Creative nonfiction - Werner

Jo Ann Beard is primarily acknowledged as a writer of creative nonfiction. What is creative nonfiction you ask? Creative nonfiction is the writing of real events using the same techniques used to create fiction; however, the writing does not contain facts from the incident. One of the many creative nonfictions written by Beard is “Werner.” Werner Hoeflich heads home to his apartment in New York City after spending the evening at his catering job. Between the hours of four and five A.M., Werner catches sounds of squeals and he wakes up to discover a tremendous amount of smoke floating in his apartment. Werner jumps out the window into the next door building; he astoundingly survives the devastating fire. Beard very effectively illustrates the process going through Werner’s head in the heat of the situation. Her words clearly describe how Werner jumped back and forth from his mind flashes, giving the reader a marvelous amount of information about Werner’s history. Beard is trying to reach out to readers who enjoy reality molded into nonfiction. She is reaching out to readers who enjoy creating scenes in their minds while interpreting the text. The information Beard is trying to convey is pretty straight forward. She is trying to convey how Werner, the main character, felt during the terrible incident. She wants to convey to the reader that every scene was conceivable even though it was now a work of creative nonfiction. Beard wanted to go to the extent where the readers would believe that they were there while the apartment building had been caught on fire. She wanted them to be present in the moment, be alive with the character of Werner. The success of the story starts right from the beginning. Jo Ann Beard grabs the readers in by using the ominous effect. For those who don’t know, the ominous effect is the feeling created by the author that something is either about to go wrong or has already gone wrong. By using this, the author is warning the readers that