Can a storyteller make stuff up?

Truman Capote making stuff up

Truman Capote making stuff up





Herodotus and Thucydides walk into a bar….



… and Truman Capote serves them a drink


So what makes reportage creative non-fiction? Schweidel thinks that


It does this by using the techniques of fiction, which are

  • dramatized action
  • dialogue
  • the point of view of a participant



And so, concludes Schweidel,


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5 thoughts on “Can a storyteller make stuff up?

  1. Andreas,

    A nice, concise look at that oxymoron, creative non-fiction. I hadn’t run across Schweidel,and he sounds thought-provoking.

    btw, Collingwood, the great British historian, credits Herodotus with inventing history and was, indeed, in one sense the creator of scientific inquiry. Collingwood argues that history-as-science has four criteria: 1) it begins by asking questions (thus is scientific, as opposed to Homer, who told us something he ‘knew’); 2) it is humanistic, asking questions about actual events involving actual humans within known timeframes; 3) is rational, basing its answers using evidence gathered; 4) it is self-revelatory — it “exists in order to tell man what man is by telling him what man has done.”

    The criteria Herodotus did not meet was number three, basing his answers on evidence. Evidence was what Thucydides added to the mix of history, the Greek word meaning “to investigate” or “make inquiry.”


  2. It’s what gets me all the time, that as author who writes “case studies” for an INGO, am I distorting the facts or merely advertising about the organization. I take creative liberties, where I can, not make up stuffs but, write in ways that makes it more interesting to read.

    I believe that writers don’t really make stuffs up all the time, they just take a chunk of life and write and then rewrite it, making it more palatable. And, yes, I think we can call that making stuffs up, not in ways that suggest a bad meaning though.

    • Just by writing one of your case studies, you are presumably forced to 1) simplify and 2) exaggerate, in order to narrate anything interesting at all. Thus by imposing order on a chaotic world, you are forcing a storyline onto it. Then you make it comprehensible and entertaining, and before you know it, instantlynoodles has written …. “creative non-fiction”.


    • Hahaha. You know, the instance I hit the send button and saw my comment awaiting moderation, I remember a thought striking my head. Instantlynoodles, know that name might not give my ‘writing’ a serious tone, coming from an author noodling around with a funny name.

      But, yup, the end result, after simplifying and making it interesting, is in fact, a creative non-fiction 😀

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