Starting With Creative Nonfiction

I have often seen people who want to write something, but have no idea what to write about. If I suggest a few random ideas, they usually get rejected for not being interesting. If I ask what they want to write, it is usually a fictional story, usually of a large scale. So if they already know what they want, why can't they write it? "I don't know how to come up with it all and put it together."

I enjoy large-scale fiction, so I would definitely encourage a person who wants to create it to just go for it. But as a guide, I would recommend starting with something simpler. If a writer wants to tell a grand story, but has trouble with character actions and interactions, then I would suggest starting with creative nonfiction. Since a story is a story, whether real or fake, it will be just like writing fiction, only you already know how the story goes. If you write a nonfiction story, you already know that the characters are real, so all you have to do is learn how to portray them realistically and figure out how and why they do the things they do.

Creative nonfiction is nice because you don't have to strain to figure out what should happen next or anything like that. You can focus solely on your telling of the story to engage the reader and develop your voice. It is like training wheels for writing. Of course, I do not mean to denigrate creative nonfiction. It is just as valid as fiction. It is simply nice because you already know all of the events. The only real drawback to it is finding a story that you think is interesting enough to write down.

I won't say that everybody should write creative nonfiction before writing fiction, but I will say that it can be a very helpful first step in the writing process. Most people are already doing it anyway, justifying it as writing what you know. So just go with the flow and get writing.