Caught in the Nude: Common Nonfiction Problems Exposed

In my business, I get to see a lot of naked drafts—you know, the middle-aged, soft around the middle, dripping from the shower kind of drafts. Where it all hangs out. Naked drafts should never be for public viewing. I’m all for dressing up our manuscripts with the best compression shape wear out there, hemming in the lumps and bumps that reveal their authors’ self-indulgence, poor discipline, and worn ideas.  

Sometimes naked drafts make it all the way to the marketplace. Rather than point out and embarrass these poor books on the shelf, I will adapt examples from in-progress writing I’ve seen over the years. Sometimes authors have trouble understanding why I prescribe a good workout or makeover for their manuscripts, claiming that the bulges I highlight are merely a function of voice and perspective—part of their charm and authenticity. Perhaps. But before you self-publish that tome, consider what the following problems communicate to readers. 

The Naked Draft with a Big Head 

Only I am smart enough.   

When we drift into overstating our case with a bit of arrogance, we communicate that we value our intellect more than others’ minds. In the extreme, authors believe they are the only people to have ever come up with an idea, or they have a tribe that agrees with them and no other position or group can be or ever has been right.  

For those of us in the Christian field of publishing, we recognize this symptom easily in others, such as in the many books that arose in the early aughts by New Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. These authors enjoyed a tone full of contempt for anyone with a different view. But I see this same attitude, too, when Christian factions defend their territories, ideas, and politics.  

Even reasonably even-minded authors fall into this trap in our age of contempt. Beware writing about another person’s or faction’s position without extending to them an assumption of good will and thoughtfulness for how they arrived at conclusions. Yes, we have plenty of books and journals filled with junk science, junk theology, and other poor logic or scholarship. Don’t become one of them by dismissing someone else’s conclusions out of hand. If your book is tasked with refuting junk logic, then do so with solid arguments and manners—and not cognitive bias. 

Be gracious as you help readers see the difference between excellent and poor conclusions. Christian books, especially, should exhibit a humble confidence. Last I checked, you are not “the man”; Jesus is “the man.” 

The Naked Draft with a Pointy Finger 

I’m right, you’re wrong.  

Many well-meaning writers develop a divide and lecture problem. While developing our thoughts, we naturally tend to lump ourselves among those that follow the right way and put the faceless masses in the “wrong way” category. The you-versus-me approach results in condescension and creates an outsider status for the people you want to connect with most. Christian writers make this mistake most often when explaining scriptural truth. We assign ourselves to team God. Like Peter, we all like to think, “Even though they all fall away, I will not” (Mark 14:29). We are as wrong as Peter was.  

If you intend to persuade, step into the shoes of the people you hope will see a different perspective. Ask yourself, “Did I always understand? How did I come to this conclusion?” Walk readers through how your mind was changed. Approach from the angle of your vices not your virtues. Ask good questions the lead readers to their own insight, their own aha! moments. And most of all, watch those pronouns. We and us stand much stronger than you or they. 

The Naked Draft with Tiny Ears  

I don’t know people.  

This bulge reads like a Jeff Foxworthy redneck joke: If your answer to a question of your target audience is “Nearly everyone will want to read my book,” you might not know people. Narrowing audience means more than claiming an age group, gender, and depth of faith journey.  

Determining audience and audience segments takes thoughtful research. First, you need to know who buys what kind of books. Then you need to discern why your thesis would appeal to an audience segment. Are your ideas regional, factional, or generational? Parents? Singles? Enthusiasts or casual readers looking for entertainment? Who are the insiders and outsiders? The core audience and the tangential audience that might have some interest? What do these people value and what turns them off? What problems are these people seeking answers for? And what “problems” do they not see as problems (and thus won’t look for an answer)? 

If you try to write for an unfiltered audience, you will never know your angle. You will shoot many arrows that hit no targets. A chosen angle will determine the audience, and a chosen audience will determine the angle. Envision who you want to reach most. Write for them. Otherwise, you’re just writing to hear yourself talk. 

The Naked Draft with Lots of Plastic Surgery 

I’m selling something.  

