Education Write A How-To Book - 8 Questions To Quality In Your Writing

Writing a quality how-to book is difficult. Knowing you have written a quality how-to book is even more difficult. In this article, I'm going to give you eight questions you can ask about your how-to book in order to ensure that you write quality books. 1. Do you know who your reader is? It is important to have a clear understanding of your reader before you begin to write your how-to book. Why is your reader interested in the subject? Do they have certain pain points or are they looking to better their lives in some way? Why would they want to read your book? What do they need to know? The more you know about the reader the better your book will be. The more targeted your book will be. The more successful your book will be. 2. Do you solve a problem, fix a pain point or better their life? There's a reason this question has been repeated. Ultimately, this is why your reader will buy your how-to book and/or read it. Without a reader your book is unfinished. And without a raison-d'etre it will never have a readership. 3. Do you know your subject? It really isn't necessary to be an expert before you write your how-to book. But it is necessary to know more than you need to know just to solve the reader's pain point. By researching your subject or else knowing it, in greater depth than you need that extra knowledge will show through as self-confidence and an understanding of the subject. It's not something you can fake. However, you can get there either by research or by subject knowledge. 4. Is your book organized for understanding? Have you organized your book so that it helps the user to learn what they need to learn in order to solve their problem? Have you organized it in rings of information? Have you broken the information into absorbable chunks? One of the key points of a how-to book is to teach the reader. Your book must help the reader to learn the subject. It needs to be organized to help teach the reader. 5. Does your book make its point? How-to books normally have a point or make an argument beyond just teaching and resolving a pain point. Whatever your point or argument it must make sense and be logically developed. You need to move from understanding to understanding. Always in one direction and always being consistent in its message. 6. Did you keep to the topic? An occasional drifting off into the ether of a cute story is allowed in a book the size of a standard how-to. However, too frequently or drifting for too long is a quick way to lose a reader. When you write a how-to book it is important to tell a story, and stories used to illustrate points are important. But you need to be sure they are relevant. And you need to keep to the point. You can't afford to drift. 7. Did you write simply? In school we are taught to write with complex words and complex sentences and complex paragraphs. As if the complexity of our writing will somehow improve the complexity of our thoughts. But now that we're no longer in school -- keep it simple! Write simply. Use active sentences and active tense. Limit your adjectives and adverbs. You are writing a how-to book, not poetry. And definitely not florid poetry. Keep it simple. Keep it easy to read. 8. Would you talk to a friend like this? When you write your how-to book it's easy to slip into the academic world. For most how-to books that is suicide. Grammar isn't nearly as important as simply sounding approachable. As sounding like yourself. So would you talk to a friend like this? If you were sitting across a kitchen table, talking to a friend, solving their problems... would you talk like this? For anything except an academic paper you should write your how-to book as if you were talking to a friend. Trust in your voice.

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