Nonfiction is prose writing based on fact, real events, and real people. It includes history, biography, memoir, essay, journalism, and many forms of argument and explanation.

Unlike fiction, nonfiction claims a truth-value that can be checked against evidence. That claim does not eliminate interpretation, selection, or literary craft; the best nonfiction is shaped with as much care as any novel. The writer of nonfiction is accountable to what happened, yet must still decide which facts matter, how to order them, and what they mean. Boundaries with fiction are sometimes blurred by techniques of scene-setting and reconstructed dialogue, but the governing intention remains factual.

Nonfiction serves information, persuasion, and the preservation of experience. Readers turn to it for knowledge, for argument, and for the texture of lives and events that actually occurred. Standards of accuracy and fairness apply in ways they do not in fiction, which is why breaches of those standards draw special criticism.

Writing that offers itself as a report on the real rather than as invention is nonfiction.