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Creative Nonfiction Short Stories – Page 31 of 236
“Silence is Golden ” by Karen Lethlean
Silence is Golden Once upon a time – A good beginning; warm and familiar you may say. Everything must have a beginning. Once upon a time; belonging to myth and fairy tales, does not seem to fit, but will have to do. This was a time when the world seemed a ‘Noah’s Ark’ society and I am the single who didn’t fit. I might have documented a case of ‘survivor syndrome’ be...
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“How To Slash A Tire” by Deidra Whitt Lovegren
Step One: Let some air out.“You have to depressurize the tire,” the older boy explains, pulling out his switchblade. With a flick of a button, a two-inch blade appears. My eyes grow wide—I have never seen anything like it. With a vulpine grin, he hands the knife to me to hold. I shake my head. His hair is long, blonde, feathered. He’s wearing a black AC/DC concert t-shirt. I don’t know him very well since he goes to another school, but he’s a friend of Susy Watts. “Why do yo...
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“Parallels ” by Julius Howard
In my office where I work there is a lot of gossip between staff.
I happened to overhear a coworker telling another worker to grow up. “I thought to my self how rude”, but it made me remember my upbringing when I was verbally abused by my mother’s boyfriend. Grow up Allen, there is a time and place to be childish and when to be a grown up, as my mother’s boyfriend yelled those words to me. It stopped me...
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“Fate and Coincidences ” by Howard Seeley
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it only takes only one small twist of fate to change your future. But in the story, I’m about to tell you, there were countless. It started on January 1974. My name is Howard and I had just turned nineteen years old. I was six-feet one-inch tall, one-hundred-sixty-fives pounds, and being an excellent bicyclist, I had the body of an athlete. Yes, I was physically fit, but inevitably, I bore an invisible flaw.
Since I could remember, I had been blind in my right eye. Years ago, the doctors ...
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“If Cinder Blocks Could Talk” by Douglas Maxson
“If Cinder Blocks Could Talk” The house at 824 Pleasant Street still stands. It was my home from 1955 to 1970. My folks cared for this two-story for another 25 years after I left for college.The memories speak of countless tales hidden within those cinder blocks stacked like legos. They were uneven showing signs of jagged cracks in the foundation from years of sett...
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“Living A Long Life” by Peter Doyle
April 1st, was my mother’s birthday. She passed away at the age of ninety-nine. I miss her every day.
She was born in 1918 during World War 1, lived through the Great Depression, was a nurse in London during World War 2. In the 1950’s she became an avid fan of Elvis Presley, then in the 1960’s The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Above all she loved watching boxing, her favorite boxer was Floyd Patterson. She l...
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“Skinny Snowmen” by Jennifer Mathews
The Winter held Spring hostage. What should have been a balmy morning was unmercifully icy. “Below zero last night,” my dad said. I assumed that meant it was really, really cold, and it certainly felt that way as I sluggishly got out of my cosy bed to get ready for school. It crossed my mind to feign a sore throat. I’d had many of those recently, so it wouldn’t b...
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“Scorpion-Fish” by Av Audrey
"I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.
" &...
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“Memories, Mondegreens, and Witnesses” by Monda Kelley
I have left too many witnesses in my wake of ridiculous behavior that I will never live down. Most incidences do not involve alcohol or any other mind or conscience altering drug. Some do, however, involve alcohol or the aftermath of some of that wild elixir. My life is filled with memories and mondegreen’s, and the witnesses I have left behind. A mondegreen is a misheard lyric or word. An example of that in my life is the AC/DC song Dirty Deeds. I am old enough to be a gran...
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“Whirlwind” by Carolyn Carter
I remember when my daughter was a toddler, I avoided taking her to the park because it always drew her to the colorful big toys and the noisy energy that came from the playground.
As I watched her beautiful brown eyes sparkle with excitement, I cringed with apprehension. It hurt me to see her lovely face turn shades of pink and her cheerful smile turn upside down when I said things like, “Uh...we’ll come back tomorrow...
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“The White Picket Fence ” by Becca Ward
It reached around our house like a protective parent. Our white picket fence. Our white house, our sanctuary within it. It gleamed and shone with the confidence of belonging. It existed because everyone had a white picket fence outside their white wooden houses, and when I was born, we were everyone.I sometimes imagine that we stayed in that house with that white picket fence until I was old enough to move out on my own. Like everyone else.Me as everyone, riding the yellow bus...
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“Chairs” by Maria Mariotti
The goal of chopsticks is to get your opponent to lose both hands before you do.
You have to tap the top of their hand to transfer points, and you can’t have more than five points on one hand. Each finger represents a point. But it’s not really a game you can learn to play without actually seeing it; you have to have someone walk you through the steps of chopsticks if you want to know how to play and to use its strategi...
