creative writing nonfiction cg

• Zondervan Library
• Research Guides

Creative Nonfiction

• Creative Nonfiction - Home
• Writing Creative Nonfiction
• Reading Creative Nonfiction

Hours Mapped to Guides

Zondervan library hours.

2023-2024 Academic Year Hours

Closed for Chapel  MWF 10:00 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.; Hours vary for exam week

Librarian Profile

Guide Title

About creative nonfiction.

Creative Nonfiction (CNF) is a form of writing set apart from other nonfiction works by its focus on storytelling. Because creative nonfiction is a vast, multi-faceted genre, it can be difficult to nail down a straightforward definition of precisely what it is. Purdue's OWL ( Online Writing Lab )  identifies two major aspects of the content of  creative nonfiction : first, it relays events honestly, and second, it reflects on how those events impacted the writer. Unlike authors of works of history or biography written with the intent of informing a reader, creative nonfiction writers do not seek objectivity; rather, the events depicted in their pieces are typically meant to convey a broader message, be it about their emotional connection to the subject, a note about the workings of society, a theme in their lives, or some other meaning they identify with those events. The efforts of creative nonfiction writers to accomplish the communication of meaning are assisted by careful use of words and voice, a practice reminiscent of that of poets. Just like poets, creative nonfiction writers consider both the sound and meaning of the language they use and structure their thoughts carefully in order to evoke strong images and emotions in their readers.

Resource / Link List 1

Defining creative nonfiction.

• Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL): CNF
• What is Creative Nonfiction (TCK Pub.)
• Understanding Creative NonFiction (Writers.com)

Resources / Books

Tips on writing creative nonfiction, on writing cnf.

General Research Tools

Google scholar, google scholar  .

WorldCat Research Station

Worldcat research station  .

Page Bottom

• Next: Writing Creative Nonfiction >>
• Last Updated: Mar 13, 2024 1:20 PM
• URL: https://library.taylor.edu/cnf

Hours Policies Support Services

WorldCat Research Guides Interlibrary Loan (ILL)

Staff Directory Email the Library

Blackboard My Library Account My Taylor

Zondervan Library Taylor University 1846 Main Street, Upland, IN 46989 (765) 998-4357

Course Syllabus

Shapes of Stories

Even good first drafts are often shapeless, with fragmentary scenes and images, anecdotes and episodes; it’s in the revision process that we more fully understand how to develop and connect all of these elements as we carve out the shapes of our stories. This course will help you expand your writer’s tool kit by experimenting with a variety of structures—everything from straightforward, traditional presentations to offshoots of the lyric essay, such as braids, collages, or the many varieties of borrowed forms that we find in “hermit crab” essays. You will read great examples and then try out each shape, if only briefly. Over the course of 10 weeks, you can choose to write about one subject using these different shapes, or let the shapes inspire an essay you hadn’t planned to write.

Students are encouraged to write at least 800 words each week for the first six weeks to become familiar with each shape, and to choose two essays to complete. Throughout the course, writers will submit work for peer and instructor critique and engage in online discussion—please see below for more details.

How it works : 

Each week provides:

• discussions of assigned readings and other general writing topics with peers and the instructor
• written lectures and a selection of readings

Some weeks also include:

• opportunities to submit a full-length essay for instructor and/or peer review (up to 1,350 words each)
• writing prompts and/or assignments
• optional video conferences that are open to all students in Week 2

Aside from the live conference, there is no need to be online at any particular time of day. To create a better classroom experience for all, you are expected to participate weekly in class discussions to receive instructor feedback on your work.

Week 1: Narrative Arc

Storytelling expectations that date all the way back to Aristotle can inform our creative nonfiction, helping us to dig deep into the significance of our experience and shape our work to foster connections with our audience. This week, we’ll look at the elements of a typical story arc as defined by Aristotle and reinterpreted by a variety of writers, and experiment with how it might apply to a story you want to tell.

