Symbolisms, Irony, Figures of Speech

ELEMENTS

Literary Elements

Creative nonfiction is the literature of fact. Yet, the creative nonfiction writer utilizes many of the literary devices of fiction writing.  The following is a list of the most common literary devices that writers incorporate into their nonfiction writing:

• Storytelling/narration. The writer needs to be able to tell his/her story. A good story includes an inciting incident, a goal, challenges and obstacles, a turning point, and resolution of the story.
• Character. The nonfiction piece often requires a main character. Example: If a writer is creating his/her memoir, then the writer is the central character.
• Setting and scene. The writer creates scenes that are action-oriented; include dialogue; and contain vivid descriptions.
• Plot and plot structure. These are the main events that make up the story. In a personal essay, there might be only one event. In a memoir, there are often several significant events.
• Figurative language. The writer often uses simile and metaphor to create an interesting piece of creative nonfiction.
• Imagery. The writer constructs “word pictures” using sensory language. Imagery can be figurative or literal.
• Point of view. Often the writer uses the first person “I.”
• Dialogue. These are the conversations spoken between people. It is an important component of creative nonfiction.
• Theme. There is a central idea that is weaved through the essay or work. Often, the theme reveals a universal truth.

TECHNIQUES

1. Create anticipation:

Set up the action to come. To create the momentum that will keep readers turning the page, setting up future action is vital. This means letting us know in Chapter 3 that in Chapter 4 an important dinner will take place. Tell us not only that this dinner will occur, but why it matters, what’s at stake.

I often read manuscripts in which the writer leaps into a high-intensity moment—such as a dinner where she tells her husband she wants a divorce—then inserts a paragraph in the scene to say she’s been thinking of taking this step for months. That paragraph is a tipoff. Instead of interrupting a dramatic encounter with explanation, set up the potent conversation in a previous scene, so that the reader feels the tension and wonders what will happen.

Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock famously described how to create suspense. In a scene where a bomb explodes in a football stadium, he said, movie viewers will be frightened for a few moments when the bomb goes off. But if we know that the bomb is under a stadium seat and will go off in 10 minutes, we’ll be frightened for 10 minutes. When you let the reader know what’s coming and why it matters, you increase tension and momentum.

Just as important as creating anticipation for a particular scene is to set up the whole plot trajectory. Elizabeth Gilbert begins Eat, Pray, Love, her popular memoir, with the sentence: “I wish Giovanni would kiss me.” We know immediately what she wants (love), we know what’s at stake (will she find it, can she be happy without it), and we’re eager to follow her quest. The book, of course, teases us until close to the end.

2. Create propulsion:

Make your scenes have consequences. In real life, after that difficult dinner with your husband, you may have watched the evening news. But if you were writing fiction, there would be a plot consequence to that dinner. The woman initiates divorce. When she does, she flirts with her divorce lawyer, a friend of her husband’s. Complications ensue. In creative nonfiction or memoir, as in fiction, you want to develop the result or consequence of the events you portray. What further action did that dinner propel? How did it complicate or feed the larger story?

I like to suggest that writers think of the difference between a row of pearls on a string and a row of dominos that can be pushed with the touch of a finger. The pearls simply sit next to each other, exerting no pressure. The domino when tipped will knock over the next, which will knock over the next. Don’t let your scenes rest serenely like a string of pearls. Make sure they ripple with the energy and impact of falling dominos, one scene launching another.

Even mundane action can have major consequences. In his poignant memoir This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff describes himself at age 11 performing a mocking imitation of his mother’s new boyfriend. The insecure boyfriend finds out he’s been the object of ridicule, and the consequences for the child are painful.

Tip: Where you place the plot consequences matters. Sometimes you want to hold off the repercussions for a short time to add tension and keep the reader hanging. But if you drop a particular plot line for too long, tension dissipates.

3. Compress time:

Limit the amount of time you cover. This is one of the most central elements of effective storytelling. “Real” time progresses in a linear fashion, one day to the next. But dramatic time, or fictional time, leaps over inessential events. A skilled storyteller dramatizes only those minutes that have an emotional punch and advance the plot.