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“The Awakening” by Douglas J. Veverka
The weary soldier sauntered toward his barracks, exhausted from the humid jungle air, barely able to breathe under the weight of his surroundings. His skin glistened in the dim light that scattered throughout the base camp. He passed a dark man leaning back in a chair, an M-16 draped across his lap. “Ronnie V., how was it out there today? Another beautiful day in Nam’. You stay hydrated and keep those feet dry?” the man asked from the shadows.
“Roger that, Sgt. Thompson. Keep ’em clean and dry. We pulled ...
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“What He Would Have Wanted” by Kate Winchester
*Trigger warning: This story discusses death and dying. You knew his picture was going to be in the church, but right in front of you, you didn’t expect. In a frame by the altar, his smile said it all; a proud father, grandfather, and future great-grandfather clad in his beloved plaid, flannel shirt and posing in front of the corn stalks that he planted for his family to enjoy. Pumpkins from his garden r...
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“Moments ” by Emma Smith
“Sit down in there!” I can still hear her voice when I look back on my adolescent years.
Those words will forever ring in my ear when I think of Aunt Minnie yelling at me, my brother, and two sisters as we peeked around the corner while she prepared bowls of ice cream. We laughed hard as we tried to guess which one of us would get “the spoon” that neither of us wanted. Aunt Minnie had what was known as a sugar s...
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Creative Nonfiction / True stories, well told.
Current Issue / Issue 78 Fall 2022
What is voice? How do you find yours? How can you change it, rearrange it, play with it? And then, how can you use it to make change in the world?
This issue is a celebration of writerly playfulness, exploration, and risk-taking, featuring breathless, epistolary, speculative, second-person, and snarky essays. Plus, an interview with Hysterical memoirist Elissa Bassist, close reads of work by Steve Coughlin, Jaquira Díaz, Margo Jefferson, and R.
Eric Thomas, micro-essays, and more.
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Sonya Huber, Beth Kephart, Leath Tonino, Jill Christman & more.
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Recent Essays
Rita Ciresi
One Morning in Maine
The L.L. Bean catalog arrives in early June, in an avalanche of hospital bills, condolence cards, and COVID-19 reopening announcements from Red Lobster and the Pinch a Penny pool supply store that proclaim, Jeffrey, we want you back!
Constance Eggers
Thin Place
We’ve entered the thin place again, where the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead feels as if we could rip it open with a breath. We make altars to our beloved dead, arranging flowers and symbols around their fading photographs.
Lee Gutkind
Battling the Book
The book is no longer a piece of writing; it’s a puzzle
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Creative Nonfiction magazine defines the genre simply, succinctly, and accurately as “true stories well told.” And that, in essence, is what creative nonfiction is all about.
In some ways, creative nonfiction is like jazz—it’s a rich mix of flavors, ideas, and techniques, some newly invented and others as old as writing itself.
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9 books for the development of creativity and creative thinking
Food, water and air are what ordinary people need. To be creative, to invent and invent is what creative people need. Have you ever wondered how new interesting ideas are born that can change lives, sometimes even millions of lives? How did Graham Bell invent the telephone? How and where did Vincent van Gogh get his inspiration? How was Mendeleev able to order the chemical elements? How did the Wright brothers design the plane? Agree, creative people change the world.
For those who want to be an active participant, and not just a spectator, we have compiled the TOP 9 best books on the development of creativity and creative thinking.
1. Submit an idea. How to make others fall in love with what you came up with
"My goal is to make the world wonder," says the author of the book. How many good ideas are left on the pages of notebooks and in your thoughts? But what if you could implement them all?.
. Sometimes we need partners to bring an idea to life. Jeroen van Heil's book will teach you how to get to the bottom of an idea that is important to convey, present it competently, and win the favor of those you need to implement it.
2. Rice Assault
Ideas are in the air, we all know that. But how to get an idea out of this very air that will "shoot"? Creativity expert Michael Mikalko in his book talks about how to generate truly breakthrough ideas. If you want to create original ideas and products, then Rice Storm is what you need.
With hundreds of fun exercises, puzzles and riddles, you'll learn how to come up with ideas that will help you in business and life. And examples of creative breakthroughs from history that have changed our world will inspire you to put these methods into practice and help you activate your creative self.
3. Steal like an artist
You don't have to be a genius, just be yourself. Here is the main idea of Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who believes that creativity is present in everything and is available to everyone.
In this book, the author gives ten tips that he himself would like to receive when he began to engage in creativity.
Humans have one wonderful flaw - we are unable to make perfect copies. It is due to the fact that we cannot completely copy our heroes that we gain our own life. This is how our evolution takes place. This is an illustrated manifesto of the modern creative person.
Humans have one wonderful flaw - we are unable to make perfect copies.
