A common and misguided critique of nonfiction is that it’s boring or lacks narrative. But as anyone who reads nonfiction will know, narrative is one of the most important parts. Even if your book is all facts, you still need a thread of human interest to tie them together! And ideally this thread will appear as soon as possible, so readers can start to follow it right away.
On that note, here are four tips to start your own nonfiction book with a bang.
1. Don’t start at the chronological beginning
“Let’s start at the very beginning” might be great for learning scales (according to Maria von Trapp, anyway!), but not so much for writing nonfiction. That’s because a topic’s origin story is usually not its most interesting aspect — and you need to find a way into the book that will get people invested. (The only exception being biographies and autobiographies, which should start from birth/childhood as a matter of form.)
It might help to think of your first chapter like an overture: It should indicate what the main body of work will hold, such as motifs and themes to come. One of the best tactics here is to simply drop readers in medias res — in the middle of the action — of an important or resonant scene. (This method is often used in fiction as well, as my colleague Linnea mentioned in her post on fictional first chapters!)
Starting in medias res may be especially useful when describing something you personally experienced. Using sensory details and your internal monologue will pull readers into the scene, making them excited to come on this journey with you.
And this doesn’t even need to be a thrilling scene, per se! So long as you can describe your thoughts, surroundings, and interactions in an immersive way, readers will be just as engaged as if you’d started with a high-stakes car chase or bank robbery.
Let’s look at a nonfiction beginning that does exactly that.
Example: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.
For those of you who don’t know, H Mart is a supermarket chain that specializes in Asian food. […] It’s where Korean families buy rice cakes to make tteokguk, a beef soup that brings in the New Year. It’s the only place where you can find a giant vat of peeled garlic, because it’s the only place that truly understands how much garlic you’ll need for the kind of food your people eat. H Mart is freedom from the single-aisle “ethnic” section in regular grocery stores. They don’t prop Goya beans next to bottles of sriracha here.
Instead, you’ll likely find me crying by the banchan refrigerators, remembering the taste of my mom’s soy-sauce eggs and cold radish soup. Or in the freezer section, holding a stack of dumpling skins, thinking of all the hours that Mom and I spent at the kitchen table. Sobbing near the dry goods, asking myself, “Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left in my life to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?”
Just from these paragraphs, we can immediately tell what Zauner’s memoir will be about: her mother, her Korean-American identity, and her love of food. Yet she doesn’t lay them out in a dry list — she “shows” readers what she’ll be talking about using vivid, specific descriptions. It may not be action-packed, but this version of in medias res works perfectly for the introspective, culturally nuanced memoir that lies ahead.
2. Kick things off with an anecdote or mystery
Not every nonfiction book calls for starting in medias res. Two more options are to open with: a) an evocative anecdote or b) a compelling mystery.
Note that neither is mutually exclusive to starting in medias res — but since these methods can also work independently, they merit their own section. That said, keep in mind my previous advice about hinting at what’s to come! A first-chapter anecdote, for example, might recount a pivotal moment in your story (without giving too much away) or even appear as an unrelated scene — one that’s later revealed to be important or symbolic in the narrative.
Introducing a mystery works similarly, intriguing readers by raising questions… and implying that your book will answer them. Many true crime books begin this way, setting up a scenario that makes readers wonder: Who is this criminal? Why did they do it? What led up to this point? And so on.
Even if you’re writing expository or informational nonfiction — a subject history, for example, or even a business book — it never hurts to begin with a sprinkling of human interest. You might open with an anecdote about someone making a discovery, for example, or a case study that segues into your wider topic.
You can probably think of a few examples of these tactics. One variation is the “symbolic anecdote” — take a look at the example below.
Example: The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser
My parents go on vacation to Arizona. They bring back souvenir cacti for my sister, Leslie, and me. Little furry stumps, potted in gravel.
Within a month, both our cacti are dead. My sister’s cactus is desiccated and shrunken. Dead of thirst. Mine is slumped over, rotten through. I have overwatered and flooded the roots.
Our parents exchange a look. As if they know already that love will not be easy for us. That we are differently but equally screwed.
CJ Hauser’s The Crane Wife — titled after her viral Paris Review essay — begins with a series of short, bracing anecdotes. The passage above is one of the first, nodding to the book’s core theme of love and its many challenges. Though this anecdote is not actually about interpersonal relationships, it still signals to readers that we are in for an emotional roller coaster… in an artful, figurative way (through the metaphor of the cacti).
