A good way to start your book
LITERATURE
By THOMAS HUKAHU
STILL thinking of writing that book?
How far are you into it?
Have you started the first page yet?
In this week’s article, I will discuss feature writing as a good way to start working on your non-fiction project.
Why write a book?
Before we get into the nitty-gritty details of feature writing and why I think it is important for new writers to explore, let me consider this question: Why write a book?
There are a couple of reasons why someone picks up a pen to start working on a book.
Some people want to become famous. They want their names on a book.
Others want to become wealthy, hopefully one day they write a book that makes the bestsellers’ list and millions of people buy it.
Some people write a book to share a story which they think is interesting.
A few experts write books to share their knowledge on different themes, like cooking, playing football, passing an exam, or how to be successful in business.
Most of these items are the how-to books, and they teach the reader the steps to take in order to accomplish their goals.
Yet others write because they want to document history, either about a person (as in the case of a memoir), or about a town or village.
Writing about someone special
This is a special reason for writing a book.
Over the years, I have come to know people who have said they want to honour a family member or someone special by writing a book about them.
That is special, and I think if you are educated and truly appreciate your people, including your parents, you should take the time to write a book about them.
It may not be long, it may be a small booklet, but it should capture things about them, their outstanding qualities and deeds.
What is documented is not just for your benefit, but for your children and their children’s kids also. It will form part of your heritage.
We all forget people quickly, sometimes too quickly. Some are people who should be remembered, they shaped your history.
And the least you can do is to pen something about their lives to remember them by.
You can also work in teams to write about someone, like getting two or three people to write about the different stages of your subject’s life.
One of my nieces did a writing project with her classmates in secondary school years ago and chose her grandfather as the subject of their work.
(The group did a good job, researching, designing their pages with the photos that they gathered, and were awarded full marks by their teacher.)
My niece did most of the research, sitting with her relative, who is my father, and interviewed him for the project.
She started from when he was born to when he and his family settled in a small hamlet just outside the urban boundary of Wewak, in East Sepik.
She traced his journey as a young man going to school in Wewak, then to Kairiru Island for high school, then off to college in East New Britain, going to work as a primary school teacher and lecturer, as well mentioning his one-year stint studying in Canberra in 1973.
When I learned about my niece’s work, I got a copy of her printed pages and typed everything again, fixed up her sentences a bit and added a few lines, more from his children’s perspective.
The work was completed sometime back and may soon be printed.
I urge you, if you are reading this, to do something similar for that special person in your family, or village.
Honour them by having their lives documented.
Feature writing, a good place to start
What I am sharing here is my view.
Other people who write may offer their views as to where to start.
I have experience working in journalism so my view is shaped by that.
There are two main ways of writing for newspapers and magazines
The first is newswriting, or writing the typical hard news story.
The second is feature writing, or writing the feature article.
The news story is short, about 200-300 words.
The stories that appear on the front pages and many pages of a newspaper are news stories.
They are brief and straight to the point, with one sentence forming one paragraph.
A feature story or article is longer, and can be anywhere between 700 and 1900 words.
This article that you are reading, and most of the others in Weekender, the supplement, are feature stories.
As you may have noticed, feature stories are longer and more detailed.
The general rule of news story with one sentence forming one paragraph does not necessarily apply here.
From feature articles to books
Flip through the pages of this supplement and take note of the articles in it.
Can you see that the writers of the different articles write on different themes?
Now, think about this.
If you can write about someone, or something, in 1000 words, then you already have something that amounts to a feature article.
Say, you want to write about the different types of traditional dishes from your village.
If there are six special dishes that you want to discuss, then you can have one feature-type article, of about 1000 words each, for each dish.
Once you have completed the six different recipes and other details, you can compile all that and they could form a small booklet with a good title telling readers about the six unique dishes.
I think you understand what I am saying.
Each feature article that you write under a theme can later be edited to form one chapter of a book with a title related to the theme.
Many authors follow a similar format in eventually compiling the pieces they write to form the chapters of a book.
Using a blog to write a book
Writers who write blogs online can also compile the pieces that they write in the form of a book.
