BellaOnline Forums Career Nonfiction Writing Outlining

I'm with you right there Dianne.

I can write a novel as it's a matter of following a story. But I have no clue as to how to start book length nonfiction work. My nonfiction ideas are eclectic article ideas. However after writing for bella for several years, I'm starting to see some themes emerge from what looked a little like chaos. LOL...well organized chaos as I know that I know I want to write about love and self-actualization, but those topics are too broad to focus on if we're talking about nonfiction. As you said I also need to focus.

Outlining would be helpful.

Yes, one strict way of writing a book from our Bella articles would be to use our categories as chapters.

We usually link articles under these headings together, so that would keep the book nice and tidy!

Ebook publishing is one way forward that I recommend - they are short, editable in minutes and instant! (I have a short stories one out.) It's good practice!

Bella Shorts:

Thanks for the tip.

I was using the previous editors' categories for the last three years, then recently I added some of my own, which are much more specific. So my work is starting to take shape.

I can think of these categories as chapters. And maybe even start to write FOR the category. Usually what I do is to write the article, then fit it into a category. To be more in control of the project I could do it the other way around.

Thank you very much actually I was looking for something like this!

For example: I would need to group my short stories review under something like - Contemporary,Classic - or Thrillers etc.

They would be the outlining for the book, then Contents, and maybe an introduction for each chapter would be needed.

I just added my ebook publishing experiences to my Webwriting For newbies site below:

Just to update. I had started to table the idea of doing the self help book for awhile and just focus on sending out magazine queries and getting other free-lance work. The day after I made this decision, I came up with a title for my book and then quickly came up with an outline--which is really a list of chapter topics. This is working out well.