Genre Guide — Nonfiction

Back to history Do you read a lot of history books? Even more than fiction? A lot of writers do, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should write one. A lot of the skills of a novelist will transfer to writing history books, but not all of them. The research you do for a novel? Trivial compared to what a historian does. You must dig into primary sources and be able to interpret them as to the prejudices and plans of the original author. You must come to conclusions and be able to defend them, because they will be attacked....

Remember to read the articles in the Essentials section. These cover all the essential skills you’ll need as a self-published author. They are not just for beginners either. They go in depth on how to successfully write, publish, and market your own books.

Have you led an interesting life? Or better yet, can you write interestingly about your life? Memoir is for those who can turn their personal stories into a tale with meaning, with humor, with characters and themes that people can relate to on a personal level. You must be a good storyteller, and an excellent stylist. It is difficult to find true life that is more dramatic than fiction, so you have to bring that drama with your words.

Memoir gets its own guide simply because of its uniqueness among nonfiction. Most nonfiction can be easily split into instructional or informational. And while it's definitely not instructional, it's not precisely informational because no one is looking for information about you. Unless you're famous. But if you're famous, you don't need our help, someone is already offering you a million dollars and a ghost writer for your memoir. And this is all before creative nonfiction comes along and tells you that memoir doesn't even have to be true. at least not the whole time. So, what even is memoir?

Dive right in and give us a scene from the era you're highlighting. Hook the reader with immediacy and detail. It can be from any portion of the story, but pick something exciting, engaging. Treat it like the first lines of a fiction book, a thriller if possible. You want people to think "What happens next?" even if they know (it's history, after all; they're only a Wikipedia article away from knowing what happened. It's your job to make them want to read your book instead of the article).

Back to history Online Resources The American Historical Association — A good place to start for an overview of the resources available to those who want to study history of any kind. Erik Larson’s blog — He doesn’t seem to be updating it any longer, but it has a ton of posts about his process when writing history books. Two PDFs on writing history, one from Duke and another from Southwestern University. Good stuff on primary and secondary sources and how to interpret them. Books to Read Instructional A Short Guide to Writing About History — Richard Marius Like it...

With the entire history of humankind to draw from, history is obviously a gigantic genre. And it’s not just the different time periods. Histories can be military, political, biographical. They can be focused on a single subject, sometimes even a single object. Or they can tell the story of an entire people from their appearance in the annals to modern day. There is no end to subjects you can tell the history. However, the best (and best-selling) histories tend to have some things in common that you should consider before diving into this rich genre. 1. Something People Want to...

Back to Nonfiction Online Resources Learn nonfiction writing from Malcolm Gladwell — from Masterclass.com Books to Read We’ll start with some general books for writing nonfiction, then list some of the best for some notable subgenres. The subgenres are too numerous and divergent to cover them all here, but we also list them within their subgenre, either in the Subgenre section of the main guide, or the study materials section of their own guide for the bigger subgenres like history or memoir. Instructional: How to Write a Factual Book — Lauren Bingham I enjoyed this book’s conversational tone far more...

Back to Nonfiction These are broken down into the main categories of informational and instructional, plus a few more of the subcategories that differ in some particular. Instructional Blueprint Typical instructional books: self-help, crafts, cookbooks, how-to Intro Introduce yourself with an eye toward establishing your expertise in the subject. Be authoritative but brief; people came to learn how to do a thing, not how you got to be an expert. For instance, do you skip the three pages of blog before the recipe you looked up online? You’re not alone. Don’t bother writing all that if people are only coming...