Week 2: Models, Diagrams, Patterns, and Metaphors

Writers including Janet Burroway, Kurt Vonnegut, and Jerome Stern have proposed methods of looking at story structure. We’ll explore a number of models, diagrams, patterns, and metaphors, many of which draw from fiction and all of which offer us varied and flexible approaches to thinking about our stories.

Week 3: Frame

A frame story begins with an introduction that may disappear altogether or reappear only at the end, providing an entry into a story that might otherwise seem foreign to the reader. A really complex frame story might contain several nested stories, like a Russian doll. You will explore this technique by writing a frame story.

Week 4: Lyric

John D’Agata and Deborah Tall describe the lyric essay as a form that “takes from the prose poem in its density and shapeliness, its distillation of ideas and musicality of language.” This week, we will look at how our essays can take structural cues from poetry.

Week 5: Braid

The braid weaves together complementary or contrasting threads. It can be an artful way to switch between past and present, to offer two perspectives, or to introduce a metaphor that takes the story deeper. Explore what happens when you interweave complementary or contrasting topics or time periods or perspectives through reading examples and trying it yourself.

Week 6: Collage

The fragmented essay relies on contrast and resonance to achieve a sense of continuity, and often incorporates external material: photos, quoted material, lists, etc. This week, you may choose to turn in for feedback an essay that employs any techniques we have discussed so far.

Week 7: Hermit Crab: Intro to Borrowed Forms

The term hermit crab was coined by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola to describe an essay that “appropriates existing forms as an outer covering, to protect its soft, vulnerable underbelly. It is an essay that deals with material that seems born without its own carapace—material that is soft, exposed, and tender, and must look elsewhere to find the form that will best contain it.” Also called found, borrowed, or appropriated, these essay forms take their shapes from other written texts, such quizzes, recipes, liner notes, questionnaires, field guides, bibliographies, reviews, footnotes, indexes, or letters.

Week 8: Hermit Crab: Instruction Manual

A particularly popular form of the hermit crab essay takes its form from the instruction manual. We will look at offshoots of this form and play with them in our own work.

Week 9: How to Find the Right Form

Read the essay by John McPhee about how he finds the structures for his essays and write about what shape you find most attuned to your style of writing. This week you will choose another essay to complete and turn it in for feedback.

Week 10: Returning to the Narrative Arc and the Flexibility of Form

We’ve isolated these shapes for the purpose of learning how to use them, but they inform and merge with each other when used skillfully. This week, we’ll revisit the traditional story arc and consider how it is enhanced, transformed, or even challenged by the other forms and shapes we’ve explored.

Creative Non-Fiction Curriculum Guide(CG)-HUMSS

CLOPIFIED does not own this SHS Creative Non-Fiction Curriculum Guide.  DepEd owns this and has certainly the right over its copyright law.

The Creative Non-Fiction Curriculum Guide introduces the students to the reading and writing of Creative Nonfiction as a literary form. This also develops in students skills in reading, and thinking critically and creatively, that will help them to be imaginative readers and writers.

Trending Courses

Join our growing community for FREE!

Only fill in if you are not human

Never miss the chance to learn something new!

Like our page to see daily insights.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

K to 12 BASIC EDUCATION CURRICULUM SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL – ACADEMIC TRACK

Related Papers

John Kilgore

Karen Le Rossignol

In a recent issue of TEXT, Matthew Ricketson sought to clarify the ‘boundaries between fiction and nonfiction’. In his capacity as a teacher of the creative nonfiction form he writes, ‘I have lost count of the number of times, in classes and in submitted work, that students have described a piece of nonfiction as anovel’. The confusion thus highlighted is not restricted to Ricketson’s journalism students. In our own university’s creative writing cohort, students also struggle with difficulties in melding the research methodology of the journalist with the language and form of creative writing required to produce nonfiction stories for a 21st century readership. Currently in Australia creative nonfiction is enthusiastically embraced by publishers and teaching institutions. Works of memoir proliferate in the lists of mainstream publishers, as do anthologies of the essay form. During a time of increasing competition and desire for differentiation between institutions, when graduate out...

