# How to write a book about your father

Fathers of a certain generation give one-word answers to feelings and long ones to tools. Use that.

## Get him talking

Ask about work first. The first truck, the foreman, the shift, the pay. Ask what he was good at that nobody noticed. Ask for the boring parts; the big stories live next door to them. Do not ask how he felt. Ask what happened, and the feeling will arrive by itself, usually in the third conversation.

## What the book needs

His father, and what he kept or threw out of him. The rule he lived by that he never said. The saying he used. The day he nearly lost something. One thing he did that showed love without saying it. One contradiction, with a scene. His place in history, where he was when it happened and what it did to him.

## Write it plain

A book about a plain-spoken man should be plain-spoken. Short sentences. His words. If he said "we managed", write "we managed", and let the reader understand the weight of it from everything around it.