Writing Your First Book? Here’s 3 Books to Get You Started!
Three Great Guides to Writing Great Nonfiction
Writing a book is one of the most intimidating tasks that any person could attempt in their life. Even if you get over the immense hurdle of finding an idea, where do you even begin? Do you need to have pages and pages of notes? Or do you just sit down at the keyboard and start pounding away at the keys?
Discovering the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) community helped me produce two novels. With the support of my local writer’s group, I’ve translated my ideas into 50,000 to 60,000-word drafts that I am proud of. My foray into nonfiction, however, has demanded a different skill set to bring my ideas to the page.
Fortunately, we’re blessed to have an endless amount of literature on the craft of writing. But with so many works to choose from, where does one get started if they wish to write great nonfiction?
Having spent two years reading on the craft of writing, I’m now one year into my latest nonfiction project. In this article, I want to share the most practical guides that have helped me construct my latest book.
With each recommendation, I’m not going to stop with a brief description of how it’s helped me. I’m going to present the best exercises from each book that I am using for my current project. By the end of this article, you’ll be a couple of steps closer to creating more impactful nonfiction.
The Craft of Research, published by The University of Chicago Press
All great works begin with an idea. From that idea, you want to identify a practical problem in the world that you can use to guide your research. Without it, you risk gathering sources that don’t bring you any closer to the main theme of your work. This is just one of the many research obstacles that The Craft of Research will help you solve.
Originally written by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams and revised by Joseph Bizup and William T. FitzGerald, The Craft of Research has been a guiding light for writers and researchers of all skill levels for nearly three decades. Now, in its fifth edition, this book guides you in turning your idea into a book that your audience will love.
I began to use The Craft of Research after I had decided on the central theme for my book. It has helped me narrow my idea into a concise problem that my book intends to solve.
How Significant is Your Research Question?
The Craft of Research uses the following framework to help you identify if your idea is worth researching:
Topic: I am studying _______
Question: because I want to find out what/why/how _______,
Significance: in order to help my reader understand _______.
What this exercise encourages us to do is think in practical terms about our idea. The authors define a practical problem as one “caused by some condition in the world… that troubles us because it costs us time, money, respect, security, opportunity, even our lives” (Booth et al. 50).
The authors give us an example of how this framework can be used to define practical problems:
“Topic: I am studying how readings from the Hubble telescope differ from readings for the same stars measured by earthbound telescopes
Question: because I want to find out how much the atmosphere distorts measurements of electromagnetic radiation,
Practical Significance: so that astronomers can use data from earthbound telescopes to measure more accurately the density of electromagnetic radiation.” (Booth et al. 57)
Using this framework directs you toward applicable research sources. It will also set you on a path to think about how to structure your argument down the road.
How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco
Once you’ve identified the practical problem, you’re ready to gather your sources.
How you assemble this data can be done in several ways.
Tools like Notion and Obsidian allow you to keep your notes in databases that can be easily sorted. Notetaking apps are helpful for establishing and viewing connections in your gathered material.
However, when taking digital notes, I tend to mindlessly jot down information without processing it.
I’ve found in my personal and academic work that I best retain information when I am writing it down by hand. For this reason, I follow the note-taking strategies that Umberto Eco outlines in How to Write a Thesis.
The title aside, Eco’s guide has many tips that will aid any aspiring nonfiction writer.
In the era before easy computer access, Eco wrote his research notes onto index cards. A single index card could contain a quote from an article he uncovered. It could include a passage from a book checked out of his local library.
Eco categorizes index cards by their purpose to the entire work as a whole. Some projects may demand that you identify content of a specific theme. Other projects may require you to write out connections between one or more sources. Some projects may need a specific index card file devoted to a single author’s collected work.
Eco encourages writers to curate their index card files to their project’s needs. Using those files, you can build a work plan that will serve your purposes best.
Elements of Eco’s system can be found in the practices of many nonfiction writers. Robert Greene, John McPhee, and Ryan Holiday write using an index-card-based system.
Eco’s How to Write a Thesis has defined the day-to-day work of researching and writing my current book. I’ve adapted these principles into my research process. Alongside Notion and Obsidian, I’ve used Eco’s advice to manage my daily workflow.
Use Your Table of Contents to Construct a Work Plan
When structuring your project, Eco advises that you construct a table of contents. By beginning this way, you will have a better idea of what you have to write. This hypothetical table of contents will serve as your work plan.
Despite having written it first, Eco suggests that we be open to changing the table of contents at any moment:
“…you will be forced to repeatedly revise this hypothetical table of contents, or perhaps rewrite it altogether. This is certainly true, but you will restructure it more effectively if you have a starting point from which to work.” (Eco 107)
The benefit of having a table of contents is that it provides a framework to subdivide your core topic. Using the topic from the previous exercise, you can split your thesis into chapters. Eco provides the following example:
Central Question
1.1. Subquestions
1.1.1. Principal Subquestion
1.1.2. Secondary Subquestion
1.2. Development of the Central Question
1.2.1. First Ramification
1.2.2. Second Ramification
With this structure, you can begin by reading about the principal subquestion of your argument. You can continue by working down the table of contents.
