Non-Fiction
Non-fiction refers to literature that presents factual information or real events, as opposed to fictional works. It encompasses a wide range of genres, including biographies, essays, memoirs, and journalistic pieces. Non-fiction aims to inform, educate, or persuade readers by presenting accurate and verifiable content.
7 Key excerpts on "Non-Fiction"
eBook - ePubLiterature for Young Adults
Books (and More) for Contemporary Readers
- Joan L. Knickerbocker, James A. Rycik(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Literary nonfiction is sometimes called creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, or literature of reality. It has also been labeled the “fourth genre” to elevate it to the status of literature, while distinguishing it from poetry, fiction, and drama (Root & Steinberg, 2010). Literary nonfiction: recognizes both the inherent power of the real and the deep resonance of the literary. It is a form that allows a writer both to narrate facts and to search for truth, blending the empirical eye of the reporter with the moral vision the—I—of the novelist. (University of Oregon, n.d., p. 1) Nonfiction has come to play a much greater role in middle and high school language arts classrooms. Content Learning Standards for English Language Arts (2018) in the state where we live, Ohio (education.ohio.gov), were influenced by the Common Core State Standards for the English Language Arts (National Governors Association, 2010). Beginning with the sixth-grade standards, the term “literary nonfiction” replaces “informational texts” in the category of “reading information.” The result is to reposition nonfiction in the curriculum, giving a much greater emphasis to creative nonfiction than it had in the past. Both literary and informational works of nonfiction may be read outside of school as part of a young adult’s personal reading, but, in the classroom, teachers can acquaint their students with the many genres of nonfiction and guide them to recognize the elements that characterize each genre. The Genres of Nonfiction There is not a universal system for categorizing the genre of a nonfiction work. The following genres were chosen to aid in selection and instruction for works of nonfiction that were either written for young adults or may have a particular appeal to that audience. Biography A biography is the history of a person’s life written by someone else; it can also focus on several persons, which is called a collective biography...
eBook - ePub- (Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Emerald Publishing(Publisher)
...8 Creative Non-Fiction One-minute summary: starting out in creative writing for many people is not about writing fiction, despite the dominance of novels on the shelves. Other genres of factual writing have developed and have become increasingly popular. Factual writing covers life-writing, travel, documentary, reportage and the personal essay. To add more interest and possibilities for writers, there has been a cross-over tendency in these areas, so that it is common now to find books and articles that mix fact and fiction. Courses and journals in this area are proliferating, notably in the USA, and many courses in Britain contain tuition in writing biography and related areas. In this chapter we look at the skills involved in writing and researching some of these genres. In this chapter, you will learn: ➢ How to plan and research a Non-Fiction book ➢ How to mix genres and conventions ➢ What resources are available to you ➢ How original treatments of such subjects can be achieved Life-writing Creative Non-Fiction – what is it? In America, there is a journal devoted to this writing, and the editor recently stressed the joy of writing in any form based on the real feel of life itself, and celebrated the nature of life is always as full of interest as the best conceived fictional plot. So creative Non-Fiction is a confluence of all the traditional forms of what used to be called ‘discursive prose’ – that is, reflective writing such as an essay, whether it is concerned with a place, a person, or a thought. A cursory look at the book review columns or the shelves of a bookshop will indicate just how popular biography is. Today, there are many options and outlets for life-writing, as it is a genre that links to many other parallel forms of writing...
- Carrie Hintz, Eric L. Tribunella(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Broadview Press(Publisher)
...History, science, and life writing can seem purely fact based, and it is undeniably true that such books aim to communicate factual information. Yet nonfiction for young people often includes stories designed to enliven the reading experience and spark an imaginative response. Reading such texts critically involves discerning whether the fictive elements diminish the capacity of the nonfictional text to communicate ideas and information, but it also involves an understanding of how a fictional element might add to a nonfictional text. Nonfiction works without fictive elements can also be read critically, with attention to the way they structure information, whether through a comparison/contrast structure, the exposition of a process or cycle, a question-and-answer format, or some other arrangement. Nonfiction trade books frequently overlap with the kind of reading that children complete in school classrooms, where they often use textbooks. However, nonfiction trade books are a thriving literary genre in their own right. The American Library Association (ALA) acknowledged the literary and cultural value of nonfiction in 2001, when it began awarding the Ronald F. Sibert Informational Book Medal for the best informational book published in English in the United States. Likewise, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) offers the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children, named after Johann Amos Comenius’s Orbis Sensualium Pictus (The Visible World in Pictures, 1658), considered the first work of nonfiction for children as well as the first picturebook...