3. Address common misconceptions
Now for a pragmatic concern: common misconceptions. This will be more relevant to some books than others, but if there are any misconceptions about your topic, it’s crucial to tackle them early — one reason being that you don’t want to mislead people or jeopardize your credibility.
But depending on what the misconception is, you may also be able to use it as a point of intrigue. Think about popular articles and videos that debunk common myths; they tend to explain the truth in a way that’s just as interesting as the misconception itself. And while you might not want it to be the very first line of your book, you can use this misconception to transition into the meat of your research.
That’s not to say you should start by putting forward a ton of new information. This is a classic mistake when writing about a data-heavy topic — one to consciously avoid! True, your target audience might be more interested in the stats than the average reader… but you still don’t want to throw them straight in the deep end.
What you can do is create a clear, striking juxtaposition between misconception and reality. You can then explain the context that led to the misconception, why that context is faulty, and how the rest of your book will serve, to some extent, as a corrective.
Example: The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
Jack the Ripper killed prostitutes, or so it has always been believed, but there is no hard evidence to suggest that three of his five victims were prostitutes at all. As soon as the bodies were discovered in dark yards or streets, the police assumed that they were prostitutes and that they had been killed by a maniac who had lured them to these places for sex. There is and never was any proof of this either.
On the contrary, it was ascertained in the course of the coroners’ inquests that Jack the Ripper never had sex with his victims. Additionally, in the case of each murder there were no signs of struggle and the killings appear to have taken place in complete silence. No one in the vicinity heard any screams.
The autopsies concluded that all of the women were killed while in reclining positions… However, the police were so committed to their theories about the killer’s choice of victims that they failed to conclude the obvious: that the Ripper targeted women while they slept.
On top of clarifying a misconception, this passage also establishes a key theme of Rubenhold’s book: that these women were constantly overlooked, dismissed, and stereotyped, even in life. This obviously remained true as the police made facile assumptions about their cases. With her introduction, Rubenhold sets the scene for a book that will disprove many such assumptions — and, as she writes later, give these women back their dignity.
4. Touch on your credentials
Finally, with just about any nonfiction book, you’ll want to demonstrate why you are the best person to be writing it. For a memoir or autobiography, your credentials will speak for themselves. But for anything else, you should mention or at least allude to your qualifications in an early chapter.
If you’re writing about a scientific, historical, or academic subject, this will likely mean a degree or work experience in the relevant field. Maybe you’re a journalist who’s been on this beat for years and decided to write a book about it (think: John Carreyrou with Bad Blood, Jodi Kantor with She Said). Indeed, for many subjects, it’s obvious what kind of credentials are expected and what you should mention near the beginning.
But even with less rigorous subject matter, it’s still important to touch on your experience. For example, if you’re writing a book about a hobby interest of yours — i.e., you don’t have a degree or a work portfolio, but you do have extensive knowledge — you can still mention things like how you got into this interest and how much time you’ve spent on it.
Even for more personal narratives — nonfiction that’s not necessarily about you, but about someone you know or circumstances you were close to — there are ways to subtly show your connection and qualifications from the start.
Here’s an example from one of my favorite crossover authors, Ann Patchett, taken from her brilliant work of memoir/narrative nonfiction, Truth & Beauty.
Example: Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett
I do not remember our love unfolding, that we got to know one another and in time became friends. I only remember that she came through the door and it was there, huge and permanent and first. I felt I had been chosen by Lucy and I was thrilled.
Dearest anvil [she would write to me six years later], dearest deposed president of some now defunct but lovingly remembered country, dearest to me, I can find no suitable words of affection for you, words that will contain the whole of your wonderfulness to me. You will have to make due with being my favorite bagel, my favorite blue awning above some great little café where the coffee is strong but milky and has real texture to it.
This first chapter in Patchett’s book about her friendship with Lucy Grealy — another acclaimed author, who later died of a heroin overdose — is one of my favorites in “novelish” nonfiction. It captures the tenderness of their friendship, yet also does double duty by showing how Patchett is uniquely positioned to write about Grealy’s life. Basically, the book presents such an amazing combination of unique selling points — Patchett’s writing talent, her closeness with Grealy, and her access to things like Grealy’s letters — the reader can’t help but be pulled in.
To be sure, there are many ways to begin a nonfiction book… but the best intros, like this one, kill two (or more!) birds with one stone. That said, even just following one of the tips above should set you up nicely to grab readers’ attention — and flow into a narrative that keeps them engaged all the way through.
