4 - Börja rätt
The beginning of a non-fiction text needs to do three things:
a) Give the text energy with something notable, a hook (an exciting event, unknown facts, conflict) b) Show why the text is important. Show, don’t tell c) Make the reader feel secure
Why am I the right person to tell this story
Signposting lowers the tempo and wastes reader energy
Researchers tend to ask many questions at the beginning of a text
7 - Pitcha text
- Too few academics engage with popular press
- It’s critical to find a “hook” to your text. Something relevant that has happened to which your text relates. Connect it to something bigger than just your research area.
- Give direct quotes, define current affairs with examples.
- Your pitch to an editor should be extremely short. Five sentences or less about your subject and why they should publish your text now. Poignant facts give weight to your text.
- The editor should also become interested in your research, why me.
- Present the thing in the first paragraph, link to yourself in the second.
- Clear connection between the hook, your research, and your pitch
- Display contrast between the intellectual quality of your work (high) and your tendency to use complex prose when writing about it (low).