Republic of the Philippines

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Region I
Schools Division Office of Vigan City
ILOCOS SUR NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL - SHS
Gomez St., Barangay VII, Vigan City 2700
principal_isnhs@yahoo.com / (077) 722-2205; 722-6516 / 674-1862

CREATIVE NONFICTION
2ND QUARTER S.Y. 2022-2023
MR. LEVIN JOHN P. PUBLICO

LESSON 1: FIGURES OF SPEECH

What is a Figure of Speech?
Phrase that has an implied meaning and should not be taken at face value.

Why do we need to understand the different Figures of Speech?

1. Understand other aspects of English language.
2. Enhance the overall quality of our English
3. Eloquence in the language

Types of Figures of Speech

1. Simile
• Indirect comparison
• implied meaning is replaced with the words “as” or “like.”
• Examples:
• His response was as cold as ice.
• Mr. Mayamot is like a hungry tiger when he gets furious.
• He rans like a cheetah.

2. Metaphor
• Direct comparison
• without using “as” or “like.”
• Examples:
• When he gets angry, Mr. Mayamot is one hungry tiger.
• She is the apple of my eye.
• She is an early bird.
• Her eyes were diamonds.
• Life is a rollercoaster.
• Their home was a prison.
• Her heart is a cold iron.

3. Personification
• Giving life to inanimate objects.
• Examples:
• The country wants us to perform civic duties.
• Opportunity knocked at his/her door.
• Time flies when you’re having fun.
• The stars winked in the sky
• The sun smiled down at us.
• The grey clouds cried drops of rain.

4. Alliteration
• the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
• Examples:
 • Claire, close your cluttered closet.
• Go and gather the green leaves on the grass.
• Harry hurried home to watch football on TV.
• Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of
pickled peppers, Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
• She sells sea shells by the sea shore. The shells she sells are surely sea shells. So if she sells shells on the sea shore, I'm
sure she sells seashore shells.

5. Onomatopoeia
• words or phrases that are similar to the sounds they produce.
• Examples:
• The banging of the door.
• The leaves crunched under my feet as I walked through the woods.
• The car horn beeped.
• The buzzing of the bee.
• The wolf howled.
• The flood water gushed through the town.
• The corn went pop in the microwave

6. Hyperbole
• These phrases are meant to emphasize the importance of something by using over exaggerated phrases.
• Examples:
• I have told you a million times not to touch my stuff!
• He has a pea-sized brain.
• I will die if she asks me to dance.
• She is as big as an elephant!
• I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.
• I love you to the moon and back.

7. Euphemism
• are used to replace stronger and harsher phrases.
• Examples:
• She has “passed away”, instead of “died.”
• The company has “let him go,” instead of “fired him.”
• adult for pornographic, or related to sex
• between jobs for unemployed, or without a job
• capital punishment for the death penalty
• full-figured for (esp. of a woman) fat, overweight or obese
• late for used instead of "dead" or "deceased" when mentioning a dead person
• pre-owned for used or second-hand
• private parts for a person's sex organs or "genitals"

8. Synecdoche
• The “part” that represents the “whole”
• Examples:
• "Can I buy you a glass?
• "Nice wheels!"
• A synecdoche in which "wheels" stand in for the car that they are a part of.
• The crown wants to collect all the taxes.
• "What's the head count?“
• Hungry mouths to feed
• Offer your hand in marriage
• The ticket costs Php. 100 per head.

9. Anaphora
• characterized by words, phrases, or clauses that repeat in consecutive sentences
• powerful and dramatic speeches
• Examples:
 • “So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New
York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania…” (From Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream”
speech).
• “In every cry of every Man, In every infant’s cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear”
(in William Blake’s poem “London”).
• It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place.
• The apartment was on the top floor—a small living-room, a small dining-room, a small bedroom, and a bath.

10. Pun
• They make you sound witty and even comical in some cases
• Examples:
• Her cat is near the computer to keep an eye on the mouse.
• A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two-tired.
• Jungle animals are very fair. Cheetahs are always spotted.
• Grammar lovers have a lot of comma sense.
• A pessimist blood type is B-negative.

