What Does ‘Hanaak’ Mean?

New people may be arriving to the page, wondering what ‘hanaak’ is. I’d be happy to explain.

Hanaak is a Ngavat word (the language of my family) which in full, means ‘the meaning of a work, one that comes to us in a time of inspiration’. In other words, you could call it metaphor in English.

But that’s not all of it. Sometimes you just don’t put a metaphor in your work, you let the plot unfold. Hanaak is this - it’s abstract, relying on the unfolding of the story rather than some metaphor you threw in there to mean something on the surface.

Everything from books, to movies, to music, should have structured hanaak. If it doesn’t, it’s not well-thought out and needs a rewrite. Out of Jimmy’s Head is a good example of a poorly structured work. We who are sensitive to hanaak call that ‘oil’. In fact, OoJH is where the term comes from.

The best way to structure your work so the hanaak shines through is as follows:

• Give your characters a purpose in your story. You might roll your eyes at Toren because he doesn’t seem to fit in an Adult Fiction web series. Don’t you worry. I have a purpose for Tor.

• Make the plot make sense. Make your character’s actions make sense.

• Analyse your work page by page, start to finish. I will teach how to do that on a more abstract level in a later blog post, but start with the latest issue. I made it pretty obvious this time.

• If the page doesn’t make sense to you, add or remove based on what your intuition tells you.

• Don’t skimp on further draft writing because you know how to analyse your hanaak now. Hanaak analysis is an editing stage, not a draft.

You’ll be surprised what shines through when you complete your rough draft, then your first draft, and so on.

If you’re not a writer, try it with your favourite book. But remember, you have to analyse EVERY page of the plot.