Nonfiction, The Teaching of Writing, and the Influence of Richard Lloyd-Jones

Bruce P Ballenger

A few years ago, the M.F.A. and undergraduate creative writing programs unexpectedly left my English department, joining theater and several other programs in a new School of the Arts. The decision to leave was negotiated secretly with the president's office and stunned most department members. Among them were the rhetoric and composition faculty-myself included-who had for years staffed the creative nonfiction offerings, including the introductory undergraduate course and the graduate M.F.A. workshop. The graduate course would surely leave with the M.F.A. But what about the undergraduate class? Introduction to Creative Nonfiction was originally conceived by the rhetoric and composition faculty, who also taught-and cherished-the course. Unsurprisingly, the creative writing faculty argued that English 204 was a "creative" writing course, and therefore belonged with them as part of their new undergraduate curriculum.

Crisis Reporters, Emotions, and Technology

Johana Kotišová

The first part of the methodological chapter explains in detail how and why the style of writing bringing together empirical material and fiction, termed “creative nonfiction,” was employed, and illustrates its main functions: illustrative, allegorical, organizing, effective, and reflexive. The author also explains most of the metaphors used in the research monograph including the character of James, the fictional journalist, and argues that the book profits precisely from the intersections of the factual and fictional narratives. The second part of the chapter re-tells the ethnographic research process, following four stages: establishing the field, immersion in the research problem, disentanglement, and return to the field. Kotisova also addresses the epistemology and methodology of studying emotions, and the opportunistic, multi-sited, and participatory logic of the research design.

The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado eBooks

College English

This article explores the genre of creative nonfiction, highlighting the largely hidden processes that influence our appraisals of it. Using a framework that builds from genre theory, this work argues that by exposing and confronting the complexity of the mechanisms by which we judge writing to be factual, we can productively intervene in debates about writing’s veracity, and more broadly, we can better understand why we tend to discount divergent views on facts.

from The Centrality of Style Edited by Mike Duncan and Star Medzerian Vanguri

Crystal N Fodrey

This chapter makes the following argument: Undergraduates studying essayistic composing—especially those at the beginner or intermediate level—can benefit from stylistic instruction just as other composition students can. Regardless of whether a creative nonfiction course is housed in composition or creative writing, style study in such courses has the potential to demystify what makes flash essays, travel memoirs, literary journalism, nature writing, and so on, different from the more traditional forms of academic writing to which they are accustomed. Teaching the importance of style analysis and production helps students new to the genre of creative nonfiction understand what it means when they are asked to write in an open, identification-seeking, literary way.

Tanya Bennett

Stacey Korson

Sheffield Maravilla

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Dissertation

Jennifer Manalo

Mary Soliday

LEARNing Landscapes

Mark Silverberg

William Germano , Margret Grebowicz , Christopher J. Lee

Ursula Hurley

University of New England

Julian Croft

Amy Ebersole

Cardiff University Phd Thesis

Josie Pearse

Michael Arnzen , Heidi Miller

Frances Kalu , Patricia Leavy

Journal of Literacy Research

Jill V Jeffery , Sarah Beck

Raquel Haua

English Leadership Quarterly

Ευθυμία Σταυρογιαννοπούλου , DIMITRIOS POLITIS

ACADEMIC WRITING AND BEYOND IN …

Ilana Shiloh

English: Shared Futures, English Association’s ‘Essays and Studies’ series, Vol 71

Bárbara Gallego Larrarte , Diya Gupta , Elleke Boehmer

Academia Letters

Stoycheva Katya

Qualitative Inquiry

Jerry Rosiek

Maria Lahman

Scholars International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Hamzah Abdurraheem

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

CalArts offers a variety of unique programs at the undergraduate and graduate level within its six world-renowned Schools—Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music and Theater.

Undergraduate core courses are the foundation of BFA studies at CalArts, providing a strong general education and opportunities to deepen every student's artistic practice.

