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000 General Knowledge

Fiction is fabricated and based on the author’s imagination. Short stories, novels, myths, legends, and fairy tales are all considered fiction. While settings, plot points, and characters in fiction are sometimes based on real-life events or people, writers use such things as jumping off points for their stories.

Nonfiction, by contrast, is factual and reports on true events. Histories, biographies, journalism, and essays are all considered nonfiction. Usually, nonfiction has a higher standard to uphold than fiction. A few smatterings of fact in a work of fiction does not make it true, while a few fabrications in a nonfiction work can force that story to lose all credibility.

In a work of historical fiction, the story takes place in the past, but characters, actions, and other details are fictionalized. Creative nonfiction, on the other hand, is a broad term that encompasses many different types of writing (and, it seems worth noting, not all of it is historical). Creative nonfiction that covers the past uses the tools of dramatization but does not fictionalize.

Creative nonfiction that includes historical eras or events does not fictionalize. While it might read like a novel, its task is to remain factually accurate. In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah tells of his experience as a child during wartime in Sierra Leone. It unfolds with the kind of detail and tension you would expect in a novel. When rebels attack Beah’s home, he is in another town:

Here, Beah recounts his own experience. Authors writing about events or eras they didn’t experience can also dramatize.

Both historical fiction and creative nonfiction that covers historical events or eras serve to illuminate real events from the past in a compelling and dramatic way. But each has a different relationship with factual accuracy.

Source: Ask the Writer: Can you explain the difference between historical fiction and creative nonfiction?

Updated April 4, 2025

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