CNF W3

• Elements of Creative Nonfiction

  • Fact
  • Extensive Research
  • Reportage/Reporting
  • Personal Experience and Personal Opinion
  • Explanation/Exposition
  • Essay Format
• Literary Elements Used in Creative Nonfiction


  • Character/s
  • Detail
  • Dialogue
  • Diction
  • Figurative Language
  • Flashback
  • Flash Forward
  • Foreshadowing
  • Imagery
  • Motif
• Fact


  The writing must be based on fact, rather than fiction. It cannot be made up.
• Extensive Research


  The piece of writing is based on primary research, such as interview or personal experience, and often secondary research, such as gathering information from books, magazines, and newspapers.
• Reportage/Reporting


  The writer must be able to document events or personal experience.
• Personal Experience and Personal Opinion


  Often, the writer includes personal experience, feelings, thoughts, and opinions. For instance, when writing a personal essay or memoir.
• Explanation/Exposition


  The writer is required to explain the personal experience or topic to the reader.
• Essay Format


  Creative nonfiction is often written in essay format. Example: Personal Essay, Literary Journalistic Essay, Brief Essay
• Character/s


  Every story has characters, but in nonfiction, these characters are real people. In order to make the work relatable or empathetic, nonfiction authors often follow the same conventions as fiction authors and develop characters that catch reader's attention.
• Detail


  Details provide pieces of information. Writers of biography and autobiography use details to give the actual facts about a person's life. Biographies do more than just relate details, however. The details you choose, arrange, and examine help communicate your own opinions and character as well as those as your subject.
• Dialogue


  Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more ("dia" means through across) people. It is the conversation between characters in a narrative. It is the lines or passages in drama which are intended to be spoken.
• Functions of Dialogue


  • It moves the action along in a work and it also helps to characterize the personality of the speakers, which vary depending on their nationalities, jobs, social classes, and educations.
  • It also gives literature a more natural, conversational flow, which makes it more readable and enjoyable.
  • By showcasing human interaction, dialogue prevents literature from being nothing more than a list of descriptions and actions.
  • Dialogue varies in structure and tone depending on the people participating in the conversation and the mood that the author is trying to maintain in his or her writing.
• Diction


  Diction is the writer's choice of words. The author chooses each word carefully so that both its meaning and sound contribute to the tone and feeling to the literary work.
• Figurative Language


  Figurative language is a type of language that varies from the norms of literal language, in which words mean exactly what they say for the sake of comparison, emphasis, clarity, or freshness.
• Flashback


  Flashback is a literary device in which an earlier or past event is inserted into the present or the normal chronological order of a narrative.
• Flash Forward


  Flash forward or prolepsis is a literary device in which the plot goes ahead of time, i.e. a scene that interrupts and takes the narrative forward in time from the current time in a story.
• Foreshadowing


  Foreshadowing is a literary device in which the author hints certain plot developments that perhaps will come to be later in the story. It is the presentation of material in a work in such a way that later events are prepared for.
• Imagery


  Imagery refers to the "pictures" which we perceive with our mind's eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin, and through which we experience the "duplicate world" created by poetic language.
• Motif


  Motif is any element, subject, idea or concept that is constantly present through the entire body of literature. Using a motif refers to the repetition of a specific theme dominating the literary work.