• Interdisciplinary
• International Engagement Opportunities
• Open Learning
• Coursera for Campus
• Academic Calendar
• Course Catalog
• Academic Requirements
• Archived Catalogs

Explore is your first stop if you are considering applying to CalArts. Here you can find information about your program(s) of interest, events the Institute is hosting or attending, a virtual campus map, and much more. Your journey to CalArts starts here.

• Application Process
• Application Deadlines
• International Applicants
• Transfer Applicants
• Academic Transcripts
• Letters of Recommendation
• Critical Studies

Center for Integrated Media

• Campus Tours and Information Sessions
• Open Houses
• Accepted Students
• Submit Enrollment Deposit
• Admissions FAQ
• Meet Our Counselors
• Tuition and Fees
• Cost of Attendance
• Net Price Calculator
• Estimated Multi-Year Tuition Schedule
• Health Insurance
• For BFA Students
• For Graduate Students
• Outside Private Scholarships
• International Students
• Federal Work Study
• Student Employment
• Policies & Eligibility
• Self-Service Proxy
• Financial Literacy Resources
• Understanding Your Award
• How to Pay Tuition
• Payment and Refund Deadlines
• Payment Options
• Access Tuition Statement
• Residence Life
• Dining Options
• Student Union
• Campus Maps
• Santa Clarita Tip Sheet
• Health and Wellness
• Disability Services
• Academic Support
• International Student Support
• Sexual Respect
• Office Of Community Rights And Responsibilities
• Basic Needs Center
• Career Fair
• Internship Program
• Bridges to Industry Program
• Campus Safety
• Covid Updates
• Board of Trustees
• Mission and Values
• Strategic Framework
• Equity and Diversity (IDEA)
• Nondiscrimination Policy
• Facts and Figures
• Accreditation
• Consumer Information
• The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts
• Land Acknowledgment
• Institutional Effectiveness
• Giving Opportunities
• Planned Giving
• Impact Stories
• How to Give
• Industry Partnerships
• Advancement Staff
• Annual Report
• Scholarship Impact
• Alumni Council
• Alumni Events
• Benefits and Discounts
• Stay Connected
• Get Involved
• Professional Development Resources
• Parents & Families
• CalArts News
• Event Publicity
• Social Media
• Publications
• Events Calendar

CalArts is located in Santa Clarita, Calif., 30 miles north of Los Angeles. Explore the local area and community.

Offering innovative continuing education arts courses designed to meet the needs of both emerging artists and lifelong learners.

• Request Info

Creative Writing

• Program Faculty
• Writing Now Reading Series
• Next Words Reading Series

2-Year Program

The CalArts MFA Creative Writing is unique in the field for the way it combines a dedication to experimental practice and a resolutely non-genre tracking curriculum . These commitments are intertwined: unlike in many MFA programs our students are free to pursue their imaginative and experimental impulses into whatever genre their work takes them—including into hybrid genre forms of their own. This is all in keeping to CalArts’s foundational commitment to experiment and interdisciplinarity. Students who come to our program regularly engage in substantial projects in multiple genres across their coursework and beyond. In other words, each student designs their own path through our curriculum, engaging with what questions of genre and practice inform their work as it develops. All this gives special import to the work each student does with their mentor during their time in our program. Students meet with their mentors multiple times each semester to discuss their plan of study, their creative work, and larger questions related to a life in writing and to connections between writing, other art forms, and intellectual endeavors. Our commitment to the mentor relationship is foundational  to the pedagogy of CalArts.

While our program is non-tracking we do offer four optional emphases that help guide our students through our curriculum and the course offerings of other schools and programs in the Institute. We call these emphases our Concentrations . These non-required Concentrations are Image + Text , Writing and Performativity , Writing and its Publics and Documentary Strategies . Image + Text traces the relationship of the written word and the visual image, including the cinematic, the static image, and the materiality of language. Writing and Performativity offers students an array of courses focused on the creative and critical practices of performative writing. Writing and Its Publics deals with the public face of writing, be it publishing, community-based work, or writing for various art audiences, while Documentary Strategies takes on a wide array of artistic engagements with documentation, witnessing, and archives of all kinds. Students whose work and interests closely engage one of these four areas can formalize that engagement by declaring an official Concentration, which may be advantageous in their professional lives after the MFA.

