The Process of Writing a Nonfiction Book: Part 1 of 2

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If you’re curious as to who I am,?here’s more about me . I’ve taught writing at Johns Hopkins, George Washington University, and the University of Florida and organized two of my own book tours across the US. My writing led to chef Chris Kimball interviewing me for his Milk Street Radio Show.?

The challenges my clients face with writing include finding the time to write and not knowing how to structure their writing or what services would be most beneficial to them. This is difficult to figure out with a busy schedule, which many of my clients have. I hope today’s article sheds light on the types of editing available to you.?

I host a free book class. Enroll in "How to Publish Your Book ," and you can get coaching when you attend live.

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Over seven years, my process to write a book was born and includes three stages:

Clarify —> Storify —> Amplify.

This process helps you publish a meaningful, high-quality book people want to read.

Overview of the 3 Stages

Although we'll focus on the Clarify Stage in this article, this overview gives you a look at the entire process.

1. In the Clarify stage, we unearth and refine the throughline of the book. The throughline includes the big or main connective idea.?By clarifying the dream audience who needs to know about your idea, we can develop book content tailored to the audience’s needs and questions. Doing this ensures your book offers them a transformation.
2. We help you Storify your book by selecting ideal storytelling opportunities that support your points.?
3. In the Amplify stage, we polish the manuscript so authors feel proud to hold the finished book in their hands. We provide guidance and support for decisions related to the book cover, back jacket copy, and author bio. If authors wish, we interview them so we can create content to promote them on our channels.?

See the image below for what’s included in each stage and keep reading for an in-depth look at Clarify.

What happens in the Clarify Stage?

We Clarify your big idea.

This happens through conversation and thought partnership.

When I work with clients to clarify their big idea (also known as the throughline, key idea, main idea, common thread), I help them prepare by giving them an online Book Journal that “warms up” their ideas and thinking on the topic. I developed this questionnaire over seven years of working on nonfiction book projects. These questions are ones I tested and refined over time to ensure each successfully works to bring forth an author’s best ideas for their book.

We empathize with your audience:

Our audience-first approach sets us apart. We dig deep on the topic of your audience to:

• understand how your future reader thinks,
• what they need help to do,
• why they would want to do what your book shows them to do,
• what the transformation will be, and more.

With this clear understanding of your future reader, we can move on to the next step of choosing the topics.

We finalize your topics.

This interconnects with identifying your readership and understanding your audience. Due to the foundational work we’ve done with your audience by this point, we save time by not choosing (and writing about) topics that won’t resonate with your readers. Instead, each topic is mindfully and carefully explored and selected in order to meet your reader needs. This saves at least 10 hours of your time.

We build your book map.

Our unique approach includes a "book map," which blends a mind map with an outline and table of contents. We often start this part of the process with a mind map, which offers a non-linear approach to capturing and saving ideas.

At this stage, the lack of pressure to put the ideas into a specific order allows the creative part of our brain to focus on idea generation as opposed to allowing the analytical part of our brain to interrupt with structure concerns. If we focus on structure too soon, we squash the creative and “idea generation” part of our brain’s workings.

How is the Clarify Stage different from the way other editors and publishing companies do the work?

Our audience-first approach ensures that your book can help people and has a purpose for existing. Understanding your audience deeply helps us identify your ideal book content and helps us begin to create the right book structure for you.

Marketing and business experience: With 25 years of organizational experience, we understand how your book can add to your business foundation.

Professional coaching background: We ask questions to provoke thinking and to bring forth ideas.

You're the boss of your book. While we see our job as providing guidance, suggestions, and recommendations, we recognize you get to decide. This is important so you have agency and control over your own project.

We take psychology and human wiring into account. In plain terms, we humans have different parts of our brains that work best for different tasks and actions: creative and analytical. These two areas of the brain don’t always play well together. We give each part of the brain their task at the proper time, which means we allow more beneficial ideas to surface and your book to stand out while helping people.

I publish a free email newsletter on writing effectively to raise your profile and grow business. Each newsletter usually offers resources yet the content isn't the same as here. Here’s the link to sign up:?

https://www.radiantmedialabs.com/letter

I host a free Book Class, so you can get answers to your nonfiction book-related questions. This includes a brief lesson on a topic related to publishing, and you can bring any questions you have about writing or publishing.

Enroll in the next free Book Class here:?

https://www.radiantmedialabs.com/radlab