TL;DR

Writing a book is easy compared to writing one worth reading. A good book requires more than an interesting idea. It requires storytelling, thoughtful pacing, respect for the reader, careful editing, and intellectual honesty. The best authors know when to explain, when to leave room for discovery, and when to accept another perspective. Most importantly, becoming a good author means being willing to keep learning, revising, and writing one step at a time.

Key Takeaways

• Good books understand storytelling. Whether fiction or nonfiction, effective writing balances information, evidence, narrative, and pacing to keep readers engaged.
• Respect your reader. Give readers enough information to build a mental picture, but leave room for them to participate and draw their own conclusions.
• Editing makes good writing better. Most manuscripts need multiple revisions and an outside perspective to move from a rough draft to a finished book.
• Preserve the author’s voice. Good editing isn’t about correcting every unconventional phrase. It’s about understanding the author’s intentions and helping them communicate effectively.
• Write with intellectual honesty. Strong nonfiction acknowledges meaningful objections, examines opposing evidence, and values truth more than winning an argument.
• Start before you feel ready. A rough or unfinished manuscript can be improved. An unwritten book cannot.

By Mike Sonneveldt

Everyone seems to have a book inside them. At least, that’s what we’re told. But there’s a considerable difference between having something to say and knowing how to turn it into a book worth reading.

Writing a book is a tremendous undertaking. It requires time, discipline, patience, and a willingness to examine your own work more critically than you might be accustomed to. But producing a good book requires something else entirely: understanding the relationship between the author, the story, and the reader.

Having written, edited, and ghostwritten books for others, I’ve come to appreciate that good writing isn’t necessarily about using impressive vocabulary, demonstrating intellectual brilliance, or filling hundreds of pages with information. It’s about communicating something meaningful in a way that invites the reader to participate.

And whether you’re writing fiction, a memoir, a business book, or a deeply researched nonfiction work, the principles aren’t nearly as different as you might think.

A Good Book Understands the Mechanics of Storytelling

One of the biggest misconceptions about storytelling is that it’s reserved for fiction and memoirs.

The truth is, the most research-intensive nonfiction book you can buy can still tell a heckuva story.

A great nonfiction book provides an almost wave-like function. It intersperses ideas, facts, figures, and research with storytelling. When you start looking for it, you’ll notice the pattern.

Make a claim. Support it with evidence. Back it up with a personal or interesting story or anecdote.

Sometimes the author flips the process around. They’ll use an anecdote to catch the reader’s attention, then introduce the claims and evidence that explain why the story unfolded the way it did.

Either way, the reader experiences a natural rhythm between information and storytelling.

Fiction works similarly, although its mechanics are different. Plot, character arcs, tension, and problems all contribute to a wave-like flow. If the story is ratcheted to eleven the entire time, it becomes unbearable. If it never moves out of first gear, it becomes boring and lethargic.

A good book needs movement.

It can be verbose or tight and compact. It can be intellectually demanding or relatively simple. But it needs a poetic music to its writing and effort.

In other words, there’s a mind dance between author and reader.

Describe too much, and you lose them. Don’t describe enough, and you confuse them. Tell everything, and they lose the mystery. Tell them nothing, and they have no thread of mystery to pull on.

The author has to understand when to lead and when to let the reader discover something for themselves.

Respect Your Reader Enough to Let Them Think

That means an author who respects the reader understands that people can intuitively pick up on cues, whether the reader realizes it or not.

Consider the difference between strode and walked.

If I tell you that a man strode through the park, I’ve already helped build the image in your mind. You understand something about his movement and disposition. In a single sentence, I’ve given you what you need.

If I spend three pages describing every detail of that man’s movement, I’ve ruined the image.

The relationship between reader and author is delicate but deep.

The author says, “I’ll give you something you can picture in your head.”

The reader responds, “I’ll go along with your story because it’s interesting to me.”

Think about the movie Inception. In the movie, the main characters can shape a person’s dream. But there’s a simple rule to architecting a dream. Give their brain just enough to build from. Just give it the framework.

Writing is the same. You’re being given just enough information to construct the mental picture. Your brain fills in the rest.

