writers or english degree types: help a layman understand basic genre

July 1, 2013 11:41 AM

My bulldog is swimming in my swimming pool.

If I have no dog or pool and imagined it, it's fiction?

If it actually happened 3 years ago, and I write now, it's non-fiction?

If it actually happened 3 years ago, and it was a poodle not a bulldog, and I write now, it's creative non-fiction?

If I'm writing it as I watch it happen, it's journalism?


Thanks for any help.

posted by larry_darrell to Writing & Language (15 answers total)

Trick question. Bulldogs can't swim.

But yes, your definitions of genre basically work.
posted by infinitywaltz at 11:44 AM on July 1, 2013 [6 favorites]

If it actually happened 3 years ago, and it was a poodle not a bulldog, and I write now, it's creative non-fiction?

I think creative non-fiction is more like, "My bulldog is swimming in my swimming pool, which happens to dovetail nicely with this other non-fiction fact or historical event." The essential facts should remain in creative non-fiction.
posted by headspace at 11:44 AM on July 1, 2013 [2 favorites]

Fiction = stories that are made up.
Non-fiction = narratives that purport to be based on what happened, or what is, or what will be.
Creative non-fiction = I've never heard of this. Your example strikes me as fiction.
Journalism = narratives that purport to be based on what happened. Journalism is a subset of non-fiction.
posted by dfriedman at 11:45 AM on July 1, 2013

Sentences don't really have a genre, as such, and I think you'd need more context to make a determination.
posted by empath at 11:47 AM on July 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

Creative non-fiction might be 'this is what my bulldog is thinking as he swims in my pool', and/or 'this is a dramatic reconstruction of the famous dog-pool incident of 2013'.
posted by communicator at 11:49 AM on July 1, 2013 [2 favorites]

headspace is right about creative nonfiction. Creative nonfiction is when you tell a factually accurate story in a nonstandard style, almost like you're writing a novel.
posted by phunniemee at 11:50 AM on July 1, 2013 [2 favorites]

Creative non-fiction = I've never heard of this.

I'm not entirely sure if this is the same thing as "historical fiction" (many good examples there) which would be sort of like the movies we see that are "based on actual events" (many good examples there) but are known to not be documentaries or retellings of actual fact-based events. A good example is Libra by Don Delilo which is about Lee Harvey Oswald and has the Kennedy assassination as a plot point but sort of diverges from other known facts to paint more of a fiction-like story around an actual real-life person as a character.
posted by jessamyn at 11:50 AM on July 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

Creative non-fiction would be more like, "My bulldog leapt into the pool, his jowls glinting in the sunlight, as we all gasped in horror." You are telling the truth, about real events, but perhaps framing or describing the events in a more narrative or artistic style.
posted by Rock Steady at 11:53 AM on July 1, 2013

"Creative nonfiction" is still a pretty young genre category, and consensus has not by any means been reached as far as how much divergence from absolute fact (i.e. changing the breed of dog, in your example) is allowed.
posted by infinitywaltz at 11:56 AM on July 1, 2013

"Creative nonfiction" is sometimes called "narrative nonfiction," which makes more sense to me. Everything in the story is true, but the writing style and structure are more similar to a novel or short story, as opposed to a journalistic style.
posted by Metroid Baby at 11:58 AM on July 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

If I'm writing it as I watch it happen, it's journalism?

If it's your bulldog and your pool, you're too close to the subject, and shouldn't be reporting on it, so I wouldn't call it journalism no matter when it happened.
posted by neroli at 11:59 AM on July 1, 2013 [2 favorites]

At least for library cataloging purposes, "non-fiction" and "not true" are two entirely different things. For example, a joke book is classified as non-fiction even though the leprechaun and the rabbi probably didn't walk into a bar together. Other non-true things that can be classified as non-fiction include:

-Books about aliens, cryptozoology, the Loch Ness Monster, etc, that take the point of view that the supernatural stuff does exist and it's possible to prove it

-Guides to the universe of popular fictional books (Hunger Games, Twilight, etc.)

-Lots of poetry

-Experiences of people who claim to have communed with the dead

-How to survive the zombie apocalypse

-The books of "fake news" put out by the Onion, the Daily Show, etc.; books of tabloid headlines

Even a history of the U.S. that got most of its facts ludicrously wrong would still be considered to be a non-fiction book... just a really bad one.

To be sure, the line between a memoir and an autobiographical novel can be pretty thin, and determined by just how much of the book is true, but it's a bit too simplistic to say that non-fiction = true.
posted by Jeanne at 12:00 PM on July 1, 2013 [3 favorites]

If creative non-fiction is all essentially true except written in the style of a novel, then what do we call what David Sedaris does, where details and events are made up outright or exaggerated but there is still the kernel of truth there at the core? I thought that was creative non-fiction, but I'm clearly outnumbered.
posted by onlyconnect at 1:19 PM on July 1, 2013

Best answer: Although there is a real and important difference between true and not-true, when you talk about fiction vs. non-fiction you're talking primarily about marketing categories, not reality.

In particular, many books that are marketed as fiction recount events that actually happened. The books might easily have been labeled memoir rather than fiction. For these, the choice between fiction and creative non-fiction is somewhat arbitrary. It's not unheard of (though certainly not common) for a writer to finish a text and still not know whether to present it as fiction or non-fiction; the writer may even submit the text to both fiction and non-fiction markets, to see which side is more responsive.

Overlap in the other direction (made-up stuff presented as non-fiction) is less common, but consider the 'non-fiction' of Hunter S. Thompson, Bruce Chatwin, or, as onlyconnect points out, David Sedaris. There is stuff in there that definitely never happened. Even in creative non-fiction that sticks closer to the truth, it's common to present scenes of extended dialogue that the writer couldn't possibly have recorded; the gist might be true, but the actual words are made up. The choice to label a book 'non-fiction' has complex and mysterious consequences for how it's approached and understood by the reader (even if you don't actually believe some of the stuff in David Sedaris, it seems somehow different because it's 'non-fiction'), but shouldn't be taken too seriously to reflect the truth or untruth of the contents.

Of course there are also many books that are very obviously fiction or non-fiction. I'm just saying there's a big overlap.

I would label your first sentence probably fiction, second and third your choice.

Journalism is primarily concerned with getting the facts right rather than making any sort of literary impression. Maybe there's overlap between somewhat intense journalism and somewhat bland creative non-fiction. It's common for a single individual to write both fiction and creative non-fiction, going back and forth over the course of a career; less common for a single individual to write both journalism and either of the literary genres. Some people start in journalism and then move on to fiction or creative non-fiction, but I think if they're successful they usually stop doing journalism. Some people may consider what they do journalism even though it's marketed more as creative non-fiction, like the way Steve Albini calls himself an engineer rather than a producer.
posted by brianconn at 3:06 PM on July 1, 2013

Creative non-fiction, which I've taught at the university and post-graduate level, is still non-fiction. You don't change facts, you don't invent poodles that never existed.
posted by fivesavagepalms at 4:08 PM on July 1, 2013