CNF, Part 3

Hooray, Friday is here! Those of you in the Albuquerque area, don't forget to come by Page 1 Books tomorrow between 11 and 1 to hang out with me and several other local authors!

For now, we focus on creative nonfiction once more. As promised, we're talking about three things I think you should never do with CNF, and why.

Don't do it. 

1. Second person

Wednesday I told you a little bit about why I don't like second person writing in creative nonfiction. Today... well, today I'll expound on it.

Second person is a lot like first person. However, in second person, you're forcing a story onto the reader. It's like saying that instead of the story happening in the life of the author, it's happening for the reader — and in the case of CNF, I just don't think that works.

The whole point of creative nonfiction is to tell a story that happened in your life, something that you think readers might like to know about you, something you think other people should know, in general. It's not to force a story on them, to make them live out something that happened instead to you. Personally, I just think second person can be uncomfortable and in some cases cruel when it comes to CNF, and therefore I don't advise using it.

2. Present tense

All right, you've already heard my rants about present tense, so I won't go too deep into this one. The trouble with present tense is that, again, it makes it difficult for the reader to understand exactly what you're trying to convey. Unlike second person, where you're forcing your own story onto the reader, present tense forces your reader to imagine that this story is playing out right now.

For most readers, it doesn't make any sense. And for a lot of us, present tense will push us so far out of the story that we can't recover, and we'll simply put it down and never pick it up again.

The whole point of writing is to have people read, not to make them uncomfortable or annoyed and have them put our work down.

So my advice to you is to write in past tense, to avoid this as much as possible.

3. Extreme embellishment

We talked on Monday about how CNF is essentially embellished nonfiction. It's a nonfictional story, a real story, with a little bit of fiction mixed in for flair. But that means we have to be extra cautious with those embellishments.

A lot of readers, oddly enough, can tell the difference between reality and falsehood when it comes to storytelling. So many of them will see right through the fiction you've added to the story. But many others will think the whole thing is true, and you don't want to come out later on as the writer who completely falsified a creative nonfiction story.

That's happened in the past, and those writers' popularity has gone way down.


I hope these have all been good tips for you when it comes to CNF! If you haven't tried writing in this genre before, I highly recommend it. CNF can be a challenge, but it's also a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.

Have a good weekend! I look forward to seeing all the Burquenos tomorrow at Page 1!

[love]

{Rani D.}