Kia ora,
I was talking with a memoir client today who sighed and said, “the photos seem to take longer than writing the book!”
I thought this might be a good reason to prepare you!
Not all of you will be using photos in your stories, but if you are, here are five things you need to know about including images in your book.
- Each image (photos, letters, family trees, recipes, anything you want to include) will first need to be digitised, so it can be woven into your book layout.
- You can digitise your images using the camera on your phone, a scanner app on your phone, a larger printer/scanner, a professional scanning service or your local library’s (often rather amazing) scanner.
- Each image will need a photo caption, which ideally summarises the basic info – who’s in that photo? When was it taken? Where was it taken?
- If you’re going to turn your story into a printed book, you’re going to need to communicate with your future book designer about exactly where each image goes, and include your photo caption.
- Yes, you can do it yourself, but remember Microsoft Word is not designed to handle lots of images. It’s for words, not photos. The way I do it is send my book designer the text file, and the photos as JPG files.
I do go into more detail about this in my memoir programme, but this is foundational, most important info that I wanted to explain (or remind you of).
Writing your story takes time, but so does this part. So it’s good to start working on it sooner, rather than later!
I hope this helps,
Charlotte x
PS I’m due to interview former news presenter Alison Mau this week about her book No words for this and her memoir writing process. Then I’ll upload that interview to my memoir programme, alongside interviews with award winning memoir writers Naomi Arnold and Gerard Hindmarsh. For those who haven’t joined yet, check out my memoir programme to learn more here and email with any questions! We’ll be meeting this Saturday online.
100 words on ‘beginnings’ by Josephine Wood – memoir student
Oh I could see It just there under the bed. I kneeled down, opened the top and took in the sight of beautiful purple tissue that individually encased every identical piece.
Too many to count. The smell was incredible. I took one and opened the tissue to discover the perfectly round and shiny item. Looking closely the texture was dimpled and coloured orange.
Then I began to peel open the orange. A juicy spray lifted from the damaged skin. My little fingers fumbled and removed pieces of skin and discarded the bits over the back of Mum’s headboard. I devoured the juicy, delicious delicacy every last bit.
I had never enjoyed a fruit as much as this. It was a new experience for my senses and the beginning of my orange mischief and lying to Mum.
I am five and its 1966.
Cheers,
Josephine
Ps Yes I was discovered and tried to lie myself out of trouble.
What did you think? I love the details about the orange, and how she describes the skin and the smell, and the lovely purple tissue, before she tells us what it was. And I loved the sense of mischievous in her voice. I remember my father telling me what a treat oranges once were. It’s hard to imagine now.
If you’d like to send me 100 words, based upon the theme ‘Beginnings’ I’d love to hear from you.
Charlotte Squire 