The truth of the matter : art and craft in creative nonfiction / Dinty W. Moore

Includes bibliographical references.

About creative nonfiction -- True Stories, Innovative Forms -- Basic Forms of Creative Nonfiction -- The Art of Narrative -- The Narrative Craft -- The Truth of the Matter -- Curiosity and Passion: The Indispensable Tools -- What Makes Nonfiction Creative? -- A Way of Seeing -- More than "Just the Facts" -- Creative Nonfiction versus Standard Journalism: An Illustration -- Honesty, Memory, and the Stranger in the Room -- Writing Prompts: What Is Creative Nonfiction? -- Building Blocks of Creative Nonfiction -- Building Blocks of Creative Nonfiction: Detail and Description -- Detail and Description -- Specific and Particular -- "Injection," Jane Armstrong -- Revising for Detail and Description -- Writing Prompts: Detail and Description -- Building Blocks of Creative Nonfiction: Characterization and Scene -- Characterization through Dialogue -- "A Dramatic Dogalog," Art Homer -- Characterization through Action -- "Drink It," Patricia Ann McNair -- Scene: Letting the Facts Speak for Themselves -- Revising for Scene -- Writing Prompts: Characterization through Dialogue -- Writing Prompts: Characterization through Action -- Building Blocks of Creative Nonfiction -- Distinctive Voice and Intimate Pint of View Distinctive Voice -- "Pop Art," Brian Doyle -- Intimate Point of View -- "Sunday," Henry Louis Gates -- Revising for Voice and Point of View -- Writing Prompts: Distinctive Voice and Intimate Point of View -- Building Blocks of Creative Nonfiction: Discovery -- What You "Make of It" -- "Solstice," Richard Terrill -- "Tino & Papi," Norma Elia Cantu -- Discovery and Details -- Revising for Discovery -- Writing Prompts: Discovery -- From Building Blocks to Complete Essay -- The Memoir Essay -- Examining the Memoir Essay "Genesis," Bret Lott -- "Thumb-Sucking Girl," Sonja Livingston -- Writing Your Own Memoir Essay -- But "Who Cares?" -- Writing Prompts: Memoir -- The Literary Journalism Essay -- Examining the Literary Journalism Essay -- "Hope," Brian Doyle -- From "Where Worlds Collide," Pico Iyer -- Writing Your Own Literary Journalism Essay -- Writing Prompts: Literary Journalism -- The Personal Essay -- Examining the Personal Essay -- "The Meadow," James Galvin -- "In Bed," Joan Didion -- Writing Your Own Personal Essay -- Writing Prompts: the Personal Essay -- Revision and Narrative Structure -- On Serious Revision -- Revision and Narrative Structure -- Braiding -- Collage -- Frame -- Other Strategies -- Writing Prompts: Narrative Structure The Anthology -- The Brief Essay -- Drummond, Laurie "Alive" -- Jakiela, Lori "You'll Love the Way We Fly -- Martin, Lee "Dumber Than" -- Tall, Deborah "The Stories Tell the Land" -- The Conventional Length Essay -- Baldwin, James "Notes of a Native Son" -- Beard, Joann "Out There" -- Cofer, Judith Ortiz "Silent Dancing" -- Dillard, Annie "Living Like Weasels" -- Earley, Tony "Somehow Form a Family" -- Gerard, Philip "What They Don't Tell You About Hurricanes" -- Grealy, Lucy "Mirrorings" -- Gutkind, Lee "Difficult Decisions" -- Hemley, Robin "Reading History to My Mother" -- Hoagland, Edward "The Courage of Turtles" -- Iyer, Pico "Where Worlds Collide" -- Kincaid, Jamaica "Biography of a Dress" -- Lott, Bret "Brothers" -- McPhee, John "The Search for Marvin Gardens" -- Nye, Naomi Shihab "Three Pokes of a Thistle" -- Sanders, Scott Russell "Buckeye" -- Sedaris, David "The Drama Bug" -- Selzer, Richard "The Knife" -- Shields, David "42 Tattoos -- Tan, Amy "Mother Tongue" -- Williams, Terry Tempest "The Clan of the One-Breasted Women" -- Essays on the Craft of Creative Nonfiction -- Dillard, Annie "Seeing" -- Kidder, Tracy "Making the Truth Believable" -- Lott, Bret "Toward a Definition of Creative Nonfiction" -- Schwartz, Mimi "Memoir? Fiction? Where's the Line?"

This introduction to creative nonfiction examines the building blocks of nonfiction prose one by one, illustrating how individual voice and narrative strategies delineate this literary form from conventional nonfiction. Individual chapters are devoted to detail and description, characterization and scene, distinctive voice, intimate point-of-view, and the various ways in which writers discover the significance or universality of their work. Essays from contemporary nonfiction writers such as Henry Louis Gates, Norma Elia Cantú, Pico Iyer, Joan Didion, and others are integrated directly into the text to illustrate concepts.