Kidder's text is mostly discussing point of view, and also making writing personal and interesting. According to Kidder, point of view "is a matter of finding the best place to stand, from which to tell a story". He says that making the choice of which point of view to use is important because it affects everything else in the story. Anoter important thing that Kidder writes about is that creative non-fiction writing needs to be believable. Although a writer may be telling us a story that is true and actually happened in the writers life, the reader may not believe what is happening. The writer needs to be aware of this as they are writing a story.
Lopate suggests that the writer needs to turn oneself into a character, and gives us ideas on how to do it. In order to make yourself, the writer, into a character, Lopate says that you need to have distance from yourself. You need to see yourself as someone else would see you. We did an exercise in class that helped us develop a character profile of ourselves. We had to write about all the important things about us involving our religion, gender, attitudes, quirks, and many other categories. The part in Lopate's essay that I found most significant was when he talked about how some writers may think that they have nothing to write about because their life is boring, and how some writers may think they have nothing to write about because their life is too weird. However, anything can be turned into a story. Creative non-fiction is called as such because the writer can add things to make it more interesting. Also, if a writer thinks their life is too weird to write about, it would probably make a really good story. Sometimes when people think something about them is "weird", it may be something that a lot of other people are going through.
Lott define's creative non-fiction by saying that creative non-fiction is "a desire to not let slip altogether away our life as we have known it; to put an order, for better and worse, to our days; this is only a test; the self as continent, you its first explorer; is this wisdom, or is this folly?; no self-righteousness, though it is always the first person talking; circle the subject to see it most whole." Those are a bunch of different concepts that Lott goes into detail talking about in his essay. My favorite part of that definition is when Lott talks about how the writer has a need to not let his/her life slip away as they are living it. It is so important to write things down as they happen, so you don't forget how you felt during the event, or how it happened. Everything that happens in a writers life can be turned into a story, and many writers use events from their own life to write about, which is called creative non-fiction.
As I have been developing my own definition of creative non-fiction, I would say that I agree most with Lopate. I agree that if we are writing from an "I" perspective, we need to turn ourselves into a character. Sometimes it is difficult for us to see ourselves in a light that isn't so great, and that is hard to write about. However, it is important to see ourselves from an outsiders opinion, even if it is negative, because it makes the story more believable to the reader. That the character of ourselves is not perfect.
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