The Cambridge introduction to creative writing

Writing creative nonfiction

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Morley, David - The Cambridge introduction to creative writing (2011) - libgen.li
Harry G. Broadman - Africa\'s Silk Road China and India\'s New Economic Frontier (2007, World Bank Publications) - libgen.li

From Alamein to Zem Zem by Keith Douglas

Writing creative nonfiction
Creative nonfiction exercises an almost incredible gravity. Playwrights, novelists and journalists are pulled into it along with popular scientists, psychologists and mathematicians. Poets use their perceptual and linguistic precision to create exact and resonant pictures of reality. It catalysed the movement called
‘self-inclusive scholarship in which academics place themselves into their work and talk personally about their role within the research process, even though, to the real world, scholarship and criticism has always been a personal endeavour.
History scholars discover untapped public audiences for their knowledge as
‘narrative historians, while academic connoisseurs of the arcane beguile readers with books on singular, or single, subjects such as silk roads or salt. If you have a story to share, you will use any device of literary craft to tell it well, or at the very least clearly.
Devices
In creative nonfiction, these devices will include many of the characteristic methods of the practice of fiction. These might include story-like qualities such as hooking the reader with the first sentence (the device is more permissible than in literary fiction developing convincing real-life scenes and characters;
using linked events and narrative writing description vividly and tautly creating and maintaining a believable point of view and setting and using speech and dialogue compellingly. Reality must be transformed into literature, but remain recognisable and grounded in life and vivid detail.

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Creative writing
Obviously, the range of creative nonfiction is vast. To give you an idea of range, here are two contrasting examples from radically different experiences war and nature – by two young writers who are both writing close to their worlds, with absolute precision.
From Alamein to Zem Zem by Keith Douglas
Control now instructed us Open fire on the enemy. Range one zero zero zero. Give the buggers every round you’ve got. Over With, I think,
some relief the various squadrons acknowledge One OK. off ‘Two
O. K. off Three OK. off. I ordered Evan to fire. I can’t see a muckin’
thing,’ he protested. Never mind, you fire at a thousand as fast as I can load Every gun was now blazing away into the twilight, the regiment somewhat massed together, firing with every available weapon. I
crammed shells into the six-pounder as fast as Evan could lay and fire it . . . The turret was full of fumes and smoke. I coughed and sweated;
fear had given place to exhilaration.
(NE2: 2538)

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