In Scott Turow’s novel Presumed Innocent, the first chapter seems to cover several hours of real time. Rusty, the protagonist, drives with chief prosecutor Raymond Horgan to the funeral of a young colleague who has been murdered. When they arrive, they greet people and chat, and the service takes place. But Turow knows that a lot of that time is immaterial to the drama. In fact, he dramatizes only about 15 minutes: five minutes in the car, one conversation before the service and one speaker at the funeral, Horgan. Dramatic time gives the illusion of real time, but it is carefully selected and compressed.

Likewise, in her memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi tells the story of a secret reading group of university students who meet weekly at her apartment. She could have easily described the first meeting from beginning to end, then the second and so on. But she knows that would be dramatically weak. Instead, she presents only brief slices of the meetings. One day we see the women arriving. In another scene we see them arguing over a passage in a novel.

These moments reveal crucial conflicts and emotions, and are so vivid that the reader easily imagines the whole two years of meetings. Yet we witness only a scattering of hours. The seasoned creative-nonfiction writer or memoirist knows the difference between what the reader needs to witness (what has to be dramatized), and what can be left offstage. Rather than giving a dutiful account of the literary meetings, Nafisi uses the group as an opening to a passionate exploration of oppression, defiance and identity.

Tip: You may think that because you have limited a chapter to two scenes—a party one night, a difficult encounter the next morning—that you’re choosing scenes carefully and compressing time. But are you covering the party from start to finish, describing yourself as you dress, drive over, greet friends? Do you need to account for the whole evening? Can you capture the significant developments by dramatizing only 10 minutes?

4. Let emotion and event, not the passage of time, prompt your story:

Don’t be bound by the calendar. This is another key element of strong dramatic writing. When you use fictional time (selected, compressed) as a structuring device, you free yourself from the compulsion to follow linear time: June, July, fall, winter. Instead, you let the significant events, and the deep emotions they unleash, animate your story.

Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking ostensibly covers one year, from the evening that her husband, John Gregory Dunne, collapsed and died of a heart attack at the dinner table, to the anniversary of his death a year later. Yet her emotionally driven book is only loosely structured around the calendar year. Mostly it surges and swells with memory, association and persistent anguish over resonant details from her life with her husband. Didion surfaces from grief (water is a repeated image, and its fluidity is fitting to the movement of grief) from time to time to let us know that it’s July or August, but the story immediately veers into another fit of remembered events that rise, like waves, over and over.

Loosening your story from chronological time allows you to follow an emotional logic, a pattern of association and recurring image that goes to the heart of what is significant. In the course of three pages, Didion swerves from a present moment at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, to a trip to Paris she and John took a month before he died, to his last cardiac procedure eight months before he died, to a taxi ride the night before his death in which he expressed despair. “Real” time is discarded in favor of the inner life of emotion, and the story is driven by memory and pain.

DEVICES IN CREATIVE NONFICTIN

1. Alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words in close proximity. Note that this is about sounds—phonetic utterances—not letters. (Even while reading we hear sounds in our minds.)

The funny phone rang in the front foyer.
The crazy cat killed the critter who dared to come into my kitchen.

Alliteration isn’t just for silly sample sentences or poetry. You can use it in almost any kind of writing, especially to emphasize a point:

Statistics show that a high percentage of traffic fatalities involve alcohol. Make sure your kids get the message: don’t drive drunk.

2. Assonance

Assonance is similar to alliteration, but it’s about similar vowel sounds in closely placed words, not consonants.

The two terms are often mixed up, but you can keep them straight by remembering that alliteration has a strong consonant sound—the /t/. Plus it has four different, softer-sounding consonant sounds: the /l/, the /r/, the /sh/, and the /n/.

Assonance has only soft consonant sounds: two /s/ sounds and two occurrences of a barely pronounced /n/. It just sounds more like vowels.

Arrive alive—drive fifty-five.
It’s during these fleeting moments of greed in which we commit our most egregious errors and misdeeds that can neither be retracted nor undone. 

3. Metonymy

Metonymy is similar to metaphor except the comparison is made to something related to or closely associated with the concept the writer wishes to illustrate.

He supported his family with hard work.
He supported his family with his own sweat and blood.

In this case, sweat and blood is closely related to hard work. Since hard work could mean almost anything, sweat and blood makes it clear that the type of work is manual labor of the most demanding kind—construction, farming, and mining are possibilities.

