Structuring Personal Narratives and Other Creative Nonfiction

Unlike more traditional essays, personal narratives and other kinds of creative nonfiction ("CN") do not necessarily have to have an explicitly stated thesis. They may have non traditional "shapes" or structures as well. Some are made up of fragments. Others may appear to focus on one subject, while actually discussing something else. It is easier to talk about the ways CN may deviate from the traditional essay than it is to talk about what a work of CN must do, if it is to be effective. After all, CN is ... creative. Right?

Partially right, anyway. However, CN shares certain characteristics with its traditional cousins. Essays are not works of fiction. The personal narrative is a recounting -- no doubt quite subjective, and that's okay -- of experience or event as perceived by the author. How s/he saw it; what it meant to her or him.

Although CN is not fiction, it does share certain characteristics with fiction, especially the short story. CN is often as richly detailed as fiction, with dialogue and descriptions of people and places. CN is often structured like a short story. A story has no thesis statement, but it has a point, a theme. Its scenes build one on the next, each adding to the reader's understanding. And toward the end a story has a climax or epiphany, an emotional high (sometimes low) point, which is what all the scenes have been leading up to. Similarly, a personal essay usually has a main point or idea toward which everything else leads, often rendered (as in fiction) as a scene, which serves as the emotional high (or low) point of the essay.

This scene can be as simple and low-key as the inevitable ending of (for example) the church picnic where you visited with relatives you hadn't seen since you were a child. Or it can be as dramatic as (for example) the night you finally left an abusive relationship or the morning you woke up in jail and realized if you didn't quit drinking you'd die. It can take the form of a problem solved -- large or small, it doesn't matter -- or a question answered. A task accomplished, a skill learned. It can take the form of a journey, in which case the reader expects a psychological or emotional "journey" in parallel with the physical one.

One crucial thing to remember is that a personal essay is structured like a short story, not a novel. In a short paper (5 - 8 pages) it's important to keep your focus narrow enough that you can explore your material in depth. Choose one incident, and concentrate on that. An essay called "My Childhood" will probably ramble on for pages. My eyes roll up at the thought. "How I Vanquished the Sandbox Bully" sounds like something I'd enjoy reading, as does "Never Say Uncle," about gathering the courage to report an act of sexual abuse by a relative. Okay, maybe "enjoy" isn't exactly the word for that one, but it was a gripping narrative, for sure. In each case, the topic was sufficiently narrow, and everything in the essay pointed to a decision point. Yet neither made an explicit statement: "if you stand up to bullies they'll leave you alone (and you feel good)," "sexual abuse should not go unpunished." Such statements are unnecessary. Everything in the essay helps to illustrate the point, without being obvious about it.