The case for creative non-fiction

NOT ALL creative writings are fictional or imaginary. Journalistic but imaginative, they go by the names personal journalism, new journalism, and creative nonfiction. They depict real events with the tools of fiction.

For Prof. Jose Victor Torres of UST’s Faculty of Arts and Letters, creative nonfiction is “a mixture of fact with the principles of writing fiction.”

Precursor of the form is “literary journalism,” basically journalism using fictional techniques, such as the non-fiction writings of Nick Joaquin (which the late National Artist invariably called “oral history, e.g. the Philippines Free Press profiles on Nora Aunor, Tony Agpaoa, and Flash Elorde, and the books “Aquinos of Tarlac” and “Quartet of the Tiger Moon”) and of the American Tom Wolfe (“Right Stuff,” “Electric Kool Aid Test”) and Truman Capote (“In Cold Blood”).

Some literary journalists have expressed discomfiture with the term “creative non-fiction” because it implies there’s non-fiction that is not creative or literary. They claim that the term basically preserves the literati’s snobbery toward journalism when the best non-fiction is in fact journalism or reportage.

They also argue that lately creative non-fiction has more and more tended to appear as extended personal essays or narratives, and if the genre is is to be accepted, it should be as a variant of personal writing, or personal journalism, such as memoirs, autobiography, and family history.

Literary journalists argue that curiously, the best literary journalists such as Joaquin, Wolfe, Capote and even Jose Lacaba, Greg Brillantes and Wilfrido Nollege wrote reportage, not “personal journalism.” They wrote about events, not about themselves.

For the Philippines as in the US, creative nonfiction is gradually setting in the form of personal journalism or extended personal narratives, such as Linda Enriquez Panlilio’s biography of her mother.

It is also true that fictionists tend to fictionalize their personal or family history, and this blurring of distinctions sometimes tends to pass for creative non-fiction.

Best nonfictionists

According to Prof. Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo of the University of the Philippines’ Department of English and Comparative Literature, fictionists are the best writers of creative nonfiction. She explained Vince Groyon’s novel The Sky Over Dimas as really a stylized revelation of the dark secrets of the upper middle-class families of the Torrecarions and the Jarabases. The novel won the grand prize in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 2002.

Another fictionist, Clinton Palanca, applies fictional techniques in writing about his experiences as a gourmand via his blog.

“Creative nonfiction is the most popular (literary) form right now. Nick Joaquin said it in the ‘90’s that the literature in the future is really nonfiction. And that is the distinction between journalism and literature,” Hidalgo, a former Varsitarian editor in chief, said.

The great number of students taking up creative nonfiction as a major at UP is indicative of the flourishing of the genre, she added.

Torres explained that even before Joaquin joined the Free Press and Philippine Graphic, he had already been writing new journalism.

“I think, somehow, Nick Joaquin was a precursor of that kind of new journalism. If you look at his works and compare it with that of Tom Wolfe, the style is almost the same but Nick Joaquin has more finesse,” he said.

Creative nonfiction, according to Hidalgo, may be in the form of essays and magazine feature articles. Essays and magazine feature articles cover newspaper columns such as commentaries, profiles of a place, and reviews.

Personal journalism’s more prevalent variant is the narrative type which comes in the form of memoirs, travel narratives, and family histories.

However, despite the proliferation of travel essays, Hidalgo believes that few are at par with the best. “Very few of them go beyond the ‘and our next stop was…’ variety,” she said.

Hidalgo said the creative non-fictionist is versatile. “You could get a job in media, advertising, and you can write for all the magazines and newspapers. The kind of training that you need for these jobs is the writing of creative nonfiction, rather than poetry or fiction.”

Elements

Hidalgo enumerates the strategies for writing creative nonfiction in her book, “Creative Nonfiction: A Manual for Filipino Writers.”

“Read. Read the best,” Hidalgo said. “A writer’s view is found in the story’s structure, approach, point-of-view, tone and voice.”

By the way a writer injects his observations in the story, not only intelligence can be gleaned, but also his personality.

A plot must be something that would hold the reader’s interest. And good chronology is an aid to this end. Point-of-view is what holds the entire narrative together.

“If it says something about the past, the writer puts his impression and observation. If it is writing about the present, ‘di mo maaalis ‘yung first person actor dun sa work,” Torres explained.

Tone, which adds significance to the flow of creative nonfiction, deals with a writer’s attitude toward the topic. Hidalgo mentioned that this attitude may be magical, offensive, sarcastic or a host of other outlooks. Then finally, there is the voice which refers to the words, languages, images and metaphors used to set the context.

For characters, Torres explained that in fleshing them out for a story, a writer must show a person’s motivations, personality and personal conflicts.

“What you do is form and put them into work, that when the readers read it, you introduce them to the person you’re writing about,” he said.

Most important, any story must finish off with a convincing ending.

But Hidalgo cautioned against the mixing of facts and personal observation. A writer must be aware not to mistake subjectivity for editorializing, she said. One’s arguments and viewpoints must be supported by accurate and sufficient evidence.

Though a story is expected to be subjective in its approach, a writer must not avoid excluding his readers.

“It’s like telling the story and bringing your reader to the place that you’re describing,” Torres said. A. R. D. S. Bordado