11. Apostrophe
• when a character, author, or speaker addresses an inanimate object or even a person that does not really exist in the given
scenario
• Examples:
• O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
• Oh, rose, how sweet you smell and how bright you look!
• Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.
• O holy night! The stars are brightly shining!
• Thank you, my guardian angel, for this parking space!

12. Paradox
• highlight something by talking about exactly the opposite of it.
• Examples:
• “Some of the biggest failures I ever had were successes.”
• “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
• "I must be cruel only to be kind.“
• This is the beginning of the end.
• Deep down, you're really shallow.
• If I know one thing, it's that I know nothing.

13. Oxymoron
• used to connect two opposite ideas simultaneously.
• Examples:
• This is another fine mess you have got us into.
• Suddenly the room filled with a deafening silence.
• Beautiful disaster
• Awfully good
• Bittersweet
• Original copy

14. Metonymy
• words that used in place of other words
• replacement words are different from the word replaced but share a common connection.
• Examples:
• “The pen is mightier than the sword.”
(here, ‘pen’ has replaced ‘the written word’).
• “If you want I can give you a hand.”
(here, ‘hand’ has replaced ‘help’).

15. Dysphemism
• a derogatory or unpleasant term used instead of a pleasant or neutral one
• Examples:
• Dysphemism for “death”
 • bit the dust • pushing daisies
• bite the big one • six feet under
• bought the farm • swimming with the fishes
• croaked • whacked
• dead as a doornail • worm food
•

• Lack of intelligence
• airhead • not the sharpest knife in the drawer
• birdbrain • not the sharpest pencil in the box
• dingleberry • the elevator doesn't reach the top floor
• dipsh** • the lights are on but nobody's home
• dipstick •
• dumb as a rock

• Smart or studious for individuals

• bookworm • geek
• brainiac • nerd
• dweeb • show-off
• egghead • smartypants
• • teacher's pet
•
• fag - for a male who is homosexual
• two-timer - for someone who cheats on a romantic partner
• pig - for a law enforcement officer
• popo - for the police

LESSON 2: BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Biography - A biography is a kind of narrative that deals with the life of a person.
- Classical biographies are about the lives of popular figures, say, national heroes or celebrities.
- 3 steps in writing biography
o Choose a famous/well-known persona
o Gather information about him/her
o Organize data

Autobiography - An autobiography is a kind of biography that centers on the life of the narrator himself/herself.
- The term autobiography is said to have been derived from the Greek words:
- autos – self
- bios –life
- graphein- to write
- Literally, an autobiography is a form of writing that is about the narrator’s own life
- It does not simply list down or relate events chronologically.
- It borrows some of the literary strategies and devices of fiction, such as characterization and plot, in order to make
one’s life story interesting.
- When writing, one should also exercise discernment in choosing the details that a writer wishes to include, particularly
details that are not only memorable but also worth sharing with the readers.
- Shares certain characteristics with other types of creative nonfiction, primarily its being in the first person.
- It deals with a chain of events
- It indicates information such as dates and places, therefore is essential.

Philosophical Arguments
(with respect to the writing and reading of the autobiographical narrative)

1. There are questions, for instance, as regard to the extent to which an autobiography can be faithful to actual or factual events in
the narrator’s life.
2. The issue may very well pertain to the postmodern tendency to blur the dichotomy between fiction and reality.
3. In any case, while a reconstruction of the past through writing necessitates the use of “memory and imagination to serve the needs
of present consciousness” (Eakin, 1985 as cited in Hidalgo, 2003, 148), the autobiography should still be moored to events that did
happen.

Model text on Autobiography

Read the following sample of autobiography. This will be included in your exams – summative and periodical.