4. Steal like an artist. Creative diary
Austin Kleon delighted all adherents of the radical art philosophy with a notebook! "Diary of a creative kleptomaniac" is the next step in the path in creativity. There are a lot of ideas, tasks, quotes and exercises. In fact, this is a daily course on the development of creativity.
Photo by —@_misanthrope1993_
5. Genius to order
Traditional solution methods fail? Do you need something truly amazing? Don't have time to wait for inspiration? Mark Levy offers a simple but very effective technique for creating brilliant ideas - freewriting.
He used it for many years to solve business problems, generate ideas, write articles and even books. The author reveals six secrets of effective freewriting, and also talks about 15 principles that will help you significantly improve your problem-solving skills and develop creativity in general.
Freewriting is the key that unlocks the chest with your creative ideas and non-standard ways of solving life and business problems.
6. Hacking creative
Often in life there are situations that require non-standard solutions. In this book, creativity expert Michael Mikalko analyzed the thinking strategies of great creatives and how you can use their secrets to create new ideas and find solutions to any problem in life or business.
You can see more than others with the same information.
Photo by @art_pavlova
7. How people think
The world moves thanks to those who can think and do it differently than 99% of other people.
Dmitry Chernyshev is sure that all thinking is creativity. There is only one problem, people prefer to live out of habit and do not “turn on their brains” at full capacity. Sometimes it's just because they don't know how.
This book will help turn on the brain. On each of its pages there are unusual facts, puzzles, stories, riddles and fairy tales, "ordinary" things and actions seen through the prism of someone else's mentality. Think and live creatively!
8. Sketches on Sundays
Berlin-based artist Christoph Niemann is convinced that drawing and visual thinking are just skills that can be mastered with constant practice. In his book Sketches on Sundays, he talks about how to get out of a creative dead end and overcome the pangs of creativity. He humorously talks about the events of his life and the most popular fears of creative people, who from time to time capture him as well. This book with hundreds of unusual pictures and sketches will become an inexhaustible source of inspiration and motivation.
9. Flexible mind
This book will teach you to see familiar things differently. She not only talks about how to be creative, but scientifically proves that creative thinking can be developed at any age until the end of your life. Our brains are capable of generating original ideas, and no amount of excuses can change that. It is only important to broaden your horizons and apply brain stimulation techniques. Learn to use creativity in everyday life.
10. Create your own universe
The authors of this book are the McLeod brothers, illustrator Greg and screenwriter Miles. Both have extensive experience in creating animated films and scripts for short films and television programs, so they know firsthand that creating something new and original is not so easy. On the pages of the creative notebook "Create your own universe" they talk with the reader and with the help of fun creative tasks help to re-ignite the imagination. The authors talk about how to unleash your creativity, generate brilliant ideas, and what to do if you don't know what you want to tell the world.
Another 320 books on creativity
Scientific and educational stories by Leo Tolstoy
Answer or solution3
Zinaida
"Why can you see in the dark?" knew fire?", "Where does the water go from the sea?", "What is the wind for?", "About ants", "Hares", "What kind of dew is on the grass", "Trees breathe", "How trees walk", " Apple trees", "Old poplar", "Bird cherry", "How wolves teach their children", "Saint Gotthard dog", "Pheasants", "Turtle", "Swans", "Hunting more than captivity".
User
Vitaly
Although L.N. Tolstoy and is known throughout the world as a master of monumental prose, among the creative heritage of the writer there are many works of small size. A separate category is made up of stories for children, including for pupils of the Yasnaya Polyana school.
Tolstoy's works for children
Among Tolstoy's works for children, there are several main genres. The first one is fairy tales.
Most of the tales are processed folk stories (such as "The Three Bears"), which were included in Tolstoy's famous "ABC".
Another genre loved by Tolstoy is the true story. In such works, he describes the events that took place in reality, but artistically processes them. The famous "Filipok" and "The Lion and the Dog" belong to this type.
The writer created a large number of realistic stories, the heroes of which are often the children themselves. These include the works "Fire", "Girl and Mushrooms", etc.
Finally, the last genre in which Tolstoy created stories for children was scientific and educational stories. Let's talk about it in more detail.
Tolstoy's scientific and educational stories
The most famous Tolstoy's scientific and educational works for children include the following stories:
- "Hares".
- "What is the dew on the grass."
- "About ants".
- "How wolves teach their children".
- "Why can you see in the dark?".
- "Apple trees".
- "How Trees Walk".
Already from the titles of the works it is clear that most of them are devoted to the description of natural phenomena. Tolstoy tells in every detail about the habits of animals, various plants, etc. At the same time, the style of presentation is rather concise, but capacious. This helps children to better perceive the material and learn the most important points regarding a particular topic.
Tolstoy's scientific and educational stories are an excellent example of how a work of art can be combined with an educational function. Children well remember a bright image, and after it the main facts that relate to the scientific characteristics of the subject of the story.
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