In the Creative Writing Program, our core courses attend closely to questions of form and aesthetics, as well as to the historical and critical contexts of literary work. Most classes combine workshopping of student-generated work with discussion of assigned texts. While not all classes are offered every year, over the two-year program all students will take a wide selection, honing their individual visions and practices while experimenting with new forms and subjects. Writing students also benefit from being able to take courses for elective credit in the MA Program in Aesthetics and Politics, as well as other MFA/upper-level BFA courses throughout the Institute.

Full Curriculum

Detailed curriculum and academic requirements can be found in the online course catalog.

View Curriculum Requirements

Ready to Begin?

Request Information

Interdisciplinary Opportunities

In addition to CalArts' rich and diverse community and naturally collaborative atmosphere, the Institute provides several programs of study that can be pursued concurrently with a student's chosen metier.

The Center for Integrated Media concentration is designed specifically for MFA students whose creative use of technology—in particular digital media—goes beyond their primary areas of study.

Home • Programs • Creative Writing • MFA

School of Critical Studies

661-253-7803  phone 661-255-0177 fax Room E123J

Santa Clara University

The jesuit university in silicon valley.

The SCU English Department is ranked #4 in the nation by the  "25 Best Colleges for English Majors 2020" list  compiled by  gradreports.com . 

The Department of English is the home for reading and writing at Santa Clara University. You'll take classes from best selling authors, ground-breaking scholars, and award winning teachers . You'll go beyond the page–learning from experience through community-based coursework , internships , and independent research – all while being immersed in the innovation, energy, and opportunity of Silicon Valley. You’ll engage critically in this cutting-edge environment through lenses of race, gender, spirituality, sexuality, language, and more. We offer an English Major and Minor , a Creative Writing Minor, and a Professional Writing Minor .

About Our Program

The Department of English affords students a rich undergraduate education in the liberal arts centered on literature, cultural studies, and writing. Critical, professional, or creative writing projects are integral to every course in the English major. Students and faculty in the English Department discuss and write about British, American, and global literatures, rhetoric, technical and professional communication, new media, and film. A range of theoretical approaches are used, sometimes with a focus on visual rhetoric and cultural studies. The department also offers the Creative Writing Program , which provides students with a coherent course of study in the writing of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction and the Professional Writing Program , which focuses on the theories, ethics, and practice of writing in industry and public contexts. The English major prepares students to read and write critically, to bring intellectual flexibility to academic and professional problems, and to enter the workforce as individuals with trained skills in analysis and self-expression.

Nadine Koochou ’24 explores Assyrian American identity through writing.

Nikhita Panjnani ’24 celebrates songwriting and literature at SCU.

What Careers Can You Pursue as a Humanities Major?

Faculty & Staff

408-554-4142 | St. Joseph's Hall 209 email

A summary of the event/party held for Simone Billings’ retirement from being a faculty member in the SCU English Department

An Interview with Isabella Gomez and Dr. Amy Lueck presented by Júlia von Gersdorff

Beyond the Classroom

Graduate Advising

Internships

Canterbury Program

Sigma Tau Delta

Student Work

HUB Writing Center

UX Research & Writing Lab

News & Events

An interview with English Department alum Teresa Contino ’23 on her experiences this past year as a Fulbright Scholar in Náchod, Czech Republic

Unique course teaches students about sustainability through film, then pushes them to produce one of their own.

During her time on campus, Natalia Cantu ’24 explored the different worlds of English and Biology.

• More pages:

Coming Events

Life after scu.

Fulbright Scholar Octavio De Leon ‘23 on Connecting with the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico

Get Connected

View this profile on Instagram SCU English Department (@ scuenglish ) • Instagram photos and videos

CRAFT: On Writing Trauma in Creative Nonfiction by Travis Harman

July 10, 2024.

It is simply not enough to write a narrative about a traumatic experience and hope to reach a deep connection with our readers. It is the well-rounded characters, with their quirks and struggles, embedded with deep reflection, that bring the reader and author together on the page.

