Simple. Teach them something new. Shine a light where maybe they haven’t thought to look. Go deeper than most online media these days with their sound bytes and tweets and clickbait titles.
Readers connect to a non-fiction book because it teaches them something in an engaging way; it answers a question they had or that they didn’t know they had. That engagement is created by emotion: the personal stories you tell and the way (tone or voice) you write the words on the page.
But non-fiction is about facts, figures, history, data and research, so how do you include emotion in an authentic way? How do you find your author’s voice?
First, you find the emotion. What is the main feeling you want the reader to feel while reading your book? Inspiration? Hope? Curiosity? Despair? Figure out what you want the reader to feel by determining what YOU feel when you are writing about this topic.
If you aren’t feeling anything at all, then why are you writing about it? You need to connect with your subject in order to write a full book about it that also connects with the reader. So, if you aren’t feeling anything but boredom, find a different subject for your book that fills you with joy, anger, amazement, wonder, curiosity – you get the picture.
Second, include those feelings in the personal narrative you share around the research you include. This could be your opinion or it could be a personal story relevant to the data you share or it could be a secondary story (story about a person you researched or the research itself) that is relevant.
One of my favorite podcasts, Invisibilia, spends the hour long podcast teasing you with stories that appear unconnected but that end up being completely connected when you reach the end of it. And they usually start with a personal story first – something random that connects to the main theme, something or someone very personal to them. And it works. Really well.
You can do the same thing in writing, but you have to let go of the academic, the professional, the diplomat. You have to get – a bit – vulnerable with your readers to draw them in and find that common ground. Easy ways to do that are to add little personal anecdotes that fit the theme of the subject you’re covering. For example, this is a completely made up paragraph with a completely not made up fact from my own life, which I use to connect the facts with the personal.
The Emperor Penguin can remain underwater for 20 minutes at a time. That is much longer than any human. I think the longest I ever held my breath was 3 minutes and I thought I would die. I did, however, spend 20 minutes with my face smushed up against the glass watching the penguins swim, play and slide around in their tank at the Mystic Aquarium when I was 10. I think that may be when I fell in love with them for the first time and realized I wanted to study them in more detail.
This is just one way to create that connection. Others include breaking the fourth wall (sort of) by posing questions, adding asides in parentheticals, pointing to something the person you are writing about did that you could never do, etc. It takes a bit of practice, but you can break out of the habit of writing too objectively by just giving it a shot.
So what’s stopping you? How long can you hold your breath?