You’ve written your first draft. Congrats!
Now it’s time to refine the words you’ve put on the page.
This starts with developmental editing. The first step I’ll walk you through is checking your main genre.
Knowing your genre is important to properly analyze your manuscript and incorporate all the elements that readers will expect. So they’ll love your book.
All you need to do is check your goal, subject matter, and writing style.
Why Do I Need To Know This?
There are several reasons for checking your genre first.
One: you want readers to enjoy your story and go on to buy your other books or services. For that, you need to know what readers like about your particular kind of book. And to know this, you need to research books that are similar to yours. And that means understanding what type of book you’ve written.
And for that, you need to know what kind of book you’ve actually written.
Two: it’ll help you determine where to put your book on Amazon and how to market your book.
The point is: if you want readers to love what you’ve written and earn money, you need to know what it is you wrote.
Tip: you can use this free plot type test to get a sense of the book you’re writing. It’s more geared toward fiction, but it can guide you in the right direction.
1. Prewriting Preparation
Ideally, you already decided what kind of story you wanted to write before you started writing it.
But if you haven’t here’s a short overview of the possible overarching nonfiction genres.
How-to books: where you explain how to do something to your reader using practical steps and guidance (e.g., cookbook, gardening book, or other type of instructional book).
Academic books: where you give information to the reader on a certain topic (e.g., educational books, popular science, or other types of educational books).
Memoir: where you share your life’s story with the reader, usually surrounding a particular subject (e.g., professional journey or overcoming a disease).
Biography: where you share the life’s story of someone else with the reader, usually a prominent figure, like a politician or actor.
Narrative nonfiction: real-life events told to the reader using creative writing techniques, with the goal of entertaining.
Journalism: usually reports of true events that are contemporary, and usually short pieces (like in newspapers or blogs). Can also be in book form about a larger subject, such as true crime or history.
Big idea books: here you use a mixture of personal anecdotes, academic references, and instructions to the reader to help them grasp a certain concept, share your story, and learn how to reach the same type of result. This is often the case in self-help books.
Note that the above genres are my take on what the overarching genres are, so your definition may be different. Some of these come from the Story Grid framework (academic, narrative, how-to, big idea).
Either way, it’s possible that during the writing process, your story morphed into something else. It happens. For instance, maybe you started the book as a how-to book, but it morphed into a big idea book. Or maybe you started a memoir, and it turned into narrative nonfiction.
Either way, it’s good to check whether your main genre is still what you decided on beforehand.
2. Your Goal
First, it’s important to establish the goal of your book.
While it’s possible that you have multiple goals, you’d want to pick your main goal to determine what type of book you’ve written.
Here’s an overview of those goals and how they relate to the genres:
Instruct: your goal is to tell readers how to do a certain thing so they can do it easily. For example, to instruct them to cook a specific meal, to make a vegetable garden, or to draw cool figures (how-to book).
Impart knowledge: your goal is to share knowledge so readers can gain a deeper understanding of a subject, such as engineering, the universe, or parenting (academic book, journalism).
Share your experience: your goal is to share what you’ve been through to help others going through the same thing or something similar. Or to help people explain what it’s like. For instance, your journey surviving cancer, adopting kids, or from childhood (memoir).
Entertain: you want your reader to be entertained while reading. While you’d always want your reader entertained, the difference here is that this is the main focus. This means the story is more important than the exact details of how things happened. It’s still nonfiction, but some parts are fictionalized to make for a better story (narrative nonfiction, journalism).
Create a transformative experience: you want to give guidance to your reader on how to achieve a specific thing while also imparting knowledge, sharing your experience, and entertaining. You want your reader to transform after reading your book, understanding and applying what you have to teach them (big-idea book).
3. Your Subject Matter
This step is nothing more than answering the question: what’s the subject of my book?
For instance, is it something psychological? Is it a historical event? Music?
Note that here, you’re looking for the broader subject, not anything specific. So, if you’re writing a book about anxiety, the subject matter is psychology, not anxiety.
4. Your Writing Style
Finally, it’s time to assess your writing style. Each nonfiction genre has its own kind of tone. Below you can find some examples.
Academic: a formal tone, with many references throughout. However, this doesn’t mean there can’t be some informality there. This depends on your target audience: if you’re writing for other academics or students, your tone will generally be more formal and contain more jargon than if you’re writing for the general public.
Humorous: nonfiction can certainly be funny! An informal tone, often with personal anecdotes of funny stories or using a humorous perspective to explain the subject matter.
Regular informal: not necessarily overly funny, but also not formal. This is probably the most common tone of voice. It’s personal and conversational, but your authority on the subject is still present.
Reported/factual: this tone is particularly present in journalism. It’s focused mostly on the facts and giving just that to the reader. That doesn’t mean that’s all there is within the text, but this is the general tone.
5. Combine your answers to determine your genre
Now that you’ve answered the above questions, you should hopefully be able to determine your genre.
For instance, if you’ve determined your goal is to impart knowledge, your subject matter is psychology, and your tone is informal, you’ve likely written a popular psychology book.
Or, if your goal is to entertain, your subject matter is crime, and your tone is factual, you’ve likely written true crime.
If you’re feeling a bit unsure, browse through the categories on Amazon to help you find the right genre.
Final Thoughts
Great job with this first step! Your next step will be to research a few other books in your genre and determine whether your book hits the mark.
Commentaires