Creative Non-Fiction: Types and Reasons

• Study notes for Creative Non-Fiction

Week 1

• Autobiography is a personal life account written by that person.
• Biography is a life account of someone written by another person.
• Travelogue is a truthful account of an individual’s travel experiences.
• Literary journalism, also known as reportage, is creative nonfiction closely related to magazine and newspaper writing.
• Reflective Essay involves a writer describing a real scene and adding personal reflection on the incident's meaning.
• Personal Narratives include personal experiences shared through autobiography, memoir, reflective essays, and narrative essays.
• Testimony/Testimonio is a first-person narrative about socially significant events, narrated by a typical or extraordinary witness/protagonist.
• Blog, short for weblog, is an updated webpage for personal commentary/business content.
• Four reasons to start a blog include self-improvement/personal development, sense of community, profit, and giving back.

Week 2

• Critique is a formal analysis/evaluation of a text, production, or performance. It may be a response paper, also known as a peer review.
• Critiquing criteria are the standards, rules, or tests for judgements.
• Article critique involves critically assessing research to identify/evaluate an article's strengths/weaknesses.
• An article critique includes an introduction, summary, critique, and conclusion.
• Criteria for critiquing include coherence/organization of paragraphs, development of literary elements, factual information, and other qualities regarding form/content.
• Coherence is the quality of the text being logical, consistent and understandable.
• Cohesion is what connects sentences in a paragraph or sections of text.

Week 3

• Writing Process involves critically and thoughtfully shaping ideas for expression.
• Purpose is required in all writing, to give it specific goals.
• Audience is important, writing is effective when the intended readers understand the message.
• Subject is about someone or something.
• Writer's identity/personality is revealed through their words, tone, approaches, and attitudes.
• Drafting and Writing Task includes generating ideas/finding a topic, stating the main idea or thesis, organizing ideas, drafting/writing the draft, and proofreading, editing, and revising.
• Parts of an Essay consist of the introduction, body paragraph, and conclusion.
• The introduction is the first paragraph with general statements to capture the reader's attention, and a thesis statement stating the main points.
• The body paragraph consists of one or more paragraphs after the introduction.
• The conclusion summarizes/repeats the most important ideas.

Week 4

• Revision means re-evaluating written work for improvement.
• Revision involves rethinking the thesis and making structural changes, and takes time.