Reflections, September 6 2007

This week's quote comes from the piece in Writing Creative Nonfiction entitled "The Shadow Knows".

"He is wearing jeans and a saggy white t-shirt. He has a kind of potato face, lumpy and uneven, a droopy lower lip and a bulbous nose. His hair is grey and thinning, uncombed. He is in his sixties, but he looks a good ten years older." -pg. 258

Initially, it appears that a passage such as this one tells the reader little about creative nonfiction. What brought my attention to the passage, though, is how rich it is in detail. I can actually see this old, seemingly broken down old man, in the room with me as I read.

I will be the first to admit that I struggle with good, vivid descriptions of people. Trying my best to not use one cliche, I inevitably stumble into using another one. But what Lowry did in this story was to bring every person alive, not only through their actions, but also in the way that they are described. Such a tool, the ability to bring someone alive through words, is essential in any creative genre, but in particular in creative nonfiction. After all, the individuals in these stories are real, so great care must be taken to nail that person accurately and fairly.

Fairness. That's another key word that must be explored when talking about creative nonfiction. You have to be fair to your subject, no matter your personal biases. In a sense, that comes out in chapter four of "Creative Nonfiction", about the art of interviewing. Don't come in with a personal agenda, whether writing a story or interviewing someone; simply write the story and get the facts.