GenresNon-fiction
Science
The universe, explained without talking down.
Science writing for the public is an act of translation that still has to be true. The reader is intelligent, busy, and not obliged to remember the periodic table. They will stay with a difficult idea if you give them a reason to want it and a path that doesn't skip the step they needed. Analogies help until they don't. When the analogy breaks, say so, because that is often the interesting part.
A subject as large as physics or biology needs a door. A question, a person, a discovery, a problem we are currently bad at. Wonder is appropriate and easy to overdo. The universe does not require you to tell the reader to feel small every chapter. Explain the mechanism, show why the argument convinced the people who study it, and be open about what is still unknown. If you are not a specialist, get the manuscript read by people who are. Courtesy to the reader and courtesy to the science are the same job.
The kinds of book inside it
Physics
Abstract ideas need concrete experiments, and the history of how we came to believe them is often the clearest way through.
Biology
Living systems are messy, which is an advantage, because the examples are everywhere if you describe them exactly.
Astronomy
Scale is the thrill and also the risk, so keep a human question in view or the book becomes a catalogue of large numbers.
Earth science
The planet's systems are the plot, and they connect easily to weather, rock, and the ground under the reader's actual feet.
Popular science
A broad invitation to the sciences, which works when it has a spine, and suffers when it is only a tour of fascinating facts.
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.