Still Worth Living: How I Survived Life’s Uncertainties

Atilla Roma

Because I came from the working-class background, I was haunted by the spectre of financial insecurity while growing
up. The modest means of livelihood that my parents had was a small store that sold fish and vegetables, but we had days when
the sales were not good. They were able to continue the business for a few years, which supported the schooling of the children
and satisfied most of our basic needs.
My siblings and I attended the same public grade school which was about one and a half kilometers away. From 1984 to
1990, I went to Bayanan to socialize with classmates with whom I shared the same working-class background. It was, therefore,
quite painful to part ways with them when I graduated from elementary.
Many of my elementary classmates and friends went to a public high school just a jeepney ride away from home. I had
also thought that I would attend the same school, so my parents’ decision to enroll me in a private high school, just a stone’s throw
from our house, came to me as a big surprise. In high school, the experience of being in a bigger institution and in the company
of new classmates, many of whom had relatively comfortable lives, made me feel uneasy, insecure, and alienated. My lower-class
upbringing easily came into conflict with middle-class culture of my high school classmates. Not wanting to feel out of place, I
painstakingly tried to familiarize myself with the movies, music, reading materials (mostly foreign comic books), and fashion that
my high school classmates knew. The feelings of insecurity became more intense whenever I went to my classmates’ well-carpeted
and well-furnished houses
Money was also a constant concern. I was given partial scholarship at the beginning after my father had personally
requested the school administration. But I was not able to keep my grades high and eventually lost the scholarship. From then on,
my schooling became an uphill battle. What made matters worse was learning that my mother had a serious lung ailment which
drained our financial resources further. Before long, our small store went bankrupt and closed down. I feared that, considering my
mother’s condition and the state of our finances, I would not be able to continue my schooling.
Fortunately, I was able to earn my high school diploma in 1994 despite having so many absences. Our financial concerns
continued, however, and I felt the need to find immediate employment rather than attend college. But my parents discouraged me
from quitting school, and instead encouraged me to look for a public university where the fees were relatively low. Although I
enrolled in such a university, I still continued to struggle with financial limitations, writing promissory letters in many instances to
take major exams and claim my grades on time. I also asked college teachers to allow me to photocopy books a few pages at a
time instead of buying them. That I had to take two jeepney rides to reach school made my situation more complicated. Inevitably,
I sometimes rode the jeep or the bus without paying the fare. At times, I would take a two-kilometer route on foot. I also engaged
in odd jobs to help support my schooling and that of my younger siblings (although they themselves were workings students). For
a fee, I would do the school projects of children in our neighbourhood or type the papers of college classmates.
When I graduated from college in 1999, I was determined to find a job right away in order to address my family’s financial
concerns. Because I never really wanted to teach, contented that I had survived four years of college, I applied in at least four
government offices as an ordinary clerk. But when all four applications got rejected, despite the relatively good score in the civil
service examination I had taken a few months before, I was left with no other choice but to try my luck in teaching.
Since then, the career I have chosen – far from being my first love – has not only been rewarding financially. It has also
restored my sense of self – worth.

LESSON 3: LITERARY JOURNALISM

What is Literature?
• a term used to describe written and sometimes spoken material.
• Portrayal of human reality
• SHE (Significant Human Experiences)

What is Journalism on the other note?

• the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information.
• the activity or profession of writing for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or preparing news to be broadcast.

Literary Journalism
• Literary journalistic essays are a popular form of creative nonfiction.
 • Their purpose is to inform, transform and enlighten.
• It is writing about facts that are external to the writer’s own life.
• The writer uses literary devices, such as dialogue, setting, characterization, and plot structure to tell a true story about
a person, place, event, experience, or to write about a big idea, like counterterrorism.
• The writer can choose any topic, so long as it can be researched.

