Category: Subtopic: How to Write Non Fiction Books

By Quentin J. Schultze

I have written over a dozen nonfiction books and am working on a few more.  I also lead workshops on writing  nonfiction books for publication.  Here are a few of the tips that I cover in workshops.

#1 Engage Your Readers as Listeners
Read your writing out loud to “readers.”  See how they respond.  Good nonfiction engages readers as listeners.  Moreover, it’s easier to tell if people are engaged with your prose by looking at and listening to their reactions to an oral reading than it is trying to gauge their immediate responses to silent reading.  Friends almost always will tell you that your writing is great, but how do they really feel about it?  When you read out loud, avoid sounding preachy or academic.  Don’t try to impress listeners.  Just read in your natural but lively voice.  Soon you’ll discover what actually engages readers and what doesn’t.  You’ll become a better writer as well as a more adept oral interpreter of your own work.  After all, most nonfiction book readers “hear” the writer when they read silently—just as they hear fictional characters’ dialogue.  I learned the importance of engaging readers as listeners by reading short sections of my work to my college students.  Their faces never lie.

#2 Title Your Chapter Drafts in Parallel Form
Perhaps each of your chapter titles should begin with a verb or a noun.  Maybe each chapter title should be one word or a short phrase.  In any case, be consistent in order to maintain the same voice and perspective across all chapters.  For instance, two of the chapter titles in my public speaking book are “Addressing Challenges” and “Crafting Artfully.” I wanted to encourage the reader to imagine herself or himself “doing” the subject of each chapter.  A chapter titled “Challenges” or “Art” would not fit that cross-chapter purpose.  Parallel titles will keep you focused and organized.  Without them you’re more likely to confuse yourself and your readers.  Note how I titled each of the tips on this page.

#3 Discuss Your Writing with Writers (and Authors)
Authors need one another.  Writing is personal, but learning about writing is communal.  Every author depends on the work of earlier writers.  This is true for style and content.  We all need feedback from other writers as well as from readers.  Discussing our ideas and manuscripts with other writers helps us to discover what works and what doesn’t—and why.  Join a local writers group (e.g., through a bookstore), read one another’s drafts, and offer kind but honest feedback.  If possible, invite some published (but humble) authors into the group.  Eventually, sitting at your keyboard or staring at a notebook will not seem so lonely, intimidating, and baffling.

#4 Address a Proven Topic in a Fresh Way
Publishers lose money on most books. They know that very few books become bestsellers.  But even if publishers can’t predict big winners they can try to avoid big losers.  How?  By reducing their risk, especially by rejecting both overly innovative manuscripts and manuscripts that address unproven topics.  Publishers prefer a modestly unique approach to a market-proven topic.  The one major exception is extremely timely topics.

#5 Thematize Your Work
What’s your book’s theme?  State it in one complete sentence to keep yourself on track.  Do this for memoir, too.  Unless you’re a well-known author, your memoir is not likely to be published.  Why should readers care about your life?  To get published, you need more than your personal story.  You need thematic significance.  Again, your best chance of getting published is by developing a novel approach to a a timeless topic such as parenting, love, health, faith, work, success, failure, and friendship.  The modestly unique theme of my public speaking book is that the purpose of all good speaking is serving the audience—not serving the speaker.

Thanks for reading.  I hope these suggestions serve you well.

Read tips 6-10.

By Quentin J. Schultze

I have written over a dozen nonfiction books and am working on a few more.  I also lead workshops on writing nonfiction books for publication.  Earlier I posted tips 1-5.  Here are five more. I hope you find them helpful.

#6 Serve a Particular Audience
Who is your reader?  Imagine your audience even before you write the first chapter.  Picture readers in your mind as you write.  Consider what they are thinking as you write specifically for them.  The best prose is written by someone in particular for others in particular.  (Contrast that with the uninteresting prose in most academic textbooks, which are written by no one in particular for everyone in general; textbooks are increasingly the product of marketers, not writers.)  After all, you’re not writing just for yourself.  If you are, why write a book?  Just keep a journal.  You’ll be much happier, without the stress of trying to get your manuscript published.  Most of my writing is essentially journal material that will never be published.  I write in order to clarify and express my own thoughts to myself and to serve my audiences at public-speaking events.  When I write for publication, however, I imagine the readers.  You can journal to express yourself.  Write books in order to serve a particular audience.

#7 Use Humor Carefully
“You had to be there.”  That’s our excuse when our half-baked attempts at humor fall flat.  Humor is one of the most difficult things to write well.  Satire is probably the most difficult of all. It’s easy to arrogantly offend rather than winsomely illuminate.  Never assume that what’s funny to you will be comical to others.  Always try out your stories to see if others truly find them humorous.

#8 Read Proven Writers
We tend to read what we enjoy and to write like the authors that we read.  Make sure you’re reading the kind of quality prose that you would like to write.  I devour many contemporary books, but I savor classical nonfiction books that have stood the test of time; I read and re-read them.  The latter help me to think and imagine like a proven writer; they flex my literary muscles.  They feed by literary spirit.  They inspire me to write wisely and well.   I also need to make sure that I’m reading “up” so I don’t write “down” to readers.  It’s so much easier to tickle readers’ ears than to touch their hearts and open their minds.

#9 Clarify Your Real Purpose
Why are you writing?  There are many fine reasons—including to inform, persuade, and delight readers.  Perhaps the many worthwhile purposes actually boil down to one: to serve others.  That’s why I get a bit concerned when a writer makes statements like these: “I just want to express my opinion.”  “I’ve got to tell my story.”  Writing is a type of service that requires a lot of effort to do well.  Many people feel called to write a book for publication.  But who’s the caller?  What’s the caller’s message?  We don’t always hear well.  We fool ourselves.  So listen again.  Question whether or not you are merely pleasing yourself or you are really serving others.

#10 Write with the End in Mind
One of the biggest problems especially for new writers is that they don’t know what they’re  writing until after they’ve written it—and even then they’re often not so sure.  They write in order to determine what to say.  That’s not all bad.  The process of writing always requires research and exploration, retrospection and introspection.  But you need to know in advance of drafting the actual manuscript what it is that you are aiming to say.  Otherwise you’ll write in circles,  revising to the point of exhaustion, like a cat maniacally chasing its tail until it eventually has to give up (and then the cat pretends like nothing happened).  I made this mistake once and ended up dumping my entire book manuscript in the trash and starting over from scratch.  As you conduct your research, make notes, and create possible manuscript outlines, be sure to discern your conclusion.  Then begin writing the manuscript.  Next, revise your manuscript to make sure that you’ve said what you set out to say.  Finally, revise the manuscript again, especially for style, so you say it well.  Then every draft will become a less-frustrating opportunity to clarify what you have already said but could have said more lucidly, convincingly, or artfully.

Thanks for reading.  I hope these suggestions serve you well.  You might want to read tips 1-5 if you found these helpful.