Refining Research Representations through Fiction, Journalism, and Creative Non-Fiction Writing Ideas

Research accounts have been critiqued as boring and unreasonably difficult to read when the actual research process is deeply fascinating and should be accessible to many. Academic researchers should draw on the creative writing disciplines (e.g., fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism) in order to improve the quality of written research accounts, and there are numerous style guides that give guidance on how to improve the quality of writing. An understanding of different academic disciplines’ style expectations seems to be needed in order to Publish and Persevere, yet literary understandings of writing will allow us to enliven writing in engaging ways. It is important to acknowledge that requiring strict adherence to style guides may be a form of intersectional oppression of race, class, and region that is seldom reflected upon. In this article, the authors review four style guides from the areas of journalism and creative writing, including the classics guides The Elements of Style (Strunk & White, 1959) and On Writing Well (Zinsser, 2006), as well as Thrice Told Tales: Three Mice Full of Writing Advice (Lewis, 2013), a contemporary guide with eye catching graphics, and The Writing Life (1989), literary author Annie Dillard’s reflective thoughts on writing