For years I have been a subscriber to “Screenwriting From Iowa”, a blog started by film producer and screenwriter Scott W Smith.
In 2008, Smith’s blog became the first screenwriting blog to win an Emmy Award.
Smith has already published his book on screenwriting, where he compiled the tips that he wrote for his blog.
Here are excerpts from Smith’s blog:
“I was looking for a way to bring all my production notes together under one roof and heard about this thing called blogging. These are notes I began gathering while in film school and have built upon for the past 20 plus years as an award-winning video/TV producer, photographer and filmmaker. Several of my short films have won awards to go along with many Aurora, Telly, Communicator, Addy and Emmy Awards …
“And though I’ve written many unproduced feature scripts, this blog serves mainly as a conduit for notes and quotes gathered from top screenwriters and directors – and storytellers in general – with the hope that they will give a sense of direction to those wanting to write screenplays, make movies, and create content – especially those in unusual places.”
If you want, you can create a blog, or Facebook page, with a specific theme in mind and then later compile all the pieces that you pen for a book project.
You can use the feature writing style to pen your posts, but they can be shorter.
Reading to write better
Reading is an important part in becoming a better writer.
If you want to write good feature-like pieces, you must spend time reading feature articles.
You will learn from other writers and follow some because they write about things that are of interest to you.
Many established writers will urge you to read the kind of books you want to write.
If you want to write about a person, find published memoirs or biographies and read them.
Take a look at the contents page also of books and see how the author lays out the different stages of the person’s life.
If you want to write about different dishes of food, take the time to read books on cooking, or go online and check how people have described their dishes as well.
Reading is vital for a writer.
Four exercises for you
I will now give you four simple exercises that you can work on to help you write a feature-like piece, or something that is a bit longer and detailed.
You can decide which exercise to start with, whichever will be easier for you.
Also, do not worry about the length of each item.
Just write until you run out of ideas, then stop.
Give yourself a break, maybe a day or two, then work on the next exercise.
When you have run out of ideas, stop, and take a break.
Then go on to the other, which may be a day or two later.
I suggest that you do a quick first draft of any piece that you write and once you are done, rewrite the piece the same day and edit your work as best as you can.
I suggest that you work with pen and paper, and later, maybe a few days later, type what you have written into a computer and save that.
Do not lose the drafts that you have on paper.
Store them in a clear folder.
You are building a profile of pieces that you write.
You will continue filing more pieces as you go further in your writing journey.
Favourite feature articles or other pieces that you collect (as those in Weekender) can also be filed in that folder.
Exercise 1. Write about yourself
Pick up a pen and a piece of paper and write about yourself.
As a guide, you can write a line or two under:
- My name
- My age
- My village and ethnic group
- My education, primary to tertiary
- My work experience
- My family (if married)
- My interests and hobbies
- Three interesting moments in my life
- Some of my goals
Can you see that you don’t really have to think to come up with lines about yourself?
You don’t have to interview anyone or do any research.
Just write about yourself.
Exercise 2. Write about someone special
Following exercise 1, now you select someone in your life and write about him or her.
The details about them can follow the same format in exercise 1.
If you want, you can interview the subject, the person that you are writing about.
In your interview, you can take a photo of them and attach that to your edited piece.
The interview can also be recorded on audio or camera.
Later you can replay the recording and do the writing.
If the person is not around, or has already passed on, you may interview other people and get the information that you need.
Exercise 3. Write about a pet
Do you have a favourite pet?
Is it a dog, cat or parrot?
Write about it.
What’s its name?
Does it have peculiar traits?
If you have three pets, write about the favourite first. If you have time later on, you can write about the other two as well.
Exercise 4. Write about a place
Do you know of a special place that you would like your new friends to visit?
Is it a beach? Or, is it a cave?
Or, is it your local town, or an island?
Write about the place and highlight the special features that make it unique and attractive.
This is what travel writers do and some eventually sell their articles to travel magazines.
Others compile their pieces in the form of a book.
You can do the same.
Next week: Writing fiction: A short story or script