- 1). Write in a journal what ideas, thoughts and directions your story can include. A journal can help you remember something in the future, engage your mind and stimulate thought. For instance, why is your teacher special or what makes her story unique? What compelled her to teach or inspire others? Was there a traumatic event she overcame to become a teacher? Use this to further develop ideas down the road once you have started writing your book.
- 2). Discuss any ideas and thoughts you've developed with your teacher. This is also a good time to obtain written permission or a signed copyright form to write the book. You may want to obtain entertainment legal counsel, or seek the advice of a literary agent or manager, because you must gain the permission of anyone you interview for the book.
- 3). Record stories or past experiences of your teacher's life on a portable voice recorder. This allows you to quote the teacher and remember pertinent information without writing it down. This can also come in handy for any rewrites; you can initially log notable quotes and later, search for the run times through your recorder without having to thumb through notes and papers. Choose whether to focus on the teacher's professional life, personal or both. You may find that the teacher you want to write about has an exciting personal journey that led to the accomplishments of his professional life. What was school like for him? Maybe he really did have to walk 15 miles in the snow and that's where he began his dedication to teaching. Was it difficult for him to learn, or was school an escape from his personal life? Did someone special inspire him to become a teacher?
- 4). Tell a story. "Story is about an imbalance and opposing forces, a problem that must be worked out. A good storyteller describes what it's like to deal with these opposing forces," states creative writing teacher Robert McKee, author of "Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting." McKee advises writers to illustrate the "struggle between expectation and reality in all its nastiness." Was your teacher raised in poverty? Did she overcome a parent with alcoholism? Or was she simply told she would never succeed? Maybe she had trouble in school but grew up to be a scholar. Search for something unique when brainstorming -- something that sets your story apart from others of its genre.
- 5). "Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite." Helen Dunmore, Orange Prize winner for her book "The Siege," states, "If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need." Little-known facts or intriguing events stand out in your teacher's biography. While it is nice to know where she came from, it may not be necessary unless it had some sort of specific influence. For example, "growing up in Normal, Illinois, was not so normal to the teacher you are writing about because" -- and conclude with why his life was not normal. Or maybe life was normal until he escaped Illinois and became a poet only to go on amazing adventures around the world. William Strunk in "The Elements of Style" advises, "Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion." For instance, "He was not very often on time," is not as direct as "He usually came late." Find direct ways to show -- not tell -- your reader or audience about your teacher's life.