A Quote by Lee Gutkind

Creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and often more accessible.

Lee Gutkind

Quote Topics

Accessible Creative Creative Nonfiction Exist Fiction Writers Ideas Information Interesting Make More Nonfiction Often Things Up Writers

Quote Author

Lee Gutkind
American - Writer

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.

Lee Gutkind

If anything, I've found nonfiction a little easier. You don't have to make anything up. Of course, that's the inherent difficulty as well: when you hit an information black hole, you don't get to make it up. That hasn't come up too often with this project though. I'm lucky to have tons of primary source material , reams of letters and diaries and memoirs.

Debra Dean

I always find myself stopping to write down ideas of things I'd like to make from computer hardware items to things new moms need - inventions to share with others to make their lives more fun or interesting or easy.

Lisa Loeb

Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work.

Andy Goldsworthy

Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things; otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realization. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work.

Andy Goldsworthy

I really connect to strong feminist writers that make their ideas accessible for the rest of the world.

Laura Harrier

One of my beliefs as a filmmaker is that if you can make somebody laugh, you can make them listen. With laughter, you can get somebody's guard down, you can open them up to listening to you. They don't feel like they're being preached to or talked down to. I think it helps, it makes really hard to understand information a little more accessible and palatable. And at the end of the day, it makes a movie a little more fun. It doesn't feel so heavy handed.

Morgan Spurlock

When you're researching things that have happened, the clear narrative arc is not there already. This is the problem of writing nonfiction for me - writing nonfiction which is about serious subjects and has serious political and social points to make, yet which is meant to be popular to a degree - what happens when the facts don't fit a convenient narrative arc? I guess that for a lot of nonfiction writers that is a central challenge.

Misha Glenny

That's just the way I end up making meaning from the direct material in my life - I think what makes it accessible is the desire to communicate, more than anything. It does make it accessible, but that's not what motivates me.

Frances Stark

If we can make some kind of adjustments, maybe in the game, to make it interesting and slow down the surfaces, then it will be more fun and more interesting.

Jana Novotna

One of the interesting things about the history of poetry in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries is that people who read liked getting their information in rhyme just as much as in prose. The genre that we would think of as nonfiction often was written in verse in forms like the Georgic when people thought that one of the tasks of poetry was conveying arguments and information in a pleasant way.

Robert Hass

Go ahead and make up a ton of lies about me. That's way more interesting than pretending Wikipedia has any real information.

Nick Kroll

Companies are accumulating vast amounts of information about your likes and dislikes. But they are doing this not only because you're interesting. The more they know, the more money they can make.

Richard Thaler

Maybe I have a one-track mind, but the best writers and thinkers are focusing on nonfiction these days; this is the genre where a writer can make a mark and change an aspect of the world - much more so than in fiction.

Lee Gutkind

It's not the number of trucks parked outside that make a movie interesting but if you have more money, you have more time. More time enables you to try out other possibilities or follow an interesting lead. I don't like indulgence, but to have more possibilities is always more interesting.