That’s what good writing can do. It invites the reader to participate.

Unfortunately, many authors either lack confidence or are arrogant. Both can produce the same problem.

Some authors don’t trust their writing to communicate, so they overexplain. Others want to demonstrate their brilliance and intelligence, so they use unnecessarily complicated language, elaborate sentences, and intellectual terminology.

The result is often the same. The reader crosses their eyes, gives a huff, and closes the book.

I’ve always found it interesting that certain classical authors receive an intellectual pass simply because their books sit on the shelves of English professors in stuffy universities. Having read and cherished a certain author can be the literary equivalent of street cred for intellectuals.

That isn’t to say complex writing is inherently bad. Difficulty and complexity can be truly beautiful. In fact, difficulty is sometimes a calling card of artistic genius.

C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite examples of genuine literary ability. He could communicate remarkably deep and complex ideas, but he also demonstrated his genius through the clarity and beauty of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and his science fiction works.

True genius can be complex. But complexity alone doesn’t make someone a genius. Sometimes the thoughts are truly so wide and deep that most of us don’t have a clue what is going on. And an artist such as C.S. Lewis can convey his ideas not only through the rich tapestry of language and complexity, but also through verses so simple a child can enjoy.

For the typical author, the responsibility is much simpler: write for your reader.

That doesn’t mean changing your message or compromising your story. It means learning to communicate clearly, concisely, and effectively. Give readers enough to follow you but leave them room to become part of the experience.

If you draw the entire picture for them, they have no reason to join you.

Your First Draft Isn’t Your Finished Product

And while crafting the initial story is important, the thing that can bring it from good to great is often the most shunned.

Sadly, most authors fear the red pen.

They look at editing as the destruction of everything they hold dear. In reality, editing is often the careful art of cutting out ego and pride in writing.

An author somewhere along the way can get the idea that the first pass must be perfect, or else they’re not a good writer. Every time a red mark appears, they dock themselves mental points, believing their vision of their own writing is crumbling.

But a good editor is more like someone sanding, finishing, staining, sealing, and polishing a table.

Sure, a couple of 2x4s and a piece of flat wood can make a table. You can nail the whole thing together and technically have something that serves its purpose. But no matter how well you nail that thing together, it isn’t necessarily going to be a great table.

Writing works much the same way.

I think it takes a very seasoned author to edit their own work objectively without someone else taking the reins or at least assisting. We’re simply too close to our product.

We’ve been there from the beginning. We’ve wrestled with the ideas, struggled through the difficult sections, and finally reached the last word. By that point, we believe we’ve produced something of tremendous value, partly because of the work and effort we’ve invested.

But we’re not perfect, and we don’t have all the answers.

An outside editor can provide something the author often cannot: perspective. A good editor understands how a piece of writing actually reads to someone who wasn’t involved in creating it.

The author hears their voice in their head. The editor hears the voice on the page.

The better an author becomes, the less disconnected those two voices are. But without outside editorial feedback, an author may never recognize their bad habits or the things they believe work but don’t.

I believe that 99.9% of books become good to great after the second, third, fourth, or tenth pass. Almost never the first.

And if your book is genuinely perfect on the first pass, congratulations. You’ll most likely be too good to sell a bunch of copies until 200 years after you’re dead.

Don’t Let Editing Erase Your Voice

Of course, editing isn’t simply about correcting everything that doesn’t conform to conventional writing rules.

It’s a delicate dance.

We recently worked with an author whose dialogue deliberately took on an inefficient, heavily accented, grammatically imperfect tone. That’s what the author wanted for the character’s voice. So we honored the author’s intention and left it alone.

There’s a difference between a mistake and an intentional creative decision.

An editor needs to understand why something is written a particular way before deciding it needs to change.

The relationship between an author and editor should be one in which an author can say, “No, I need it to sound that way,” and in the next breath say, “But this here, I trust you. Let’s change it.”

When I’ve ghostwritten for clients, the process has often involved level-headed debates about particular aspects of the manuscript.

One project involved a very personal testimony and memoir. I knew that if I was going to make a change or recommendation, I had better have a darn good reason for doing so. Likewise, if the author wanted to retain something that went against conventional writing technique, they needed a solid reason for wanting it that way.