Definition of a Literary Journalistic Essay

• What is a literary journalistic essay? It is the “literature of fact.” The writer can compose an essay on any topic, such as drug
addiction, rape, unemployment, spirituality, or crime. Whatever the topic, the writer needs factual and true information to
write about a person, place, event, or idea. These facts must be verifiable. In fact, every important fact must be verifiable.
• Most often, the literary journalistic essay requires that the writer complete some research, often extensive research, in order
to uncover the facts. Unlike the personal essay or memoir, which is based on the writer’s own life, a literary journalistic
essay is based on another person’s life, or events, or experiences external to the writer’s own life.
• Unlike the personal essay or memoir, which is written from the first-person “I” point of view, the literary journalistic essay is
written from the third person “he/she” point of view.
• The writer’s goal is to dramatize the story or events by using dramatic scenes. A scene includes a location/setting, passage
of time, details and descriptions, action of by the people in the story.
• The writer also uses other literary devices to craft an interesting story. Popular literary techniques include simile, metaphor,
and imagery.
• The intention of the writer is to inform the readers and to also enlighten them with new information.
• But the writer must do more than enlighten; the writer must also entertain by recreating the scene. The writing accomplishes
this by using the elements of fiction, such as the use of characterization, dialogue, narrative structure, and so on.

How to Write a Literary Journalistic Essay

1. Choosing a topic
Choose a topic that allows you to write intimately and to dramatize the story.

2. Research Your Topic

• A literary journalist is based on fact. Therefore, you will need to collect the facts for your story. The best approach is to use
personal reportage. Here is how:
o Observe the person, event, or experience. Afterwards, make notes.
o Interview subject matter experts. Make notes as you ask questions, or use a tape recorder.

Conducting an Interview
• Make a list of questions to ask.
• Take a pen and paper, or tape record.
• Interview the subject matter experts.
• Ask the person you are interviewing to stop talking while you are attempting to take notes.
• After the interview, type out your notes.
• Save the toughest questions for last.
• Don’t quote a subject matter expert out of context.
• Don’t fabricate quotations.

3. Use Dramatic Scenes

The writer recreates the event or experience in the mind of the reader. Scene building creates a dream in the mind of the reader. It
is like a scene from a film. A scene takes place in a specific place at a particular time. It includes action and dialogue. It includes
concrete and specific details, not abstract language and generalizations. It also includes details that appeal to the senses, such as
the sense of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. It creates a sense of movement.

4. Include a Lead, Content, and Ending

Whether you write about a person, place, event, idea, your story needs a lead that tells the readers the purpose of your essay and
why they should read the essay. The lead also needs to persuade the reader to read the essay. So, you must write a hook. It can be
a quotation, interesting fact, important point, question, anecdote.

LESSON 4: PERSONAL NARRATIVE ESSAY

What is a personal narrative essay?
A personal narrative essay is a story you choose to share with readers, for it communicates your understanding of yourself, others,
and/or society.

2 guiding questions in writing personal narrative essay

1. What questions can I consider to help me convey my story effectively?

A personal narrative essay uses the components of a story: introduction, plot, characters, setting, and conflict. It also uses the
components of argumentative essay; argument, thesis, and conclusion.

A. Conflict and Thesis

An effective thesis in a narrative often responds directly to or reflects on a source of conflict, so the first step in developing a personal
narrative essay is usually to define the conflict at the heart of your story.

Your story helps readers reflect on the negotiation of conflict, which generates meaning. Your thesis articulates that meaning
succinctly. Sometimes this meaning remains implicit in the narrative—the details themselves powerful enough to evoke
understanding among your readers.

With an understanding of your conflict, consider the following questions for your thesis:

B. Background and Setting

Consider the following questions as you develop the setting of your narrative.

• What is the event you want to share?

• Where did this event take place?
• When did this event occur?
• How do the details of time and place develop the context your readers need to understand the meaning of the story?
• What initial expectations or mentality do these details help viewers to establish that will be changed, developed, or affirmed as your
story progresses?

C. Plot: Analyzing Cause and Effect

Consider the following questions as you develop the plot of your narrative.

• What important events led to this event?

• What action happened immediately before the event?
• What action happened after the event?
• What changed as a result of the event?
• How has this event impacted you directly or indirectly?

D. Characters:
Consider the following questions as you develop the characters in your narrative.

• Who was involved in this event?

• What is the relationship between you and these other individuals?
• Why are these individuals significant to your narrative?
• How might their views present a source of conflict in the narrative?
• Who is static in the story, and who is dynamic? That is, who does not change, and who does change?
• Because humans are not one-dimensional, how might you offer multiple perspectives as a basis for why characters chose the
action they did?
• Did this story involve a dialogue of points of view among or between characters?

