What It Takes to Write a Non-fiction Book

Beginning writers look up at that ivory pedestal and wish that some day they could be standing on it. But most of the time the writer that’s currently standing on it high above the masses is the one who writes fiction. Why is that?

Perhaps it’s because the majority of what a novelist writes comes from his or her imagination. Readers respect that. But those who write non-fiction books work just as hard—perhaps harder—since they deal in facts and can’t embellish those facts to enhance their story.

So what does it take to write a non-fiction book? It takes commitment and lots and lots of research. The subject you chose for your book has to be one that will appeal to a wide variety of readers. While other writers may have written about it before, you have to choose the right angle that will make your chosen subject seem new and exciting. In non-fiction, that’s known as a slant.

No matter how much you want to write a book, don’t start out doing that. First, your writing skills may not be up to it, and second, your organizational skills won’t certainly be up to it. And if you haven’t written and published articles, on the subject of your book or not, you don’t have the credibility publishers look for.

So you say, forget the publishers, I’m going to publish my book myself electronically. That’s all well and good, but unless you have a reputation as a writer, why should readers buy it. And after all the work you’ll be putting into it, you certainly want them to do that.

Writing a book direct from the starting gate is like going from grammar school to graduate school in one leap. Chances are highly likely that you won’t finish it, and even if you do, it won’t sell. You need to be comfortable with the writing process before you tackle a book. You should be sure you can actually write well enough to be able to focus your attention on other things, such as organization, process, and deadlines and not have to worry about your writing. .

Before you begin to write your book, you’ll need to plan it out. Writers call this blocking. While you may want to start with an informal list of what you want to include, eventually you’ll need to create a table of contents. The table of contents becomes your guide while writing your book.

But before you can even begin putting together your table of contents, you’ll need to do quite a lot of research. You’ll need to do two types of research—marketing research and content research. The first looks into what other books have bene published on your subject and when. The second digs for the facts you’ll need to produce the content of your book. Both are equally important.

If there are lots of books published on your subject, it may not do well because of a flooded market. If there aren’t any or few books published on your subject, it may also not do well because readers may not be interested in it. So you have to look for a happy medium.

Researching the content of your book is a big job that takes a great deal of organization. You may choose to do all the research and then write your book, or you may research one chapter at a time. Whatever you do, use your table of contents to help keep things organized.

If you’ve chosen to self-publish your book and before you start to write it, set a drop-dead deadline—one that you can work with—and work backwards to the present time. Include editing, copy editing, revisions, and extra time for the unknown and unknowable. If there isn’t enough time between then and now, change the final deadline or publication date

If you choose the publisher route, you’ll begin by composing a query letter and sending it out to publishers, that through your marketing research, you believe may show an interest in it. In this case, you won’t begin to write your book until you get a firm commitment from a publisher who will also set the deadline for completion of the manuscript.

There are two ways to write your book. The first is in chronological order, beginning with Chapter One. The second is to write it out of order, beginning with the easiest chapter first and working ahead to the more complex ones.

Edit each chapter as you finish it. This is much easier than waiting to edit your whole book. As you write, be honest with yourself. If you get that little pang of doubt, listen to it. Don’t con yourself and don’t fall in love with your own pearls on paper. On the other hand, don’t polish until you take all the luster off the page. Know when to stop editing.

However, the editing you do is to get the manuscript in the best condition possible. Even though you’ve edited your work, you’ll need to find a professional editor to edit it if you’re self-publishing. Otherwise, you’ll send it to the publisher who will assign an in-house editor to work with you on the final copy edit. Writing your book is only half of the process.

Unless your publisher gives you a short deadline, figure out how much time you’ll need to complete your book and plan accordingly. Writing can’t be rushed. You’re not trying to make the early edition. You’re writing a book, perhaps your first. Between writing times, do something other than think about the book. Leave space between work sessions. Take a day to review research, and then sleep on it. Write, reread, leave it alone, and sleep on it. Remember, your mind will be working on your book while you’re sleeping.

It’s important not to overdo it when writing your book. Don’t work for hours on end. Take frequent breaks and spread the work out over days and weeks. Also, eat well, sleep as much as you need to, stretch frequently, and exercise. This is work. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

If at First You Don't Succeed

For most writers, writing a first draft of an article, short story, or book is still a lot better than going to the dentist. For some, cleaning the bathroom or folding the laundry is a lot less stressful. With a first draft you'll start from nothing and creating something, but not the finished product.

Before writing the first draft of any piece of writing, it pays to block out your idea. It makes writing an article or short story a lot simpler. But just because you block out the structure of your piece of writing, that doesn’t mean you have to stick to it religiously. Blocking helps you to think through some questions before you begin writing. If you’re writing fiction, the story, itself, can take an unexpected turn. That can change everything. Sometimes, it’s a dead end, and you’ll have your blocking to fall back on.