The president approved the plan.
The White House approved the plan.

Here, the White House represents the US president.

Company senior executives refused to approve raises for my work group.
The C-suite refused to approve raises for my work group.

And in this example, the C-suite represents upper-level executives who often have a “C” in their shortened titles: CEO, CFO, COO, and CIO.

4. Onomatopoeia

Sometimes wrongly pronounced ah-nuh-mah-nuh-PEE-ah (/n/ instead of /t/), you might remember this one from school if only because it’s fun.

Onomatopoeia refers to words that sound like the person, animal, action, or event that the word describes.

A bike went by.
A bike whizzed by.

The glass broke as it hit the floor.
The glass shattered as it smashed to the floor.

The rain fell on the driveway.
The rain plip-plopped and splattered on the driveway.

The pesky fly flew around his head.
The pesky fly buzzed around his head.

5. Oxymoron

An oxymoron is a contradiction of terms—a two-word paradox—often used to add humor, dramatic effect, or meaning according to context.

After a long illness, his death brought a heavy lightness to her shoulders.
She didn’t love often, but when she loved, she loved ferociously.

An oxymoron can also be contained in a sentence with a broader meaning.

You’d be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap. ~Dolly Parton

6. Personification

If you’ve ever watched or read a weather report—who hasn’t?—you’re familiar with personification of meteorological events and natural disasters.

Mother Nature holds the cards.

Spring has no intention of arriving any time soon.

Personification ascribes human (person-like) qualities to non-human things or events. This also applies to animals in certain cases although animal lovers might argue they aren’t very different from humans, so that’s a bit tricky.

Good examples of personification:

My computer refuses to cooperate.
The vicious tornado screamed in fury as it blew our roof off.
The cockroach refuses to cooperate with my efforts to squish him.

Not such a good example of personification:

My dog refuses to cooperate.

Dogs are known to have many human-like qualities (and to be uncooperative at times!), so this isn’t really personification.

Take a look at this one:

The flowers swayed happily, petals outstretched to the sun, as the warm summer breeze gave its blessing.

Happy flowers that stretch their petals and a breeze that bestows a blessing are good examples of personification.

7. Asyndeton

The term comes from Greek and means not bonded or not connected. Simply put, asyndeton omits conjunctions (words that connect like and, or, nor, for, so, yet, but)  between words, phrases, or clauses.

Cookies, cupcakes, ice cream, candy, cannoli—oh my. It was beyond tempting.

He was exhausted, spent, drained, sick. His loss was more than he could bear, but bear it he did.

Write, revise, edit, proofread, repeat; that’s your job as a writer.

Be careful when you use asyndeton. It’s best saved for clear-cut tragic, dramatic, sarcastic, funny, or other situations with strong emotion or action. You don’t want the omission of a conjunction to be seen as a careless mistake.

8. Polysyndeton

If you know the /a/ before syndeton in #7 means without, then you might recognize poly– as a prefix that means many or multiple.

Polysyndeton is the use of a conjunction between each word, phrase, or clause in a list—many connections—instead of commas.

Cookies and cupcakes and ice cream and candy and cannoli—oh my. It was beyond tempting.

He was exhausted and spent and drained and sick. His loss was more than he could bear, but bear it he did.

Write and revise and edit and proofread and repeat; that’s your job as a writer.

Polysyndeton creates an effect similar to that of asyndeton, but it’s more relaxed or fluid, and it lends a different rhythm or energy to the sentence and situation. And that can suggest an entirely different meaning.

In the “write and revise” asyndeton example in #7, you have the stern voice of someone dispensing advice. But by using polysyndeton instead, you have a voice (depending on context, of course) that sounds a bit more cheerful or jokingly sarcastic.

9. Hyperbole

Hyperbole, as you may know, is an exaggeration. To be effective, hyperbole should be used sparingly, and the exaggeration has to be obvious.

That guy must have had five cups of coffee.

This isn’t an effective hyperbole if you’re trying to describe a nervous, high-strung, talkative person. Five cups of coffee just isn’t that unusual for many people (even if it would turn you into a hi-speed train wreck), so it’s not much of an exaggeration.

That guy must have mainlined an entire Starbucks.

