Literary Nonfiction

Literary Nonfiction• Uses literary techniques associated with

fiction, prose, poetry, and drama to describe nonfictional subjects

• Relies on figurative language and vivid, colorful details

“On a Rainy Morning” by Charles S. Brooks

• Persons with umbrellas clamp them down close upon their heads and proceed blindly like the larger and more reckless crabs that you see in aquariums. Until it rains, the umbrella stands in a Chinese vase beneath the stairs like a lifeless creature. But when a November wind is up, it is a cousin of the balloon, with an equal zest to explore the Earth and alight upon the moon…

How is this different from straightforward nonfiction?

• Nonfiction essay: “The powerful rain and wind forces pedestrians to ling to their umbrellas.”

• Brooks adds more descriptive detail • He compares people in the rain to crabs in the

aquarium • Personifies the umbrella by describing it as a

“listless creature” • Types of elements usually seen in a story or poem

Use Your Imagination…• Brooks finds a descriptive way to describe

the effects of rain• Literary nonfiction uses informational

structures like cause and effect, process, and main idea and supporting details to blend facts with personal experience

Narration• The telling of a story• Literary nonfiction often tells a story with

detailed descriptions of characters and setting

“On a Pleasing Encounter with a Pickpocket” –essay by Louise Imogen

Guiney • I was in town the other evening, walking by myself,

when, at a lonely street corner not adorned by a gas lamp, I suddenly felt a delicate stir in my upper pocket. In the beat of a swallow’s wing, my fingers had brushed the flying thief, my eyes saw him, and my legs flew madly after him. I was in for the chase in the keen winter air, with the moon just rising over the city roofs. My able bandit was short, pale, sullen, with coat collar up and hat brim down.