My Book, Fathoms | Kill Your Darlings

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Structuring the Non-fiction Book with Rebecca Giggs

Introduction

Welcome to Non-Fiction Narratives
Other Kinds of Nonfiction
Time Required & Materials
Structure of this Course
Meet Your Teacher (1:57)
Difficulties of Structure

Part One: Section A

A Book-Shaped Idea (3:48)
Things Books Can and Can't Do
The Core Ingredients
Your Response to the Dot Points
Approaches to Core Ingredients
First Ingredient—The ‘Origin Myth’
What Have We Learned?
My Book, Fathoms
Answering Why Now?
Biography
Exercise: Your Bookshelf
Exercise: Your Book's Beginnings
The Origin Myth in Context

Part One: Section B

Second Core Ingredient—Questions
Sequential Chapters with Linked Questions
A ‘Canopy Question’
Essay Collections
Simplify and Think of the Reader
Questions as Narrative ‘Gateways’
Exericse: A Reader’s Questions
Exercise: Building Your Driving Questions
Third Ingredient—A Hypothesis
Exercise: Where Will Your Journey Lead?

Part One: Section C

Fourth Ingredient—Originality
Originality (2:24)
Exercise: What’s Your Angle?
Fifth Ingredient—A Narrative Arc
Scene-Setting and Worldbuilding
Rising Action
Friction
What About the Rising Part of Rising Action?
Known Events
What We Can Learn from Fiction
Non-fiction’s ‘Dark Night of the Soul’
Crisis and Climax
In My Own Practice
Denouement and Closure
Summarising the Narrative Arc
Exercise: Narrative Arc
Inquiry-led Books

Part One: Section D

Sixth Ingredient—Conclusions
Exercise: Your Conclusions
Rounding Up (1:28)
Troubleshooting
Why is Your Idea Too Small?
What if Your Ideas are Too Big for a Book?

Part Two

Structure Before Drafting (0:54)
File Organisation
Notebooking
Structure During Drafting (2:15)
Parameters or Roadblocks
Exercise: Draft a Capsule Narrative
Creating Cover Sheets

Part Three

Introduction (2:05)
Taking Inspiration from Published Books
Timelines
Exercise: Making a Timeline
Diagramming
Exercise: Storyboarding
Exercise: An Arc Diagram
Exercise: Using Shapes
Genre-Smashes
Composing a Table of Contents
Drafting Your Table of Contents
Conclusion (1:05)

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