|
|
|
|
Non-Fiction Writers Workshop
by Carolyn Dekat
Good Start
Let me tell you a story about Tom Wolfe. Have any of you read any of his work? He's a well-known, talented author. I've run across much of his writing quoted in creative non-fiction how-to books. Well, here's something that happened to him that I found interesting. See what you think:
Tom Wolfe was making his living as a newspaper reporter. When newspapers in New York went on strike, he decided to try his hand at his first magazine article. He pitched his idea on customized cars to an editor who assigned the piece to him.
Over the next month, he researched customized cars. At the end of the month he settled down to write, only to find that he had no idea how to begin. After several days of what he describes as "agonizing struggle," he called the editor and told him he couldn't do the article. The editor had already laid out the story and engraved the pictures; there was no option-- they had to have the story. So the editor asked Tom Wolfe to write a letter describing what he'd learned, and the editor would turn the notes over to a "real writer" who could finish the story.
At this point, the Tom Wolfe rolled a sheet of paper in his machine, and starting with "Dear Byron" wrote the story in the informal tone of one person telling another about a remarkable thing. In the end, the editor simply cut "Dear Byron" off the top of the letter and published the piece as it appeared in the letter.
No doubt at one time or another you have felt that same sense of disaster. Since you know that it is best to write about topics that spark your interest, you may find that after a few weeks of digging, you have a pile of notes, clippings, books, speeches, old newspaper articles, interviews and facts that seem overwhelming. It can be extremely difficult to decide where to start.
There are as many different starting places as there are authors. Actually, the starting point for me will change from article to article. Each one is an adventure all it's own! The point is though, that much of the anxiety over beginning an article starts in the mind. The key to a good beginning is getting over whatever hurdles make the writing difficult. There are several different ways you can accomplish this, depending on what exactly it is that is keeping you from getting the rough draft completed.
More than one author uses the same letter approach that Tom Wolfe used inadvertently, to cull through the material and even help them decide on a tight focus. Jessica Mitford in Poison Penmanship says: "One technique I have found useful . . . is to write letters to friends about what I am doing. In that way I . . . start editing the material for fear my correspondent's eyes will glaze over with boredom if I put in everything. . . . Also, one's style is bound to be more relaxed than it will be at the dread moment when one writes 'Page 1' on a manuscript for an editor."
Her statement also highlights the need to remove anxiety and relax. Let the words flow and the story tell itself. Let your eagerness and excitement about the topic pour through, without thought of an editor, word count, tone, style, transitions, grammar, punctuation, etc. Oftentimes, your material will organize itself in this way and you know instinctively what to leave out, what to include, and how to arrange the material to appeal to a reader.
But for some authors, there is so much material that they feel it necessary to sort through the information they've gathered first. I recall that this plagued me to a great degree when I wrote my article on the Edison Trait (Do You Know This Family? Women & Family Page of WomenOnline.) There was so much good material. All of it seemed extremely important--either educational, reassuring, or critical for parents raising a child whose thinking was diverse and who wanted to reign it in without squashing it. My notes were staggering in scope, and none of it seemed to be discardable. The anxiety of deciding what went where and what to cut paralyzed me.
For this article I started with coding all the notes I had and from there I worked it into an article by necessity left much of all that "good stuff" out. I left only the best material for that particular piece. The key point is, coding the notes made the process manageable for me. I could move forward from that point.
Here in a nutshell is the process I used to organize my notes. I found something to contain all the notes--manila file folder, pocket folder, notebook-- anything that made it easy to flip back and forth through the information in search of the points I needed. For example's sake, let's say I had three magazine articles, an interview and a book that I was using to write my article. I assigned numbers to the individual pieces: magazine article=1, magazine article=2, magazine article=3, interview notes=4, book notes=5. Then I underlined or highlighted key phrases in those pieces that I wanted to use and coded them by letter. Then when I did my my outline, or decided upon revision to use different material, I could write in "4c" where I wanted to include excerpt "c" from the interview. Note here that I had done no typing, no drafting. This simply organized the research and the portions of it that I felt critical to what I was trying to say in the article.
In his book Magazine Writing That Sells (Writers Digest Books, 1996) Don McKinney suggests that at a bare minimum you type your notes, with a view to arranging them by subject and then roughing out an outline showing the order in which you plan to present the material. Since the material will have to be typed sooner or later, this may be a good starting point for you. The initial impulse is to type the information into a word processing program, but you may consider using a data base program that may enable you to manipulate the information more easily, sending the pieces you choose to the word processing program as you work up the article.
Personally, it is very difficult for me to do this work on the computer. I like to be able to see all my notes out in front of me; too much scrolling and cutting and pasting soon gets me confused.
So, continuing with the Edison Trait article as an example, this was my next step:
I typed in the marked excerpts and printed them out, then cut them apart, so I had one excerpt per sheet. From there I organized the notes into piles that pertained to similar aspects of the topic. After this step, I was able to work up an outline, and then write from the outline. Also, it was easy to pull the information that didn't quite fit, leaving only notes that I then could easily find and rearrange in my computer file.
For a pencil and paper version of this, you can try mind-mapping. Your central theme is placed in the center of the page and circled. Subpoints are written and circled, and then spokes drawn from the central theme to the subpoints. Try assigning the subpoints numbers and then coding your notes to those numbers.
For some writers there is still the question of deciding what the article is going to accomplish. This question MUST be answered: "Why am I writing this article?" Every author must do this; some do it at different stages. Some prefer to have it in mind before the research; others prefer to research and then decide, leaving themselves open to new directions in which the research may lead. This is fine, as long as you haven't been assigned a topic by an editor. Once an editor responds to your query, it is important to keep in mind what you promised in your query, because this is what the editor is expecting.
In either case, you will find the structure of your article much easier to determine once you have a one sentence statement of what the article will accomplish. It should sound something like: "I am writing this article because I want the reader to know/do/feel _________." This statement becomes the theme that your article will center upon. Next decide what subpoints (from 3 to 6, depending much on the word count you must stick to) will support your theme, and accomplish your goal. From this kind of careful planning you set up the process of sorting through the notes to see which ones will best support the article.
You will probably end up culling out some material, and this can be a difficult process if "all of it is good stuff." Here are some pointers that can make this phase easier:
1. You are not allowed to throw anything away. Yes, it is all "good stuff" that can be reused and recycled without spending more time or money to do it.
2. Consider whether or not some of the discarded material would make good sidebars.
3. The discarded material can be used to write different articles, with more $$$ in view.
With those points in mind, it's easier to discard good stuff in favor of the best. You want items in your article that if left out would leave a gaping hole. If you can leave out a segment and the article still stands on it's own, it is material that should be removed.
Conversely you may find that you cut material that needs to be inserted. This is where I find that coding notes comes in handy. Find the information, jot down the number and letter code in the appropriate place for insertion, and it's easy to make the changes.
If you decided that writing your friend (real or imaginary) about this project didn't work before you got a good feel for your notes, you may consider trying it now to get a rough draft down. I would suggest that you really send it--your friends can give excellent feedback if something is missing or unclear.
As you read through this information, you may find ideas that pop into mind that will work for you. Some of the ideas may seem like they would never be something you would use. However, if you ever hit a block getting started that you just can't seem to get past, then try some of those ideas that didn't sound so good. You might be surprised how well they work.
Happy writing!
Homework
Write us a letter on about what you've found in researching your topic and post it on the Circle. Hopefully, it will get you off on a good start in getting that article on paper!
Let us know how it turns out!
© 1998 Carolyn Dekat
|
|
|