E. Climax:
Consider the following questions as you develop the climax of your narrative.

• At what point in your story did your understanding of your conflict change?
• What meaning is revealed in the moment of truth—or the moment of revelation or recognition?

F. Conclusion/Resolution:
Consider the following questions as you develop the conclusion to your narrative.
• How was the conflict resolved, or to what extent?
• How can you illustrate relief from or resolution of the tension caused by the conflict?
• Why might the reader believe this conflict will or will not pose a problem in the future?

What story-telling tools will I need to tell my story?

Through the use of sensory details and figurative language.

To sum it up, refer to the diagram that you copied on your notebook.

Model text on Personal Narrative Essay

Read the following sample of personal narrative essay. This will be included in your exams – summative and periodical.

MY FRENCH VILLAGE
Criselda Yabes

Les Ardennes is hidden in the northeast region of France. The French don’t give it much of a thought, unlike the Riviera in the south,
the countryside of Normandy in the north, or the waves of the Atlantic against Brittany. If by any chance they’ve come across it,
they’d say it’s at the end of the world, or describe it as “the finger stuck in the ass” of Belgium with which it shares the frontier.

For three consecutive summers, I stayed in a small village referred to as part of the region’s la valleé. Even that has an ominous ring
to it; that being in a valley depicts the imagined claustrophobia of a people, its small-mindedness, its fear of strangers; and that I,
being an Asian, from a country many had probably never heard of, was an oddity.

My village, Haybes, faces a wall of a thick green forest that people find oppressive, as if it keeps them imprisoned. I should have
been surprised but wasn’t when I discovered that a Filipina has been living here among 2,000 souls, married to a retired French man
and making herself as inconspicuous as possible.

Anna Liza rang me up one day when she’d heard of me while at an errand at the pharmacy situated by the river and across the steel
bridge as one enters the village. That was normal: the pharmacist is my ex-husband who had had the urge to return to his place of
childhood, this damn valley as he would sometimes say out of frustration.

There’s not much to be done in Haybes; it doesn’t even have a decent café. The restaurants would be far from seeing their names
in the Michelin guide. The pizzeria run by an Italian is ranked lower than its counterparts in the next town about ten kilometers away.
The bakery has had its ups and down with the clientele that finds the baguette a tad below its taste.

What this village has--the entire valley for that matter--is the one thing I could not escape from: nature. And so I invited Anna Liza,
my fellow Pinay, for a stroll in the woods just behind my house. It was where I’d go for walks in the late afternoons and it became like
a park for me, choosing any of the trails that wove through other villages, a silent meander among pines and oaks and other trees
not seen in my own country.

Having been here more than 20 years, raising a daughter, tending to a household in what resembled a subdivision, the forest was a
strange apparition for Anna Liza. She was afraid of snakes. She feared getting raped (although there had been no such incidents in
our part of the woods). I showed her there was nothing dark to it, making her listen to the soothing run of the stream, pointing out to
her the infrequent marks of caves from which stone slates known as the ardoise were gathered in the old days.

The ardoise had been the valley’s industry, along with other massive manufacturing and metallurgical factories that had made this
region wealthy, enticing migrants from Italy and Spain through the first half of the 20th century. But it had been more of a relic, until
the village historian made a rather impressive movie about what took place in Haybes during the First World War.

That was one of the rare occasions when residents came out of their dwellings for a public gathering. At the very least they were
proud of what the community had done one hundred years ago, trying to defend the village from the German soldiers. There had
been a massacre. The church survived razing by the enemy, the only structure in which Anna Liza was hoping to find solace as she
would have done back home; but it has been locked to keep away vandals and is opened only for weddings and baptisms.
She arrived in Haybes in the early 1990s when prosperity was already waning, the rich protecting themselves in their enclave while
the growing unemployed, the immigrants, the poor Arabs put up in social housing were pushed to the backside of the village. Anna
Liza seized me in a panic when we ran into Muslim teenagers playing by the creek.
In my house made of the ardoise, thin purple slates fitted to the walls, I would wait for the sun to shine. The valley’s worst reputation
is for its rain, consistently wetting the forest and filling up the river. The mist covers the village like a phantom that comes to visit from
time to time. At the slight hint of the bright rays, I’d be off on my bicycle, trundling down the hill until I reached the level ground of the
track along the River Meuse.

