It seems like the essential component of creative nonfiction is some type of personal narrative. These are stories in which a narrator tells about him or herself. They all do this differently, some talking about an event, others about aspects of themselves, but in any case these are stories centered around the narrator. They offer biographical information in varying degrees. Lopate's "Portrait of My Body" is composed almost exclusively of autobiographical detail, whereas Marquart's "Some Things About That Day" offers few if any hard informational facts about the speaker of the piece. While that narrator is nonetheless characterized by her thoughts and actions and the tone of her narration, the piece is much more focused on elements of her experience than details about her as a person. These two extremes of style are synthesized in Beard's "Out There" in which the narrator talks about herself and her life while relating the tale of her harrowing experience.
Largely absent from these pieces is any element of dialogue. This serves to further the self-centeredness of the style. Short pieces, like "Some Things About That Day" are short all the way through, favoring short, terse sentences, whereas the slightly longer form "Portrait of My Body" tends to weave longer, more relaxed sentences. Certainly this reflects the differences in subject matter between the two pieces, but also may indicate their character on the whole.
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