Documentary writing techniques

Last Wednesday, Years 10 and 11 IGCSE Thai and Years 12 and 13 IB Thai students had the opportunity to meet Khun Orasom Suddhisakorn, a documentary book writer who received the Silpathorn Award in 2009. The Silpathorn Award is an honouring award annually presented by the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, Ministry of Culture, Thailand since 2004 to living Thai contemporary artists who have made notable contributions to Thai fine arts and culture.

The students did not only learn from her about tips and techniques on how to produce good documentary writing, but also gained valuable insight into her life experiences on the process of collecting information in depth by being at the real site before starting to write each book. Most of her literary works depict serious social problems which are looked at by readers from several perspectives; yet she includes solutions to the problems proposed by concerned people and specialists from different parts, which she describes lively and beautifully. She showed us a few examples of the opening and closing parts from some of her other books in which plenty of explanative and descriptive words were used in her writing, allowing us to vividly follow her stories.

Reflection from one of the students:
"The lecture by Orasom Suddhisakorn was truly beneficial. I learned about the work of documentary feature writers who have been to the real sites. I never knew that documentary feature writers could have such interesting lives. Khun Orasom also gave us advice on how to produce writing pieces with better quality, which will be very useful for me when I take the writing test for the Thai IGCSE exam next year. Overall, Orasom Suddhisakorn’s lecture was an experience that I will treasure and never forget." – Alisa, Year 11W