While writing my memoir, Remote Outpost: Fighting with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan , I knew that I wanted to connect with readers in hopes they would see what it was like fighting on the front lines in Afghanistan. It was crucial for me to have a strong protagonist and knew that I would have to start with a character sketch of myself, as I had changed greatly from when I had experienced my trauma. I began my sketch using this example from Columbia  University’s Fiction Foundry .

I mined my brain, every crevice, searching for parts of me that only I knew. Even though not all the information I obtained was used in my writing, once I brought my protagonist to life and set him aside from the crowd with oddities and quirks, I began my story. Having taken playwriting courses at Wilkes University, I knew that forward action would help the story move forward, but it began to lack something personal. My mentor, playwright Nicole Pandolfo, suggested that I reflect on my time deployed from different aspects. How I felt about my father serving with me in a combat zone, or how it began to mold me from a naïve boy into a battle-hardened man.

I had to distance myself from being the author and back to that naïve boy. Unsure of how to approach this concept, I began to journal while I wrote my scenes, trying to remember what feelings I had at the time of these incidents that had occurred fifteen years prior. I also began to note how I felt in the present while writing about my traumatic events so I could take a moment to disassociate and reflect.

I wanted to let the reader into my mind either during or after the event — no matter how ugly. I needed a reference though, and continued in my research for combat veteran memoirs until I stumbled upon a self-published memoir by George M. Coen entitled Collateral Damage. Much like my memoir, it told his tale of growing up in a dysfunctional household and then leaving for the military. He joined the Navy and deployed to Vietnam. During his time there, he experienced many traumatic events.

Coen’s characters are flat and there is little emotion in his narratives, and this showed me what I wanted to avoid. Right before I decided to scrub his book from my list, my gut told me to finish it. I felt that I owed it to him to read his story in its entirety. It was the end of his piece that finally connected me to him. Coen looked back on his life and recognized he was suffering from PTSD. He writes:

“Professionally, I was doing well — a respected member of the community, active in several civic organizations, and my business was growing. At home, things were not as successful. Marital tension was high as my wife, and I tried to reconcile differing life dreams and expectations. In retrospect, as I reflect upon this period, I believe I was experiencing classic PTSD symptoms, and those symptoms were having negative effects on my marriage.”

Since reflection and dissociation are part of healing after trauma, the author must capture this from the character’s perspective to present a truthful experience for the reader. Coen grasps this concept well, and with it he evokes sympathy and empathy from the reader, making a connection with them.

Collateral Damage does not have much to offer in terms of character development, but it does have a great deal to do with reflecting and recognizing prior actions caused by the symptoms associated with trauma. The balance between imaginative and reflective lacks, but, at the end of the manuscript, Coen confesses that he hopes his memoir helps others in their struggles. Coen does just this with his reflections on his past experiences. He can help others with his reflections.

The character will only take the ball so far down the field, but it is the reflection of the character’s actions and experiences that help us find human connection. Writing about trauma and mental health is not a new concept, but it is not often talked about. It is important to connect the dots on why we, as readers, are so fascinated with trauma, as well as healing and rebirth.

As writers, we must paint accurate portraits of our experiences, and how we have developed as a result, to gain the trust of our readers.

Share a Comment Cancel reply

Contributor updates.

Alumni & Contributor Updates: Early 2024

Contributor Updates: Fall 2023

Contributor & Alumni Updates: Spring 2023

Contributor Updates: Spring 2022

Writing Creatively to Make Sense of the Times We Live In

Journalist katrin schumann talks about why she writes fiction..

Updated July 12, 2024 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• Studies show that the act of all kinds of writing hones our reflective abilities.
• Creative writing stretches our imagination, increases emotional resilience, and alleviates stress.
• Writers of nonfiction examine complex issues that are relevant to our times.
• Novelists examine the issues using characters as a vehicle for empathy.

