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Crafting Revision in Creative Nonfiction: One Word Clarifies the Truth reframes creative nonfiction as a genre built through revision rather than inspiration, emphasizing the choices writers make when shaping memory, experience, and research into narrative. Designed for undergraduate, multilingual, and inspiring writers, this book treats revision as an ethical and artistic practice, where decisions about selection, emphasis, voice, and structure determine not only how a story reads but what it means. Through clear explanations, real student writing examples, and genre-specific revision strategies, the text guides writers beyond first drafts toward more deliberate, reflective work. Rather than offering fixed templates, the book encourages experimentation and reconsideration, helping students develop a nonfiction voice grounded in honesty, attention, and responsibility to the reader.
Dr. Ryan Thorpe, Yuli Ming Endowed Professor of Writing at Shanghai Jiao Tong University Global College, directs its academic writing program and writing center. Author of Teaching Second Language Creative Writing (2021) and three fantasy novels (2023), he is currently developing the Writing Through Revision textbook series for Anthem Press.
Acknowledgments; Introduction; Notes on Organization; Key Vocabulary; Key Genre Conventions; Diversity in Creative Nonfiction; Creating a Personal Truth That Lives in the Story; Blending the Personal with the Universal; Braid Together Several Different Threads or Timelines into a Single Story; Creating Intimacy Through Voice; The Ethics of Writing About Others; Exercises to Practice; Basics of Drafting; Developing Ideas into a Draft; Prompts; Introduction to Revision; Revising Out: Writing Beyond the Edges; Student Draft; Learning to Revise Out; Revision and Genre: Thinking and Revising in Choices; Revising in Creative Nonfiction; Revising Inward: The Creative Nonfiction Sentence and Paragraph; Student Example; Sentence-Level Revision Strategies; General Advice for Development; Text to Practice On; Epilogue; Common Grammar Errors; Glossary; About the Author;