Creative non-fiction works under a constraint that fiction is free of: fidelity to what actually happened, which is often stranger and more resistant than anything invented. The journalist who also cares about prose carries a double obligation — to the fact and to the reader who must be held long enough to receive it — and the best work in this tradition never lets the craft obscure the reporting or the reporting crowd out the craft. To render the actual world in language that does justice to its strangeness is one of the most demanding creative tasks there is.
Each step builds on the last.