eBook - ePubDocuments in Crisis
Nonfiction Literatures in Twentieth-Century Mexico
- Beth E. Jörgensen(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- SUNY Press(Publisher)
...She develops her argument for limiting the category of fiction to nonreferential narrative by carrying out a systematic narratological comparison and contrast between various forms of history writing (biography, autobiography, historiography) and their fictional counterparts. In the present study, the focus is reversed to attend to the distinction of nonfiction by examining the interplay of conventions and expectations that inform the production and the reception of nonfictional narrative and that structure our perception of its particular relationship to material reality and human actions, past and present. The two Mexican writers quoted above are well-known for their contributions to literary nonfiction, in particular the chronicle and, in the case of Leñero, the documentary or nonfiction novel and documentary theater as well. Their reflections that I have excerpted articulate the fundamental connection between nonfiction writing and real world events and identifiable people, and they introduce a number of concepts and terms that arise in any discussion of nonfictional narrative: reality, real life, testimony, datum, fact, and document are part of the essential vocabulary with which to talk about the texts brought together in this book. This lexicon, which must also include other terms such as evidence, plausibility, factual status, and factual adequacy, requires a rigorous interrogation and theorization that goes well beyond the limits of commonsense usage. In this chapter I have assembled critical resources provided by studies in history and literary and genre theory in order to formulate functional definitions for a core vocabulary, without negating the persistent ambiguities inherent in each concept. Three distinct and competing conditions for writing and reading nonfiction inform my study, which acknowledges and seeks to explain the tensions at play among them...
eBook - ePubA Guided Reader to Early Years and Primary English
Creativity, principles and practice
- Margaret Mallett(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...CHAPTER 7 Non-Fiction literature in English lessons Introduction English lessons are the special home of fiction and this is reflected in the length and depth of analysis of a range of genres in Chapter 6. However, some kinds of Non-Fiction have an important place in the English curriculum and have, perhaps, not always received the attention they deserve. And yet the best writing of this kind has qualities which help develop critical literacy and accelerate children’s progress in reading and writing. What are the genres of Non-Fiction of value in English lessons? I include here autobiography and biography, ‘lyrical’ texts and those texts in print or on-screen which set out arguments to inform and nourish the debates that are a feature of lively English lessons. The extracts in Section 1 are concerned with diaries, autobiography and biography. Extract 53 takes up a broad canvass and confirms the place of literary kinds of Non-Fiction including diaries, letters, autobiography and biography – in the English programme. Extract 54 sets out Sue Unstead’s review of Michael Rosen’s biography of Roald Dahl and indicates what she values in his innovative approach to informing and involving his young readers about a gifted writer and sometimes eccentric human being. In Section 2, Extract 55, from Mallett’s Bookmark publication on the lyrical voice in Non-Fiction, attention turns to a poetic Non-Fiction text which describes the life cycle of the eel in such a way that text and pictures combine to draw upon and develop the imagination and feelings as well thinking and understanding. Calling such creations ‘information picturebooks’ hardly does them justice; children who have shared this book with me have commented that it is a ‘sort of poem in words and pictures’. Section 3 turns to some of the texts that support and inspire that part of an English programme which allows children to reflect on all the many issues that concern human beings as they live their lives...
eBook - ePubThe Book of Literary Terms
The Genres of Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, and Scholarship. Second Edition.
- Lewis Turco(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- University of New Mexico Press(Publisher)
...The Genres of Nonfiction “Nonfiction” is a catch-all term encompassing many sub-genres. The formal essay is a scholarly disquisition upon a particular subject, whereas the informal essay is a discussion of some topic in a less rigorous vein. Criticism, including the short form called the review or critique, is commentary on art, music, literature, drama, dance, and other forms of creative endeavor; history is writing on the past, and speculation is writing about the possibilities of the future. Professional writing is a category encompassing such subgenres as technical writing (manuals, articles on medical techniques), business writing (letters, merchandising and manufacturing reports), and report writing of other kinds, as for instance a report from a field office to the home office regarding personnel matters. Biography is the story of someone else’s life. The profile, an essay-length biographical character study ; autobiography, the story of one’s own life; the memoir, a reminiscent essay, and the personal essay is a discussion of some subject from the author’s particular viewpoint—if the topic is a literary one, and the style chatty and informal, it is a causerie. The journal is a daily record of one’s life, to be distinguished from journalism, which is reportage of current events—it is one of the mass media (singular, medium) that include newspapers, radio and television...
- ANNABEL WATSON, Ruth G Newman, Annabel Watson, Ruth Newman(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Interwoven into these sections are practical activities for you to try out and take into your classrooms. These activities are centred on exploring writer’s language choices and how they have been crafted to convey meaning to the implied reader. At the end of this chapter you should be able to: develop understanding of the sociocultural views of reading, writing and genre; understand the reciprocal relationship between reading and writing; develop knowledge and understanding of how model texts can be used to explore real writers’ uses of language, as well as scaffold pupils’ own writing; develop knowledge of the ways in which language, grammar and structural features can be used to convey meaning. Non-Fiction across UK curricula If you take a moment to consider the range of Non-Fiction texts which circulate in our communities, it becomes evident that the list is an incredibly long one. From formal newspaper articles to celebrity ‘insta’ captions, Non-Fiction texts permeate our daily lives – informing us, advising us and most definitely persuading us! Therefore, it is of little surprise that Non-Fiction reading, and writing, is embedded in curricula across the nations of the UK. All curricula highlight the need for pupils to read and write for ‘a variety of purposes and audiences across a range of contexts’ (DfE, 2014c, p. 3) and develop ‘an understanding of how meaning is created’ (CCEA, 2017). As a result, this synergy across the four corners of the UK indicates the importance Non-Fiction plays in our society, and given how new media technologies grant us (and at times bombard us with) constant access to online content, there is little wonder why twenty-first-century pupils need experience analysing and evaluating Non-Fiction texts where potentially biased statements and ‘fake news’ can be presented as verifiable truths and facts...
