When it comes to writing books, nonfiction is probably one of the easiest to organize and create. We’re not saddled with different storytelling structures and models. We don’t have to deal with character back stories, plot twists, or worry about building a new universe.
There are a few different ways to organize a nonfiction book, depending on your subject matter and your purpose, and knowing how you’re going to organize the book can make the thing so much easier to write.
When my friend, Kyle Lacy, and I wrote Branding Yourself back in 2010, we came up with a simple structure. We divided the book into sections, chapters, and sub-sections or sub-chapters. Each sub-section was no more than 2,000 words long, and many of them were under 1,000, and several of them even had sub-sub-sections. We had four months to write the book, and we could average three chapters per month between us, partly because of how we had organized and broken up the book.
We each had chapters and technology we wanted to write about, so we claimed the chapters we liked and went to work. The writing was rather simple because we would focus on writing the different sub-sections rather than focusing on the whole chapter or even the entire book. Write one sub-section, and then another, and then another. After a while, each chapter was done. A little longer, and the book was done. By focusing on one sub-section at a time, we were able to churn out a 300 page book in four months.
(This is advice I have given other people who are afraid of tackling their own book: Think of each sub-section as a blog article. Write two or three blog articles per week, publish them on your blog, and before you know it, you’ve got a book. Repackage your blog articles into a single book and you’re all set.)
How Do You Decide Which Format to Follow?
Unlike the fiction world where you get to debate between plotting versus pantsing — plotting out the book in advance or just writing and see where the story takes you — nonfiction writers really don’t get that luxury. We have to plan our books in advance if we know how we’re going to research it, relay the information, and tell the story.
There are a few ways you can organize your nonfiction book to make it flow logically and naturally.
Chronological
Most biographies, memoirs, and creative nonfiction stories follow this model. Just like a regular fiction story, there’s a beginning, middle, and end to the story. There’s a linear time flow to the story where it starts some time ago, and ends in the recent past. Former Kerouac House writer-in-residence Lily Brooks-Dalton wrote her motorcycle memoir, Motorcycles I’ve Loved in chronological structure. She started from the time she thought about getting a motorcycle to the time she finally took a multi-day road trip with her dad.
How to
My book Branding Yourself was a how-to book because we not only explained how to use different social media channels, we explained how to develop a personal branding strategy. We also built on the knowledge, giving people basic information on how to use different social networks, how to write a blog, and then how to analyze your efforts, and finally how to put all those prior efforts to work in developing your larger strategy.
Big picture to small detail: If you want to explain a large movement, a philosophy, or an event, you can paint a big picture and then begin breaking it down to the smaller pieces, showing how each piece and part function within the bigger whole. You can use this to explain historical events such as the Civil War: Explain the war and its effects, and then break it down to smaller details like some of the notable battles, generals, and events.
Small detail to big picture: Some of the longer stories on NPR are structured this way. In order to explain how a new proposed policy or bill could affect the country, the story will always start with a focus on one particular person or family. The reporter will interview them, talk about their circumstances, and then “pan out” to the bigger picture, looking at how many people will be affected by the proposal.
List Books
A book of essays, rules, or a basic recitation of facts. 1,001 Movies To See Before You Die is a great example of a list book. You can divide these books up into a chronological order (40s, 50s, 60s) or by specific categories (comedy, drama, action, etc.), but they can also just be organized into alphabetical order.
Topic by Topic
When you have a subject that doesn’t fit with any other structure, and doesn’t have a chronological or size-related flow, you can use this structure. As Wheatmark.com explained:
If you are covering a subject that has many individual sections that do not necessarily go together, for example, the animals of Africa, you may want to structure your book by the types of animals that live there such as hunters and runners.
Thought Leadership
GrammarFactory.com says this is less of a process-oriented book, it’s a way to make your case for something you believe in. The outline starts with the problem facing your industry or society, introduce your solution to the problem, and then introduce your framework at a high level. My book, No Bullshit Social Media was more of a thought leadership book, rather than a how-to book, because we didn’t explain how to actually do social media, only tell executives why they needed it.
The nice thing about nonfiction books is that they generally have a logical flow to them that shares information in an easy-to-grasp manner that makes it interesting and informative. If you’re writing your own nonfiction book, pick your structure, create your outline, and then start filling everything in. It will flow so much more easily and faster if you can decide your structure early on.
