If you have questions about what is creative nonfiction, check out the Creative Nonfiction Foundation's "what is" page at
http://www.creativenonfiction.org/thejournal/whatiscnf.htm
In a nutshell, their definition is: The word “creative” refers simply to the use of literary craft in presenting nonfiction—that is, factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid manner. To put it another way, creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and, often, more accessible.
Sometimes it is called literary nonfiction or narrative nonfiction.
Depending on how you write it, a memoir is creative nonfiction. I actually wrote my memoir (about covering an oil spill and investigating the company responsible for it) in third person, as if it were a novel, because the structure fit, and as a reporter, I'm more comfortable writing in third person. I based everything on news sources, both mine and other media outlets, so that everything that happened and almost every word is factual and attributable, but I used creativity in how I told the story.
Non-fiction can be really boring, creative non-fiction adds the element of storytelling to the facts, figures, dates and quotes, so that it becomes a more interesting read than a series of newspaper articles, IMO.
Focus
