How to Write About an Unusual Hobby
Photo by WARWICK MARTIN on Unsplash
by Michelle
Hey Essay Narwhals! Did you know that different groups of whales may sing songs in different dialects? It’s been hypothesized that the songs in these dialects could be a way for whales to identify themselves, and bring up the possibility of the existence of different whale ‘cultures.’
This idea is easy enough to understand for human society as well. Even groups of people in the same country may communicate in different ways, depending on age, generation, and various other variables like class or subcultures.
However, when you’re writing your college essays, you want to be able to communicate your points clearly to your readers, no matter who they are. To narrow in our focus for a moment, what if you want to write your essay about a certain extracurricular activity or hobby? For many Essay Narwhals, these could serve up stories for some great essays if they’re written and structured well.
Unexpected challenges can pop up though, if the activity you are writing about is more unusual or niche.
Most readers would have some idea on what is involved in activities like soccer or singing. But if your extracurricular interests fall a little more outside the mainstream—like DJing on weekends for a youth activity center, or creating detailed game FAQ pages for a decades-old Legend of Zelda game, or making handmade quilts—then your task can get a little trickier.
You can’t assume the reader has the same background knowledge or love for the activity that you do. So, how can you best write about an unusual hobby or activity in a way that is understandable for your audience?
Here are 3 tips on how you can write about an unusual hobby or activity:
1) Paint a scene of the space where the activity/hobby takes place.
What does the area where you do the work for the activity look like? What sort of tools and materials do you use for that hobby or extracurricular?
For instance, if your activity involves video editing for your school’s yearbook, you could write about the specific editing programs you have open on your computer on a particular Tuesday, the type of recording camera you have lying around your table, the zig-zagging soundwaves on the line of music audio on your screen that you are trying to cut to match the actions in the video.
Or, if you have a hobby of making cute pottery mugs shaped like chickens, you could describe the look of the pottery studio where you take your class, the giant pottery wheels, the color of the clay and paints that you use to glaze the mugs with.
2)Show the time you put in towards an unusual activity with hard numbers.
This tip might seem a little vague at first. Let me give an example.
A previous student had wanted to bring up in their essay an unpublished fantasy book they had been working on during their free time. However, ironically enough, they were sort of at a loss for words to describe through writing the exact work they had done in writing their story.
Finally, I asked them a couple questions to dig more into their hobby. How many chapters of the book had they written out in a rough draft? What did the wordcount of their draft look like so far? How much time on a weekend did they spend in thinking up and typing up the story? These questions gave the student the nudge they needed, and they were able to use details with hard numbers as evidence of their love for writing.
Of course, this doesn’t mean to list out all the hours you have ever been involved with an activity for, like repeating information from a resume.
But it can be helpful though, to sketch out a brief picture for your audience so they can understand the time and passion you have invested into it. How often in a day do you set aside time for it? How much time did completing one project from your hobby take, from the research stage to the final version?
3) Explain some hobby-specific vocabulary.
This tip could be used sparingly, but can also be a great way to give some background context to the stuff you are doing with your activity. You don’t want to scatter jargon throughout your whole essay, but including a couple brief sprinkles can give your writing a kick.
For example, if the activity you are writing about is related to computer coding, you might want to explain in your essay what debugging or machine ethics means.
If your hobby involves knitting stuffed toys for charity, you may want to bring up what ‘casting off’ or a ‘herringbone stitch’ looks like.
If you helped work on a sailboat over your summers, you could briefly bring up in a sentence what a ‘jibe’ or bowline knot is.
No matter how unusual or little-known you think your activity or hobby is, that shouldn’t stop you from singing your unique song as an Essay Narwhal! For more related writing tips for your college essay in general, you could also look at our older posts ‘Show and Tell’ and ‘3 Excellent Examples of Personal Writing.’
