Truly creative nonfiction writing
in the English language arts classroom

One of the hottest genres in the literary world these days is a class of nonfiction called creative, literary or narrative nonfiction. The three synonymous terms refer to applying the techniques of fiction to nonfiction writing.

Graduate programs are popping up all over to teach students how to write in this style which may encompass old genre labels such as biography, memoir, and travel writing.

Hazards for writing teachers

Creative nonfiction presents potential problems for writing teachers outside graduate writing programs, particularly those teaching grades seven through 12.

The problems arise from the way English language arts teachers use the word creative. In elementary school, the "creative" kids are those who invent people, places, and situations that are not part of their experience. That association of creativity with an imagined world persists into high school.

A handful of high school students may be excited by assignments to write imaginative stories and poems, but by late middle school such imaginative assignments turn off most boys and many girls.

That turnoff is not entirely bad.

Students encouraged to equate "creative" with "imaginative" may present invented information as if it were fact. Blurring the line between imagined and actual is not good anywhere. It can even be dangerous.

Imaginative writing is not appropriate for most of the writing our students will be required to do in college and on the job. Do you want your investment manager to apply imaginative techniques to his report on the condition of your portfolio? Bernie Madoff's clients didn't, did they?

 

Real world creativity is reality-based

English teachers don't associate creativity with chemistry, government cost containment, or a cure for cancer, but those are the kinds of creative thinking the outside world seeks.

In the world outside the ELA classroom, people are considered creative if they have the ability to do such things as:

• Take objects from their everyday experience and turn them to new uses.

• See opportunities to change the way people live their lives every day.

• Convince buyers they want or need to possess something that is actually nonessential.

These are firmly rooted in everyday reality, but they see that reality in ways that is not obvious to others. We might call them commercial applications of creativity.

The creativity teachers should seek to nourish in all students is not pure imagination but the application of "what if?" thinking to genuine problems.

Teachers in grades 7 and beyond need to make a concerted effort to get kids to develop this kind of reality-based creativity. Such creativity is particularly important for kids turned off by assignments calling for imagination; one of them may be the next Bill Gates.

The simplest way to develop students' creativity to give assignments that challenge them to apply what they are studying in school to real problems in real situations that they can experience with their senses.

Oddly enough, creativity can be encouraged by teaching students strategies for thinking about problems. Even though the strategies may seem uncreative because they are formulaic, they allow students to develop the information necessary to find a solution.

The trick for English language arts teachers is to find genuine problems within their curriculum that students can be directed to solve and write about. The students' discussion of the problem and solution might not be literary or narrative nonfiction, but it would certainly be genuinely creative nonfiction in the eyes of the nonacademic world.