Answer: non-fiction
Explanation:
An essay is different than a made up fictional “story” in that an essay is all about your opinions on a real topic in life. The term Expository means a style of writing your essay that explains or clarifies your topic (thesis) that your essay is focusing on. This topic would usually be what you were assigned to write about, also known as the writing prompt. The term non-fiction in writing means that it is based on true and proven facts and reality. So, an essay would be non-fiction because it is when you write your opinions about something that isn’t a made-up concept.
For example, your essay topic might be ants. So you would have to write your expository essay on a non-fiction based idea, like how ants work together in an organized way to maintain their amazing city-like systems underground. In your essay, you would give examples and explain. You could include main points such as how these insects protect their queen ant for reproductive purposes, conservation of food, etc. You could even include some cited researched statistics to add in your essay to support your own discussion.
What your non-fiction essay would not be: a creative fiction story you make up about an ant as a character who has a name and all about his/her journey (similar to animated children’s movies about ants taking on human characteristics and talking to each other, walking upright, and so forth).
Related Helpful Tip:
One way to remember the difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction starts with f, like “false.” So non-fiction is essentially non-false (based on true reality).
