Introductory Notes
Nonfiction:
focuses on real, rather than imaginary,
subjects, (people, things, events, and
places) facts rather than opinions
 Writers know the importance of being
clear.

 what they write must be of interest, or no
one will want to read what they have to say
Facts vs. Opinions
On average, adults watch double the
amount of television that teenagers do.
 Adults watch too much TV.
 The first CD pressed in the U.S. was
Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA
 The best CD ever produced was Bruce
Springsteen’s Born in the USA

Types of Non-Fiction
Narrative Nonfiction
 Informative Nonfiction

Narrative Nonfiction
Tells a story, just as fictional (made=up)
stories do.
 Includes setting, character, theme, plot,
conflict
 May be told in chronological order or in
flashback.

Informative Nonfiction
Informative Nonfiction: writing that
explains a topic or promotes an opinion
 Newspapers, journals, and reputable
magazines and some websites are
sources of informative non-fiction
 Two types of informative non-fiction are

 Expository
 Persuasive
Types of informative nonfiction

EXPOSITORY

PERSUASIVE
 Type of writing that explains,
 Type of writing that is
gives information, defines,
or clarifies an idea
 Found in news articles, in
histories, in biographies,
cookbooks, how-to
manuals, etc.
aimed at leading the reader
or listern to rethink or act in
a certain way
 Found in newspaper
editorials, in speeches, in
certain types of essays,
advice columns, movie
review, etc.
Types of Narrative and
Informative Nonfiction
Autobiography
 Biography
 Memoir
 Diary
 Essay
 Speech
 Informational articles

Autobiography

Autobiography: story of a person’s life
written by that person
 written from a 1st person point of view and
based entirely on the author’s memory
 Subjective: proceeding from or taking place
within an indicidual’s mind and unaffected by
the outside world
 Advantage: reveals the motives, emotions,
and fears that only the writer can know.
Biography
Biography: story of a person’s life
written by someone other than that
person, uses the third person point of
view
 Objective: Uninfluenced by emotion or
personal prejudice
 Advantage: An outsider can tell us
things about background, history,
influences, of another person—things
that the person may not have realized

Memoir

Memoir: an account of an event or
period in the author’s life that usually
emphasizes the author’s personal
experience of a particular event or time
period
 Like an autobiography, a memoir is told from
the first-person point of view.
Diary

A first-person, day-to-day account of a
person’s life written as it is lived
Essay

Essay: short piece of nonfiction writing
that usually deals with a single subjectMany essays share the author’s
thoughts about a subject or experience.
Types of Essays

Narrative: a nonfiction story
 In this short form, authors present a real time
and place, real people as characters, and
events that actually happened.
 often includes a central conflict or problem, as
well as a climax and resolution (plot elements)
 Knowing that a literary work is a narrative
essay can help you to gain historical and/or
general knowledge about other people, places
and events.
Types of Essays

Personal: usually informal in their
language and tone
 often reflect an incident in the writer’s life
 The writer may share a life lesson, or reminisce
about a past event.

Descriptive: uses carefully selected
details to help readers picture an object or
place
 Writers often use sensory details in their
description to help the reader understand what
something looks like, sounds like, and feels like.
Types of Essays (Informational nonfiction)

Expository: when you write to inform, give
directions, explain an idea, or make something
clear

Persuasive: employs techniques designed to
convince an audience to think or act in a certain
way
 examples of techniques:
○ cause or effect reasoning (appeals to logic)
○ emotion
○ ethics
○ authority
 A good persuasive writer anticipates the possible
concerns and objectives of the audience and uses this
insight to directly address possible arguments.
Speech

Speech: speaker tries to influence the
listener’s ideas or actions
Informational Article

Informational Article: Provides facts
about a subject
 Newspaper and magazine articles, feature
stories
 Textbooks, pamphlets, how-to books
Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Title: the name of a work of literature
 expresses themes, highlights important
details, or points to a central character or
event
Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Author’s purpose: reason for writing
 may be to entertain, to persuade, to express
opinions, to describe or to inform
Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Characterization: how the author
reveals the personality of the characters
 Direct characterization: author makes
direct statements about a character
 Indirect characterization: author reveals a
character through his or her words,
thoughts, and actions and through what
other characters think and say about the
character

Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Historical Narrative: work of nonfiction
that tells the story of important historical
events or developments
 people described have motives and writers can
reveal them through their words, actions,
appearances and other details
 includes events that are usually told in
chronological order
 some also include a central conflict, rising action
and a resolution
Literary Elements of Nonfiction
Narrator: person or voice that tells the
story
 Anecdote: a brief account of an
interesting or significant circumstance

 Writers often use anecdotes to illustrate their
points, to get a reader’s attention, to clarify
ideas or to convey a story element such as
setting or rising action
Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Author’s purpose: the author’s
reason for writing
 The purpose may be to persuade, to
express an opinion, or to inform
Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Tone: an author’s attitude toward his or
her subject matter
 conveyed through elements such as word
choice, punctuation, sentence structure, and
figures of speech
 can convey a variety of attitudes, such as
sympathy, objectivity or humor
 the specific tone is often related both to the
type of writing and its purpose
Objective versus Subjective
Writing

Objective= facts which can be proved to
be true by the senses, the calendar, or the
clock
 examples: the geographic location of a city, the
time of day

Subjective= details that may be true, but
are verifiable only by reference to your
own state of mind
 examples: feelings about an event, description
of a person
 word connotation (associations that affect
meaning)
Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Plot: sequence of events
 Exposition
 Rising action
 Climax
 Falling action
 Resolution
Literary Elements of Nonfiction
Aphorism: a short, pointed statement
that expresses a wise or clever
observation about human experience
 “To travel hopefully is better than to
arrive.”- Robert Louis Stevenson

Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Setting: the time and place in which
events of a work occur
 In addition to physical characteristics, setting
also includes the history, customs and
values of the people who live there
Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Thesis: main idea of an essay or other
work of non-fiction
 It is generally stated in one or two sentences
 Contains a subject, and opinions, and
reasons for that opinion
 Indentifying the thesis of a work can help
you better understand the work as a whole
 The thesis may be stated directly or
indirectly
Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Structure: the particular order a writer
uses to present ideas
Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Dialogue: a conversation between
characters in a literary work
 usually set off with quotation marks and
dialogue tags, or markers that let the reader
know who said what
Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Rhetorical devices: techniques that an
author uses to create particular effects
or to engage the attention of the reader
 Use language in artistic ways that make
passages more memorable as well as more
persuasive
 Parallelism
 Repetition
Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Antithesis: a contrasting relationship
between two ideas
 An author uses antithesis by placing
contrasting ideas together, often in parallel
structure
 Mentioning two ideas next to each other
highlights their differences
 Can lead the reader to certain conclusions
or opinions
Literary Elements of Nonfiction

Humor: quality of a literary work that
makes the characters, situations, or events
seem funny or ridiculous
 Recognizing the author’s use of humor can help
you determine how serious a selection is, as
well as if it is fictional or factual
 Often used to point out human failings or ironies
of every day life
○ Sarcasm
○ Exaggeration
○ Puns
○ Verbal irony