GenresNon-fiction
Nature & Environment
Field, forest, ocean, and the systems that hold them.
Nature writing can be a field guide, a reported book about a crisis, or a personal account of paying attention to a place. The best of it is specific. Birds, tides, soil, and the names of things are not decoration, they are the evidence that someone has looked. A general reverence for the outdoors is not enough to fill a book, and readers who love this shelf have usually had enough of writers announcing that the woods are humbling.
If the subject is climate or conservation, bring the reporting. Who decided, who lives there, what the numbers are, what an intervention actually does. If the subject is a place, stay long enough that the place can contradict your first impression. The tradition has not always been good at noticing who was already living on the land being described as empty, and a new book should not inherit that habit by accident. Write what is there, including the people, the damage, and the ordinary beauty that doesn't need a drumroll.
The kinds of book inside it
Natural history
Species and systems are explained with enough precision that the reader could go outside and recognise something they had been walking past.
Climate
The science and the politics both belong, and the book should make a large problem graspable without pretending it is simple.
Conservation
Protection is practical work, so the book needs successes, failures, and the arguments about what is worth saving and who decides.
Place writing
One location is attended to over time, and the writer's presence should illuminate the place rather than replace it.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a contents list in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.