Think of your first draft as the clay, not the sculpture. You start out with a hunk of clay that you mold over and over. Much of it will be messy and unrefined. But don’t worry about that now. Your job is simply to get from the beginning to the end. Put down everything that comes into your head. Don’t worry about grammar. You’ll be able to correct any problems later. For now, get everything out.

Remember, no one but you should read your first draft.  Don’t show your first draft to anyone. Asking someone else to read it would be pointless and embarrassing. If you don’t know what your first draft needs, then by all means, ask for help. But just because you don’t show your first draft to anyone else doesn’t mean you can’t discuss your idea with a close friend or colleague if need be. Doing so might give you a different take on your subject.

Don’t stop to do research.  Depending on the type of writing you do, completing all your research before you start may be necessary, such as in writing an article. But if you’re writing a piece of fiction or even a book, it may be better to do some basic research—just enough to get you started—rather than doing all of it. Instead, you can insert words in uppercase letters in your first drafts to indicate where details need to be filled in later.

Set a deadline. It pays to set a deadline for your first draft. Otherwise you may be writing it for much longer than you planned. You really can't move on until you complete your first draft. And without anyone to prod you, you may not even get your first draft finished. Don’t start your next draft as soon as you finish your first one. Give it some time to rest. In the meantime, do some work on another project. When you come back to it, you’ll see the problems immediately.

Efficient Note-Taking Tips

No matter how good your research skills are, they won’t do you any good if you don’t have an efficient note-taking system. Organizing all the information you collect is just as important as finding it. Without good organized notes, whatever you write will take twice as long.

While some writers still cling to the one-note-on-an-index-card system they learned in school, that’s not the most efficient way of organizing your information. First, it’s a technique that originated before the Digital Age. Today, there are far better ways of doing the same thing.

One of the simplest ways to take notes is to create a note file in your word processor. Into that, you can type in whatever notes are pertinent to the writing project you’ll use the notes for. At this stage, don’t worry about gathering notes in any particular order. Add them to your note file as you find them.

Let’s say your writing an article. At some point, you need to block it out. Blocking is a simple technique that lists the main parts of your piece. It’s not detailed like outlining. Try to stick to a half dozen or so sections for your article. Think of the phrase that you write for each section as its heading. Organize the sections in the order best suited for the article, beginning with the lead. Finally, number each section in order from the lead to the conclusion.  This should take about 10 minutes.

Once you’ve gathered all the notes for say an article, print out your note file. Read over your notes, underlining key passages. In the left-hand margin, jot down which section of your article that piece of information applies. After completing this sorting process, go back and place the section numbers to the left of each note. The numbers won’t be in order. But by following their chronological order, you can begin to write the first draft of your article. Depending on how many notes you have, this should only take 10-15 minutes.  If the subject of your article is pretty straight forward, you should be able to complete the first draft in 60-90 minutes. By allowing another 30-45 minutes for editing, you should be able to complete the finished article in about two hours, not counting your note-taking time.

There are lots of other ways to gather information. You could use a tiny digital recorder and take your notes orally, then transfer what your read into the recorder to a word-processor-ready file in your computer.

If you’re taking notes from written material, you can use a program like Dragon Naturally Speaking, to read selected bits of information into your word-processor directly. This program is extremely accurate and will cut down your note-taking time considerably.

Another option, especially if you don’t have the time at the moment to read through and select information is to use an OCR program like Omnipage Pro. In this case, you scan the pages you want to use and the program converts the printed text to workable word-processing text. Afterwards, when you have more time, you can either go through the text on screen or print it out and underline those parts you wish to select. You’ll then have to go back and using the side-by-side feature of your word processor, copy and paste the parts you selected to a separate note file.

Keep all the notes for each writing project in a separate file folder. Obviously, you’ll have many of them for a book project. In that case, create a folder for each chapter in which you may have several printed out note files.

Being a successful freelance writer demands that you work as efficiently as possible. After all, time is money. The less time you spend on note-taking, the more money you’ll make for each project.

The All-Important First Draft

First drafts are the all-important backbone of any article, short-story, or book. But many writers produce them as if they’re the final draft. There’s a great difference between the two.  And there’s a difference between a first draft in non-fiction and one in fiction.

In non-fiction, you begin with a mass of facts and have to compile them into a cohesive article or book that documents reality. But in fiction, you start out with nothing and have to create an illusion of reality. In both cases, a first draft gives you something to work with.

But even before you get to the first draft stage in your writing, you need to think about what you’re going to write. You’d be surprised just how many beginning writers don’t do this. This comes from bad practices they learned in school. Much of the writing they did was spontaneous writing in class. The teacher would give them an exercise, and they had to start it or even complete it in class. Too many carried this method over to their own writing.