As you proceed in your research, you may come across new developments or find old ones to be less significant. When those events arise, you can edit your work plan as needed and construct a new table of contents.
With this work plan, you’ll have a defined start and end point for your work. Each day of research will be another step down the table of contents.
The Index Card Files
Eco describes several different types of index card files that researchers can keep:
Bibliography File: cards with the citation material of a research source
Author File: cards containing material from a specific author
Idea File: cards listing possible ideas to explore later in your research
Theme-Based File: cards containing material sorted by different themes and topics
Readings File: cards containing passages from sources that you’ve read
Recommendations File: cards that list suggested ideas and sources from your original sources for you to explore in the future
There is an endless variety of files that you can produce for any research project. Eco states that you shouldn’t feel compelled to use every index card file he lists:
“…must you really write all these index cards? Of course not. …the nature of the thesis suggests the nature of the index cards. My only suggestion is that a given file be complete and unified.” (Eco 118)
For my current project, I keep a readings file to store my primary material. I have a bibliography file to log the sources that I’ve reviewed so far. I also maintain a recommendations file to guide my future research. Any commentary or extra notes I produce during the process gets documented on Obsidian.
Write Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick
As you begin to assemble more material for your book, you’ll begin to get a greater sense of its structure. You’ll see how the different pieces come together.
At the same time, you want to meet the reader’s needs and maintain their interest. No matter how much research you do — and you should do plenty of research — it doesn’t matter if no one reads your book.
Rob Fitzpatrick’s Write Useful Books is a succinct guide to writing value-dense nonfiction. Fitzpatrick offers an actionable playbook for every stage of the writing process. Whether it’s structuring your content or working with beta readers, Fitzpatrick’s straightforward tips will guide you from start to finish.
From Table of Contents to First Draft
Fitzpatrick suggests drafting when you have enough material to produce part of the table of contents. When that part of the first draft is complete, he advises sending that work to prospective test and beta readers. Fitzpatrick says you “should write enough to deliver the first big piece of value, allowing you to begin beta reading on that piece” (Fitzpatrick 41).
You want to provide the reader with valuable information every couple of pages. As Fitzpatrick states, “you want your reader to be thinking, ‘Oh wow, I can use that’” (Fitzpatrick 46). Constantly presenting value at regular intervals will keep readers turning the pages.
Fitzpatrick cautions to not confuse necessary knowledge with content that is valuable for the reader:
“The most common way to ruin your reader experience is to spend too long on foundational theory before getting to the bits that people actually want.” (Fitzpatrick 47)
The table of contents can be an effective gauge of the reader’s perceived experience with your book. Fitzpatrick adds word counts at the end of each chapter and section title in his drafted table of contents. Fitzpatrick suggests that doing this “[allows] you to see how many words (and thus how many minutes — 250 words per minute is typical) are sitting between any two pieces of value” (Fitzpatrick 49).
The word counts let you gauge how long it takes the reader to reach specific learning outcomes. This practice allows you to easily diagnose problems with your draft’s pacing.
If there are too many words before the first major piece of value, your book will have a slow start. Long back-to-back sections may drag readers along longer than they can keep interest.
This technique will serve you well as you navigate the revision stage.
Honorable Mention
I want to provide a brief honorable mention to Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Half-narrative, half-handbook, On Writing provides the best revision advice that I’ve ever received. Profound in its simplicity, King says:
“You need to revise for length.
Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft — 10%” (King 222)
I’ve found that having a concrete goal to aim for while revising compels me to be more critical of what to cut.
I’ll begin by looking at the word count for a specific chapter. If I’ve printed out the chapter, I’ll strike through needless words with a pencil. If I’m editing on a computer, I’ll apply a strikethrough on the words I intend to cut. If I get to the end of a chapter and it isn’t 10% smaller, I run back through and find something else to cut.
As brutal as it may be to “kill your darlings,” King believes that this is achievable for the beginning writer. “If you can’t get out ten per cent of it while retaining the basic story and flavor,” King says, “you’re not trying very hard” (King 223).
And if it’s still too brutal to leave your work on the cutting room floor, Rob Fitzpatrick has a suggestion. Fitzpatrick advises keeping a separate document where you can save your cut material. This “cutting room floor” document allows you to return to those gems if you need them in the future.
As I write this, I’m getting ready to travel to the southern United States with boxes of index cards in tow. In my brief hours of rest in hotel rooms, I’ll be sorting cards and solidifying the vision I have for my latest book. I will also have the books above with me as my guide. They’ve been instrumental in helping me navigate the craft of writing.
Let these exercises and the books that house them be your guide. I hope they motivate you to pursue your next project with a renewed sense of energy and bring you one step closer to a finished manuscript.
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Notes:
Booth, Wayne C., et al. The Craft of Research. 1995. 4th ed., Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, The University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. 1977. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, The MIT Press, 2015.
Fitzpatrick, Rob. Write Useful Books: A modern approach to designing and refining recommendable nonfiction. Useful Books Ltd., 2021.
King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York, New York, United States of America, Scribner, 2000.