Communication For Development: Lessons In Photography As, Surprise, Lessons In Better Writing!

Writer Frank A Hilario is highly original, yes. Creative, he invented Communication for Development (ComDev) 40 years ago when he was Editor in Chief of Habitat, a deliberate look-alike of the American National Geographic, published by the Forest Research Institute based at UP Los Baños. Today, from him, you can improve your writing by learning a lesson or two in photography!

Now look closely at my photograph above, digitally transformed into 3 parts: trees, ground of grass, flowers. That’s how your story looks like usually: Promising but failing to deliver!

Inspired by Erniein Sesame Street, your first lesson in writing is that a story has 3 major parts: Beginning, Middle, End. Equivalents in your story: Foreground, Field, and Background.

Note that the Foreground should be Attractive – a mix of colors growing, as if celebrating their sight of the Field. In the above image, I clouded it up so that you will get the picture!

The usual news story today is either negative or shocking, vintage The Manila Times, founded by Thomas Gowan, an Englishman living in the Philippines. Wikipedia tells us “The paper was created to serve mainly the Americans who were sent to Manila to fight in the Spanish-American War[1].” So, the perspective of Times’ stories was “Fight!” To embolden soldiers and readers so they will ask for more. Peacetime, that’s bad journalism.

Time to apply my ComDev:

The Beginning of your story should be able to catch the reader’s attention by being positive, welcoming, if not colorful. Negative, shocking or threatening is the usual news story, opinion piece, or highlight of today’s media. You don’t need Creativity there – all you need is Negativity!

Importantly:

The Beginningshould be a problem that looks solvable, to be fulfilled when in the Middle.

The Middleof your story should be the encouraging narrative you want to relate, to which you attracted readers via your Beginning.

The Endof your story should be the denouement, the resolution of the unfolding story you told in the Middle.

If you started with an un/stated promise of good in your Beginning, the End should now go back to it and point to its fulfilment – or the promise of something good or better – or what else needs to be done to complete a beautiful picture.

Now, look at my unretouched photograph below. It’s a scene from the UP Los Baños campus, shot with a not-so-advanced Sony camera on 08 July 2007 at 0946 hours. The undivided, beautiful image I show here is to inspire you to write your beautiful news story, column or essay on Philippine agriculture.

One of the photography lessons Biju Arayakkeel gives in his “10 Storytelling Lessons From Photography[2]” (October 2020, Toastmaster.org) is this:

“As a storyteller, I want to share a compelling story that can touch the hearts of my audience, inspire them, and leave them with something to ponder and act on.”

Positive, Inspiring, if possible Creative. Go, ComDev, go!@517


[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manila_Times

[2]https://www.toastmasters.org/magazine/magazine-issues/2020/oct/storytelling-lessons-from-photography

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