When an author and editor can both humble themselves and find a relationship within the manuscript, they become partners in its crafting.

They learn to trust what the other person is seeing and understand why certain words are written the way they are.

The best editor doesn’t necessarily win every argument. The best author doesn’t either.

The manuscript wins when both parties are willing to put their egos aside and serve the work.

Write With Intellectual Honesty

There’s another responsibility that becomes particularly important when writing nonfiction: the responsibility to truth.

As someone who values truth deeply, I believe an author should do their absolute best to find the most accurate line of truth possible.

That doesn’t mean every author has to agree with every opposing perspective. But good writing should at least acknowledge objections that carry some weight and address them with a degree of objectivity.

None of us can be objective in the truest sense. We all use lenses. We each see the world through those lenses, and the sheer volume of information and evidence available today is so vast that we could spend forever arguing over conclusions.

Two people with the same intelligence, background, resources, and research could still arrive at completely opposite conclusions.

This is where intellectual honesty comes into play.

A persuasive argument is the art of taking the available evidence and your particular lens, then building the most reasonable case possible.

Unfortunately, the line between persuasion and manipulation is thin.

Often, it comes down to the author’s motives. Do they genuinely believe their argument? Or do they secretly know there are loose ends and facts that don’t support their position? Are they willing to examine those things, or do they actively try to hide the other side from themselves?

Consider a simple example.

If I give you five dollars, you have no idea what my motive is. Maybe I’m genuinely giving you five dollars out of the kindness of my heart. Or perhaps I know that in two weeks, when I ask you for ten dollars, you’ll feel guilty about accepting the original five and readily give me ten in return.

The action is identical. The motive is entirely different.

Writing can work the same way.

An author can present information to help someone understand a subject, or selectively construct an argument to lead the reader toward a predetermined conclusion.

The difference isn’t always apparent on the page. But the author knows whether they’re genuinely pursuing truth or simply trying to win an argument.

I don’t believe an author has to be right about everything. I do believe they have a responsibility to be honest about what they believe, why they believe it, and what evidence might challenge those beliefs.

Truth should matter more than winning.

Stop Looking at the Elephant

Finally, there’s one mistake I see aspiring authors make before they even begin writing.

They look at the whole book.

It’s like a man standing in front of a dead elephant with a fork. He has no idea where to start, what to do, or how he’s ever going to get through the entire project.

The sheer magnitude of the undertaking overwhelms him.

I’ve seen plenty of people hem and haw for years, if not decades. They have it on their heart to write a book, but they never quite get around to it.

Personally, I’d rather see a bunch of half-finished manuscripts than an author who has never put pen to paper because they’re waiting to finish the book before they begin.

A book is a long project. It doesn’t have to happen all at once.

It can take days, weeks, months, years, or even decades. What matters is that you start and begin taking it one step at a time.

Don’t try to solve the entire book today. Simply write the next paragraph, develop the next idea, or work through the next chapter.

A rough manuscript can be edited. A disorganized manuscript can be restructured. A half-finished manuscript can be completed.

An unwritten book has none of those possibilities.

The Difference Between Writing a Book and Becoming an Author

Writing a book isn’t particularly complicated in principle. You have an idea, put words on paper, and eventually reach the end.

But writing a good book requires something more.

It requires understanding storytelling, respecting your reader, accepting criticism, collaborating with editors, preserving your voice, and maintaining intellectual honesty.

Most importantly, it requires a willingness to keep working after the initial excitement of having an idea wears off.

The finished book is the product of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of small decisions. Some involve adding words. Others involve removing them. Some require defending a creative choice, while others require admitting that someone else has seen something you missed.

And that’s perfectly fine.

You don’t have to be a perfect writer to produce a good book. You do have to be willing to become a better one.

Being an author means picking up the pen (or sitting down at the laptop…or typewriter if you so choose) and starting your craft. At least start. And then just keep going one step at a time. You’ll learn more about yourself than you ever thought possible.

And who knows, you might even end up with a book people want to read.

So, pick up the fork. Start somewhere. And keep working at it.