"Winter Counts:" Transforming Non-fiction into Fiction

Creative writing typically blends what we know and experience with what we invent and imagine.

- RICK MULKEY

When my university writing students begin making the transition from personal experience writing to attempting to write short fiction, I do a series of exercises and writing prompts with them to help them see both the value of personal experience in the writing of fiction and the differences between objective fact and fictional "truth."

For instance, close your eyes and try to recall all the details of the room in which you're sitting. You'll find that some of those details are transformed. In non-fiction, these transformations are typically unconscious changes. But when we move into fiction, these transformations become both unconscious and conscious. The conscious choices are the ones we make to develop the "truth" of our story, not simply the facts of an experience.