Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd have co-authored Good Prose: The Art of Non-Fiction and opened a window into writing and editing, writer and editor. Author of Strength in What Remains, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World, Tracy Kidder won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1981 non-fiction narrative, The Soul of a New Machine. Kidder established… [Read More]
Many authors simply dismiss Twitter. They imagine Brooklynites and Los Angelinos strolling city streets while on their smartphones punching tiny keyboards. If the demographics of your book’s readers don’t match those who use Twitter, why bother? No one seems interested in tweeting what they ate for lunch, where they went shopping, or the funny thing their kid said. How can you say anything meaningful or… [Read More]
Jill Swenson: Cathryn Prince, this is your fourth book of historical non-fiction. Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff is a featured selection for the Military History Book Club this spring, advance reviews are positive and Amazon sales rankings impressive.. How does your experience working towards publication on this fourth book compare to a decade ago with your first, Shot from… [Read More]
When you write a book, it needs to be about something. When someone asks what your book is about, how do respond? Do you stumble over your words trying to describe your book? Time to pin down your premise. Premise: The central idea, situation, or set-up which provides the foundation and pushes the narrative forward. What happens as a result of actions is another way… [Read More]
Do you have a non-fiction work-in-progress? Are you in search of structure to your manuscript? The organization and order of information in a non-fiction book is every bit as important as plot is to fiction. Immersing yourself in the subject matter is no guarantee that the structure of a book will reveal itself as self-evident. So how does a writer of non-fiction move from the… [Read More]
Horst Woit, a young boy, snatched his uncle’s jack knife from the kitchen table as he and his mother walked out the door of their home. They trudged through the snow and freezing weather toward the Baltic harbor where they boarded a ship named the Wilhelm Gustloff to flee from Nazi Germany while Stalin’s soldiers advanced on the Eastern Front in January 1945. When Alexander… [Read More]
“There’s never been a book like this,” is a phrase that may doom your book propsoal to oblivion. When writing a book proposal, an essential document to prepare is a comparative title analysis. This is a report which identifies the current bestselling books like yours. If there is nothing comparable to your book in the marketplace of ideas, then there may be a reason for… [Read More]
Preparing a book proposal for submission to a publisher or an agent requires you write a Table of Contents (TOC). This should be an outline of the book concept you plan to propose. Simple enough? Simple is not the same as easy. To begin this document, start with a list of your chapters. Do you have chapter titles? Are the chapters divided into sections or… [Read More]
Planning to write a non-fiction book in 2013? Do you have a work-in-progress memoir? And your goal is to publish? Then start the New Year with a timeline and plan to write a book proposal. Now that you’ve updated your biographical profile, write a synopsis of your book concept before the end of this month. In less than 1,000 words, write an essay in third… [Read More]
