Writing Creative Nonfiction Writing Creative Nonfiction Fiction Techniques for Crafting Great Nonfiction e Theodore A. Rees Cheney Ten Speed Press Berkeley / Toronto Copyright © 1987, 1991, 2001 by Theodore A. Rees Cheney All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except brief excerpts for the purpose of review, without written permission of the publisher. Excerpt from River-Horse: Across America by Boat by William Least Heat-Moon: Copyright © 1999 by William Least Heat-Moon. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Excerpts from Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt: Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. Copyright © 1996 by Frank McCourt. Excerpt from “Twynam of Wimbledon” from A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles by John McPhee: Copyright © 1968 by John McPhee. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Every effort has been made to secure permissions to reprint the excerpts included in this book. Any corrections should be reported to the publisher. Ten Speed Press P. O. Box 7123 Berkeley, California 94707 www.tenspeed.com Distributed in Australia by Simon and Schuster Australia, in Canada by Ten Speed Press Canada, in New Zealand by Southern Publishers Group, in South Africa by Real Books, in Southeast Asia by Berkeley Books, and in the United Kingdom and Europe by Airlift Book Company. Cover and text design by Betsy Stromberg Cover photograph by Theodore A. Rees Cheney Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cheney, Theodore A. Rees (Theodore Albert Rees), 1928– Writing creative nonfiction: fiction techniques for crafting great nonfiction / Theodore A. Rees Cheney. p. cm. ISBN 1-58008-229-7 1. Reportage literature—Technique. 2. Nonfiction novel—Technique. 3. Journalism—Authorship. 4. Narration (Rhetoric) 5. Creative writing. I. Title. PN3377.5.R45 C46 2001 808’.02—dc21 2001003095 First printing, 2001 Printed in Canada 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 — 05 04 03 02 01 Dedicated to Didion, McPhee, Talese, and Wolfe They had the courage to break away and report the world to us in words more vivid, more dramatic, and more accurate. Acknowledgments I acknowledge here the women who helped, each in her own way, with the production of this book: my mother, Ruth Rees Cheney, who made my life possible and creative; my wife, Dorothy Bates Cheney, who has allowed me the necessary freedom to write; and Meghan Keeffe, who edited this new edition. Contents 1 Creative Nonfiction 1 2 Openings: Dramatic and Summary Methods 10 3 Authority Through Realistic Details 35 4 The Realities of Group Life 59 5 The Realities of Individual Lives 80 6 Dialogs, Monologs, and Other Logs 93 7 Angles of Approach and Points of View 117