That was where I chanced upon Anna Liza a few days after our forest hike. She was walking to the pharmacy to buy some creams
on a doctor’s prescription. Her legs had swollen from a rash after we’d sat on a bench in the arboretum. I felt guilty and made up for
it by inviting her for a bike ride along the Meuse as autumn was fast approaching. She came for the sake of exercise when the
weather called for it.

But the river for her was useless, “Walang silbi,” she said, because the sight of the water made her pine for the seas back home
thousands of miles away. I came to Les Ardennes for this river looping around villages, sending out the ducks, geese, swans to the
banks, displaying the hues of the verdant greens. I love this river. It made me daydream, it made me go forward, and it gave me a
certain amount of strength.
The biking track from one end to another stretches to about 90 kilometers, starting from the city of Charleville-Mezieres--home of the
rebel poet Arthur Rimbaud of the late 1800s--to the frontier town of Givet that Belgians flock to for the restaurants by the quai, the
shops and supermarkets and the odd McDonald’s by the fields. Givet is the nearest thing to civilization from our village.

We would go there for the movies and for the patisserie that sells the Paris Brest I’d boast to everyone as the best tasting one in the
whole of France--and I am, of course, exaggerating. Luckily for us, a new salon de thé opened close by this summer, in the town
where my ex-husband grew up, his family home already sold when his parents retired to the Riviera. It is right across the river and I
could bike to it if I wanted to.

It’s our saving grace in our corner of the valley, if you ask me. The pastries are good enough to boost us out of our afternoon gloom.
We take home baguettes for our meals for the days ahead and the croissants saved for our Sunday breakfast treat. That’s how little
it would take to make me happy being in Les Ardennes.

According to many, happiness is on the other side of the border. The Belgians living at the frontier know how to have fun, the opposite
of the French; as if the border itself had put up an imaginary chord dividing these two French-speaking peoples’ states of mind. It is
true that once we cross over, the air feels lighter, the sun warmer, and we envy the Belgians who plunge into rivers in such wild
spontaneity.

Without the River Meuse of my summers, Les Ardennes would have been bleaker. By now I’d gotten the hang of biking the length of
the track and I knew it by heart, capturing many vivid pictures in my mind: the old dams of needle weir (soon to be replaced by
modern technology), the tunnel and the bends, the yachts and barges anchored by the banks, the gray heron that hides from me.

The most difficult route goes out to a tiny and quaint village called Chooz, where the atmosphere could be sinister, nearly 20
kilometers away from my village. The ride cuts across the highway and into the paved plaza with a beautiful dovecote church. The
houses along the river are charming in a fairy-tale fashion, except that the greatness of its view is marred by two nuclear power
plants billowing out massive smoke; but it was thanks to the presence of the centrale nucleaire that the villagers were lifted out of
the poverty that has hit others in the past two decades of France’s economic crisis.

I am tempted to call my village simple. My days followed the weather, mostly to be able to schedule hanging out the laundry by the
terrace of the garden, the clothesline tied to a rowan tree that Anna Liza made me swear never to cut because she said it was lucky.
When it gets gray, other women friends come by for tea and we do an exchange of homemade fruit jams, particularly the summer
blackberries picked from the shrubs along the river.

One Sunday morning, after buying fruits and vegetables from the friendly Turk who unloads his produce at the plaza rain or shine, I
saw a striking, gray-haired woman getting off her bike by the river. I watched her remove her socks and then her shoes. She balanced
herself on a rock by the banks, found her place to sit, and dipped her feet in the river. That was one of the small things that made
me happy about Les Ardennes, and I thought that I might do the same if or when I return to my French village.