Studies show that the act of writing hones our reflective abilities, stretches our imagination , increases emotional resilience , and alleviates stress . In my conversation with journalist-turned-novelist Katrin Schumann, we discuss how creative writing, in particular, is a worthy pursuit to understand the issues of our time. Schumann is the author of the nonfiction books Mothers Need Time Outs Too and The Secret Life of Middle Children, as well as the novels The Forgotten Hours and This Terrible Beauty .

You’re a trained journalist and the author of nonfiction books. Why, in the last few years, have you focused on writing fiction?

Writing nonfiction has been a way for me to examine complex issues that are relevant to our times, including psychological ones, but I’ve found that in recent years, I’ve been drawn to fiction because it allows me to get closer to the subject. In exploring thorny issues like loyalty and trust or co-dependency , I’m able to do more of a deep dive in fiction. The form allows me to sit with the complexities, to live in the gray areas with my characters.

I can’t always do this with nonfiction, where I’m approaching the topic from a specific angle, seeking solutions. In fiction, I have space to explore nuances that fascinate and confuse me and try to make sense of the inevitable contradictions. It’s messier and more delicate than nonfiction. For me, this feels more true to the human experience.

All writing involves deep reflection. Do you find the act of writing fiction to be a different kind of therapy?

Yes. Spending years creating characters and situations that grapple with serious, real-world problems lets me explore my own difficult experiences. For instance, I’d been wrestling with the aftermath of dealing with a narcissist when I started writing my first novel. By fictionalizing those challenges, I was able to find the courage to linger in the dark areas, examining them from all angles in order to find where the light might get in.

I discovered greater empathy and resilience in myself while also being able to acknowledge the trauma I’d been through. It’s using my imagination, combined with researching some very real and current psychological challenges, that ultimately feels most powerful to me and an effective way to reach readers.

How does fictionalizing the story give you more latitude or depth in exploring topics? You write about things like self-reliance and depression, and I’m wondering why not just write articles about it.

I write to figure out my own issues and to learn, but also to share. For me, fiction writing makes me work harder and go deeper. I’m trying to change people’s minds and hearts in subtler ways. I’m reflecting on experiences I’ve had, wrestling with what they mean, and how we can all learn from them and come out the better for it.

Yet, I don’t want to be prescriptive; I want people to draw their own conclusions. I research deeply about whatever topic I’m tackling.

To write my last novel, I studied the history of neuropsychology, dissecting studies on substance abuse . I conducted interviews. For all my books, I gather and study facts and figures, but with novels, I take that a step further. I put those facts and figures into play with my imagined characters to explore what happens. I imbue the impersonal with empathy and allow readers to try to figure out how they feel about how the characters contend with the issue. This approach leads me to meaningful personal discoveries while also taking the reader along on the emotional journey.

How do you decide whether to approach a topic in a nonfiction book or in a novel?

The more I’m personally involved with the topic, the more I want to explore it in fictional form. Ironically, for fiction, I feel like I should have an even better understanding of some of these psychological challenges than if I were covering them through straight nonfiction reportage. I first have to understand the topic and its history so my story is not only realistic but feels authentic.

I want readers to trust me, which means I have to be thorough. It’s my aim to take them on a ride that’s compelling as well as informative. And I love learning something new when I’m immersed in researching and writing fiction.

If writing fiction is about wrestling with your own demons, why not simply journal?

Journaling is, without question, a beneficial reflective activity. Yet what differentiates this kind of work from journaling about our problems or writing blog posts is that novelists are committing more time and energy to the deep dive on a specific topic. My last novel took almost three years to write, and during that time, I was reading everything I could get my hands on about the topic in order to distill it so that readers might find it relevant to their own lives.

At that stage, it’s not really about me anymore; it’s about the human condition. And in the end, that’s what readers relate to, I think. It’s what makes them call their friends and say, “I just finished this great book. You’ve got to read it.”

More about Katrin Schumann 's work

Lynne Griffin, R.N., M.Ed. , researches family life and is a novelist.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Sticking up for yourself is no easy task. But there are concrete skills you can use to hone your assertiveness and advocate for yourself.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience