Back to nonfiction 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...

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...