posted
Since I don't know of any hard and fast rule forbidding us from posting nonfiction work here, I thought I'd put this up and see if anyone with an interest or background in homeschooling would be willing to give it a quick read over the weekend. (And if this is against the rules, I'm sure Kathleen can send a quick zap to my HUB.)
It's about 1,500 words, and is tentatively titled "Socializing Your Homeschooler." It's on spec for Backhome magazine, and I plan to send it off within the next couple of days. The first 13 lines follow:
Parents considering homeschooling their children face several concerns. One of the most common is the socialization of their children. After being homeschooled for years, will their children be able to interact well with other people?
A second fear is that they will not be able to provide a well-rounded education to their children. They aren’t able to teach subjects like band, and they can’t offer a sports team. Will their children have all the beneficial experiences that a school offers?
What worked for my family was allowing the solution to the second problem to solve the first also. Being homeschooled doesn’t mean that children don’t have access to programs like bands and sports teams.
posted
Hey, intimidation is in your job description; might as well do it well. I was thinking of the nonfiction area as just being a place to comment on published nonfiction or discuss technical issues; my bad, as we said in my youth. BTW, I really can spell "nonfiction"; but as far as I can tell, you can't edit topics.
Posts: 491 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Something about the way this starts feels a little off kilter. I think that it could be focused and compacted a bit.
quote:One of the most common concerns of parents considering homeschooling is the socialization of their children. After being homeschooled for years, will their children be able to interact well with other people? Will they be able to provide a well-rounded education to their children? Will their children suffer from a lack of extracurricular activities, such as bands and sports teams?
posted
Wow! Thanks for all the offers. I'll send it right out.
Survivor: You're probably right, although compressing the first two paragraphs would mean reworking a little further into the beginning and adjusting the end as well, I think.
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Dear minister You introduce two topics, socialization AND quality of education, when your title clearly indicates you are focusing on socialization. I think each topic deserves its own piece. You may use some of your ideas in the second paragraph to support your thesis, but don't present it as a second topic. The way you have organized it now, it seems you intend to give equal attention to both topics. For this type of article, introduce, as you have, your thesis in the first paragraph. Then introduce three (or thereabouts) good reasons that support your thesis. Then build up each of those ideas with nitty-gritty details into paragraphs or sections. I also think articles of this nature can be made interesting if you introduce a "golden thread", or metaphor, at the beginning somehow and refer to it throughout. Including a specific example at the beginning is also a way to personalize and add interest. Good luck. Judith
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Judith: Thanks for your input. Frankly, I have struggled to come up with a better title for this piece. Having seen only what you have seen of this piece, I would likely agree with your assessment (it's the approach I took to an awful lot of seminary assignments, after all). But the point of the piece is that the solutions that I am offering can help solve both problems -- kind of a "kill two birds with one stone" article. I hesitate to change the approach, since it is this approach that I used in my initial pitch for the article. If anyone has suggestions for a better title, I'd love to hear them. I went with socialization because that is often the first objection I hear to homeschooling.
Posts: 491 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I'm sure you'll get plenty of good advice from your other readers, so I won't offer to read, but I would like to butt in with my 2 cents.
When writing any short piece like this, you should first decide on the logical approach you will take, deductive or inductive.
You can use a deductive approach when you want to lay out all the facts and the rationale first, so that your reader comes to the same conclusions you do, when you do. That is, you educate the reader and obtain their pre-approval of your conclusions. Scientific papers are often written this way.
Another approach (the inductive approach) is to state your thesis or conclusions first, and raise questions in your readers mind that you then proceed to answer.
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I think that the inductive approach might work well for you in this case, because:
1) it is not as didactic and will not scare your readers off as easily as the deductive style 2) it is amenable to be structured into easily-digested chunks 3) it is easy to re-order or rearrange on the paper
Now, to illustrate this style, everything since the --- above has been in the inductive style. This paragraph would immediately start to address why the inductive style would not scare your readers off.
This next paragraph would address the second item above.
And this last paragraph would address the third.
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For a reference for the techniques of logically structuring a non-fiction piece before writing it, beg, borrow or buy The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking, & Problem Solving, by Barbara Minto.
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Mike: I'm pretty familiar with inductive versus deductive reasoning, argumentation, and presentation. This piece, however, is essentially informative, not argumentative. I'm not so much arguing that it is possible to both socialize and educate homeschoolers as I am giving suggestions on how to do it. Thus, the layout would generally follow the inductive format (a list of points with explanation for each), but I don't stick to it rigidly, because I'm not really trying to convince anyone of anything. I'm just laying out some options. Maybe I should have explained in the initial post that the magazine prefers "how-to" articles, with an emphasis on personal experience, rather than typical journalistic writing. Frankly, I'm much better at framing an argument (either inductively or deductively) than just laying out a how-to guide; that's part of why I asked for readers. I'll have to check out that work on structuring non-fiction though; sounds good.
Kathleen: Thanks for the suggestions. I might be able to adjust and use the last one, in particular.
*Edited for another terrible mistake.
[This message has been edited by Minister (edited January 30, 2005).]
posted
That's cool, Minister. Didn't mean to make it sound as though you weren't already familiar with the techniques. It's just that so many people aren't, that I hate to miss an opportunity to educate them.
posted
Yo comprendo. And I'd rather people assume I know absolutely nothing about anything until they find out otherwise; otherwise they sometimes leave something fundamental out that I really don't know. If people assume you know everything, you hardly learn anything.
Posts: 491 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
I like the start of this. As far as titles, here are somethings off the top of my head:
Life Lessons, Homeschool
Providing a well-rounded education to your homeschooler
(Actually, I think these two headlines could work even better in tandem as Headline + deck head; however that sort of decision is usually made by whomever is doing the page layout. Depending on the publication, they will even write the headline.)
[Edited to include: Good luck, if you've already dealt with this and sent it off.]
[This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited February 03, 2005).]
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I was thinking of the nonfiction area as just being a place to comment on published nonfiction or discuss technical issues; my bad, as we said in my youth. BTW, I really can spell "nonfiction"; but as far as I can tell, you can't edit topics.