This is a more effective use of hyperbole since it suggests a consumption of coffee (that could make the guy nervous) in quantities that just aren’t possible. At least one hopes it’s not possible.

More examples of hyperbole:

A mountain of food threatened to crush the table.
I’m so tired I’ll sleep for weeks.
By the time you finish this project, global warming will be long gone and we’ll be in the next ice age.

10. Allusion

An allusion is a brief reference to a well-known person or event that features qualities or characteristics of the subject matter. The tricky part is making sure your readers know the reference and what is meant.

The Cold War was back on when I told the kids we weren’t going to the movies.

If you’re sure your readers know that the “Cold War” didn’t involve actual fighting and that, among kids, it means silence, then go for it.

You’re a great writer, but you probably won’t be rubbing shoulders with Stephen King any time soon.

Most readers know Stephen King is a highly successful, prolific novelist. If they don’t, or if you’re sure they don’t like Stephen King for some reason, then replace with Shakespeare or some other writer they can identify with.

I enjoy helping people, but I’m no Mother Teresa.

Again, if you’re sure your readers know that Mother Teresa was a Catholic missionary famous for compassionate, selfless service to the poor, then use the allusion. If you’re not sure, choose some other way to get your point across.

11. Anaphora

Sounds like a medical diagnosis, doesn’t it? Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences.

Anaphora lends emphasis and dramatic effect because it appeals to a reader’s emotions. It can also drive in a point:

If you don’t dream, if you don’t make a plan, if you don’t act, if you don’t take a chance, you’ll never get anywhere.

A writer dreams, a writer thinks, a writer creates, a writer writes; simply put, a writer bleeds out his soul.

Poetry often employs anaphora; Allen Ginsberg’s The Howl is a well-known example.

12. Anacoluthon

Anacoluthon makes me think of death by anaconda. But it’s a nifty little trick whereby a sentence ends abruptly with a grammatical structure that’s syntactically or otherwise different—and unexpected—from the one it started with.

The initial sentence is often interrupted:

The enormous anaconda slithered out from the—she couldn’t tear her eyes away.

If you’re familiar with formal logic, it’s like a non sequitur, which means it doesn’t follow or doesn’t make sense. But in context and properly executed, anacoluthon makes perfect sense, especially if read as stream of consciousness or interior thought.

A writer must edit and proofread rigorously as well as—oh, I’ve warned you enough.

13. Hypophora

Now what could this be? It sounds like some alternate reality or something, doesn’t it? Well, hypophora is actually the technique of raising a question and then answering it. Which I just did, in case you didn’t notice.

Hypophora can be used as a transition that guides a reader from one section to another. Let’s say you’ve written several paragraphs on ways to improve physical fitness, and now you want to move smoothly into the benefits.

Try using hypophora:

And just how will all this exercise improve your health? For starters, it will strengthen your heart. On top of that, your …

Hypophora is especially effective when readers are likely to have a question anyway. Ask the question for them and answer it.

14. Procatalepsis

This is similar to hypophora, but procatalepsis doesn’t pose a direct question. Instead, it simply anticipates reader objection and addresses it.

You might think these literary devices are silly or not worth your time. If you ask any experienced writer, however, you’ll soon learn how valuable they truly are.

Procatalepsis is especially useful when the topic is controversial. It’s almost like waving a white flag and saying “Hey, I know this might sound off the wall to you, but give me a chance to explain.” It can mean the difference between a reader clicking the back button or closing the book and hanging around to consider your point or finish the story.

Even if you’re not sure your readers will object, it’s a handy way to introduce additional information.

Some people think recycling is a useless waste of time. But if they’d consider fact A, fact B, and the amazing fact C, they might agree that recycling isn’t such a bad idea after all.

15. Epizeuxis

Despite the fancy terminology, epizeuxis is just the repetition of a word for emphasis or to communicate strong emotion.

All he ever did was whine, whine, whine.

My garden is just ruined with weeds, weeds, everywhere weeds!

If you want to succeed as a writer, just write, write, and write some more.

As with most literary devices, use caution. In the Counting Crows song Round Here, “Round here we stay up very, very, very, very late” just works. In Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, “The horror, the horror” just works (and is often quoted). Using epizeuxis carelessly, however, might look like lazy writing and serve no purpose.