In fact, you should begin by thoroughly thinking out your idea and how you plan to craft it. Then you need to block out what you plan to write. This isn’t an outline but a plan—and a loose one at that. You shouldn’t include too many details in your blocking but, instead, focus on the main and some of the subpoints. The main thing is to keep it flexible. Your blocked plan will help you to stay on course. In non-fiction, it will help you line up the facts in a logical order. In fiction, it will keep you from going down too many side paths and thus drifting away from your plot.

Think of your first draft as the clay, not the sculpture. A potter starts with a hunk of wet clay and kneads it into a pliable mass. At that point, he or she only has a vague idea of what the final piece will look like. And just like this mass of clay, your first draft will be messy and unrefined. But refining comes later. Your job now is just to get started.

So the first thing to do is to empty your head of everything on the subject at hand. In non-fiction, you most likely will have notes to refer to but in fiction, you may just create as you go. In both cases, you have your blocked plan to follow. Don worry about how your writing looks or sounds at this point. This is just between you and your  keyboard.

You shouldn’t show your first draft to anyone. You know it needs lots of work. In fact, you probably know exactly what that work should be. So showing your first draft to someone at this stage is pointless. It’s not called a “rough” draft for nothing.  And while you shouldn’t show your first draft to anyone, that doesn’t mean that you can’t discuss your idea with a close friend or family member. Doing so might help to free up the cobwebs in your brain. Talking about an idea  often helps a person think it out.

Today, both non-fiction and fiction writers do lots of research. But that can bog you down.  You may get so involved in your research that you never get to your first draft. Also, know when you’ve done enough general research on your idea. If you start writing and then continue your research, you’ll constantly be changing what you’ve written. It’s okay to look up details.

If you’re writing fiction, you can always flub the details and make them up to keep the story going. To make sure you know which details to look up later,  put them in bold type. This will make them stand out. If you’re writing an historical article or fictional story, put the year dates in bold type. Then you’ll be able to see at a glance if they’re out of chronological order. The only time they may not be is if you’re using a flashback.

Finally, set a deadline for your first draft. Be reasonable. Give yourself plenty of time to write it, but know when it should be finished so that you can get on with revising in future drafts. If you stop for any reason for a bit of time, insert “START HERE” in your notes or if you’re in a revision draft, wherever you stop within it.

The key to writing a successful first draft is not to revise as you go. Keep revising until after you have the whole story laid out, and you’ve gained some perspective on it. When you’ve finished your first draft, let it rest. Work or another project or do something else for a bit. That way, when you do get back to it, you’ll be able to see just what needs to be done.

Plotting Along

In a video interview on YouTube, Stephen King recently told a group of students, “Forget plotting. That takes all the fun out of writing.” That may be easy for him to say. As a famous writer of over 35 books and numerous short stories, plotting is second nature. But to most beginning writers, plotting fiction and blocking non-fiction is a fact of life. A necessary evil that they need to master.

The more you write, the easier it becomes. Just as any other professional, writers develop skills that become part of the routine. While Stephen King may think he’s just winging it, he’s actually plotting out his stories in his mind. He doesn’t need to plan them on paper, but you do.

Whether you’re writing articles or short stories, non-fiction books or novels, you need to know where you’re going—you need to know how it will generally will end—so that you can finally get there. Too many beginning writers start a book and only get a third to half way through before they call it quits. The article, short story, book, or novel won’t guide you. Only you can do that.

The reason most beginning writers shy away from blocking or plotting is that they associate these with outlining—that dreaded chore they had to do in school for their term papers and such. Neither is outlining.

Let’s take blocking, for instance. Blocking out an article is easy. You start by putting the word “beginning” at the top of the page and the word “ending” at the bottom of the page. In between you list what comes in the middle in whatever order you choose. This is simplifying this a bit, but, nevertheless, it’s as simple as that. You don’t have to write each step out in sentences, just make notes to yourself as to what it will contain. You may also may want to make a note as to how you plan to start your piece and how you’ll end it since endings usually wrap up where you began. You can do all of this on a napkin if you want. This isn’t a formal outline, but a flexible plan that may change as you write. But it’s a plan all the same.

Plotting a short story is similar. There are some basic plots for all short stories. So after you choose which basic plot you’ll be following, you need to write a synopsis of your story. Pretend a friend asked you what your story is going to be about, then just tell him or her, but do it on paper and limit it to one page. This will help you plot out your story. Again it’s a flexible plan. It can change as you go, but by doing this, you’ll have an idea how the story will end. So you write forwards towards that ending.

Writing isn’t easy. Anyone who tells you that or gives you that impression is only telling you what you want to hear. Writing is work—hard work. But the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Once you start blocking or plotting, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner. Yes, writing can be fun, but if you’re stressed out trying to write something, there’s no way it can be.