Customer Reviews

Keep It Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction

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Who says that non-fiction has to be just the facts and nothing else? "Keep It Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction" is a guide for writers who are set to write nonfiction but want to do it with some flare, by taking the concepts of fiction - scene, dialogue, metaphor, suspense, and applies them to reality, as a way of telling the truth in the way it happened. Explaining the genre as a whole, sifting through facts to find the best story, points of view, libel fears, immersion, and so many more concepts are covered, making "Keep It Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction" highly recommended for anyone who wants to dive into this field.

I had read some articles by Gutkind in his journal Creative Nonfiction and was excited to see a book that included some of the most valuable selections from previous issues of the journal. As a writer new to this field, I found the chapters extremely helpful and have already been able to apply some of the concepts (mostly concerning research) to my own writing. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is just getting his or her feet wet with this genre, and I think it would also be beneficial as a refresher for those who have been working with this type of writing for some time.

This is a book I'm keeping for reference. It's definitely a must for those interested in pursuing creative nonfiction as a writing genre. You'll find interesting material on plagiarism, interviewing technique, and POV. The piece on David Sedaris and the family repercussions of his memoirist writings was fascinating -- and a good lesson for everyone who intends to venture into family-and-friends memoirs. As I said, I'll keep this as a reference, but it's also a very interesting read on its own.

Okay, so I'm not a writer. I don't even play one on TV. I'd LIKE to be a writer, but beyond a few stories, I'd like to tell, I possess no formalized tools (read: haven't taken any creative writing classes AND probably didn't pay enough attention in English 101 - much to my regret) to get those stories out.

That's why I liked "Keep it Real." Mr. Gutkind and his team of contributors have assembled several constructive articles regarding necessities for "Creative Nonfiction." Much of what they share moves beyond the Creative Nonfiction genre and can inform the work of the fiction writer.

While the order of the brief articles seemed random (they're alphabetical, dummy!) I frequently found myself underlining passages to which I would want to refer as I worked through future projects. Within a couple of days, I was back in the book, rereading an underscored passage or two.

As I rewrite something that was "perfect" before, as I mold a journal entry into a memoir piece, heck, even as I take notes for a possible idea, many of the tenets of "Keep it Real" guide my efforts and help make my efforts more succinct and efficient. I have license now to be more critical of my work:

"Take a highlighter and yellow in the scenes. If half your essay, more or less, is not glaring and blaring back at you in yellow (I use green), that's a red flag, a warning that your essay may not be infused with enough narrative to compel a reader onward." (page 141) That one piece of advice is more than worth the price of admission for me.

Perhaps this is not the volume for a student in an MFA program or for someone who is studying writing in a formal program. But for someone with a story to tell who is looking for tips and coaching about how to tell it, this book deserves an easily accessible place on the shelf. You'll be referring to it often.

The book works as a general view of "creative nonfiction". An easy read. Not too technical if you already have some knowledge of creative writing.

I ordered this because I needed it for Creative Nonfiction class. I thought it wasn't very useful and the rest of the class agreed. Boring and full of things we had already been taught.