Fiction and Nonfiction – what can I write about?

By: John Mutter

             First of all, some students may be confused as to what is fiction and what is nonfiction. Let’s get that cleared up right away. Fiction is something that is fake, made up, or not true. Nonfiction is something that is not fake, it’s true and really happened. So let’s give some examples.

                                                                          Fiction

1. You are 10 years old and you write a story about your first car, a 400 horse power Chevrolet. This is fiction, because if you are 10 years old, you certainly are not old enough to own or drive a car.
2. You are walking along the roadside picking up aluminum cans and you find a bag with $10,000 dollars of money from a different planet. This would be fiction, because we don’t even know if money exists on other planets.
3. You make up the name of a man and write a story about him being the strongest man in the world and you write that he could lift over 50,000 pounds with one arm. This is fiction, as we know nobody can be that strong.
4. You write a story about your pet dog, who learns how to fly like a bird. This would be amazing if your dog could actually fly, but we all know that dogs can’t fly, so this would be a fiction story.
5. You write a story about your mom who climbed Mt. Everest backwards. Mt. Everest is very difficult to climb for anyone, but impossible to climb backwards, so although interesting, it would be fiction.
6. You planted a sunflower seed in the garden and it grew and grew. One day you decided to climb it and when you got to the top, you were in China. It’s safe to say that this would be fiction.
7. Remember, anything you write that is fake, made up, or not true, is Fiction!

                                                                            Nonfiction

1. If you write a story about your first job and you describe what you all had to do, and how much money you were paid, this is nonfiction.
2. If you have a cat and she was lost, and you took fliers around to all the neighbors with a picture of the cat, and after a couple of weeks she returned home, or someone calls you that they found your cat, this would be a nonfiction story.
3. You write about someone, or even yourself, who had Covid-19 and recovered, this would be nonfiction.
4. You write about the first time you went deer hunting and if you had luck or not, this would be nonfiction.
5. You had a friend who you were best of friends with and either your family or your friend’s family had to move and how this made you feel, this would be nonfiction.
6. Students that are in high school have an advantage in nonfiction. Many more things have happened in their lives, and all of this is nonfiction.
7. Remember if you write about something that is not fake, that really happened and is true, you are writing a nonfiction story.

                                                                Good Luck!!