How many times have you come across the internet marketing ploy, “Watch this video to learn the 7 secrets to improving your gut health for good!” or some such claim? Are you ever occasionally curious about those seven secrets? But when you watch the, gulp, thirty-minute video of scrolling words, all you see are teasers to those secrets. “Do you want to know the secrets? Keep watching. I’m going to tell you.” But in truth, the video gives the most basic, repetitive, run-down of a concept and asks you sign up for some book, product, system, or class to learn more.  

I’m finding click-bait and “wait, there’s more” marketing hype more and more in manuscripts that cross my desk. The technique usually betrays a lack of actual content. Spending pages up-selling what comes at the end of the book means you have too few true insights to fill the pages. Or you’re writing a book just to sell a product or service. 

If you find yourself writing phrases like “no one else is going to give you this information” or “by the end of this book, I will have solved a problem no one else has been able to solve,” consider making the switch to advertising. Marketing has its place. Let good content sell itself by presenting it with the right angle to the right audience with helpful insights in every chapter. 

The Naked Draft with a Swollen Tongue 

I don’t know what I’m saying.  

As pastors say, now I’m going to start meddling. One of the top problems I find in Christian manuscripts, other than the “I’m right, you’re wrong” divide, is a perpetuation of jargon and “Christianese,” essentially spiritual cliché. Authors throw around terms like Christian life, salvation, evangelical, gospel, glory, and the cross and biblical metaphors like washed in the blood, take up your cross, life’s storms, prayer warrior, lusts of the flesh, field white for the harvest, and den of iniquity, to name only a few, as though everyone knows exactly what they mean. Sometimes, not even the author knows precisely what he or she means. The words, abstract and muddy, stand for many different concepts at the same time—or just sound spiritual. If we can’t explain a concept simply and concisely, we don’t know yet what we're saying. 

As with most clichés, the image loses its connection to the original, fresh context. It becomes a stand-in for meaning, but without the power of the original: where the rubber hits the road, when I’m down and out, and so on. The author who knows with precision what he or she means to say can restate technical terms in less technical language and can find new images to explain biblical truth (or clearly explain allusions to biblical imagery). As I ask authors what they mean by some of these terms, we often discover a need to develop more precision, to be careful to articulate differences in subtle meanings with different terms to avoid confusion, and to reach for new expressions that avoid our insider readers from relying on concepts they’ve heard often but frequently misunderstand. 

The Naked Draft with Weak Vision 

I’m closed-minded.  

Pointing out this problem creates much pushback in our current cultural climate. Nobody considers themselves closed-minded, just savvy. We all, in some ways, think we have the characteristics of another group pegged.  

Recently, I commented to a conservative author who used the terms “journalists and academics” as a substitute for “left-wing liberal,” that he was creating a straw man fallacy. By stereotyping all journalists and academics as socialist liberals, he effectively wrote off their arguments as invalid and ignored the existence of the many conservative journalists and academics (like me). While liberalism characterizes many of our academies and media outlets, the professions themselves don’t make a person right-wing or left-wing; moral framework and identification with our conceptual environment does that, among other factors. 

When we oversimplify with stereotypes, we reveal a refusal to engage in the complexity of core values within each group. If we persist in judging other books by their covers, people will turn about and see that our book is naked and out of shape. An open-minded author will group people according to the values each person chooses rather than assign values to people according to appearance or demographics.  

The Naked Draft with a Faulty Compass 

I don’t know where I’m going.  

People tend to know that a story or joke can connect with an audience, but fail to realize that the story or joke must also be integral to the message. In terms of memoir and highly narrative nonfiction, many authors tell their stories with no clear purpose.  

If you are already a celebrity or can write with beautiful prose, then perhaps clarity of purpose matters less. Readers will join you on a voyeuristic journey or revel in the way you phrase aspects of your experience. But for the rest of us, readers engage in our stories because they want to discover how to live better, experience vicarious character change, take away key principles, and be entertained. If you’ve experienced a miracle or forgiveness or redemption, we are excited for you. Help us know how your story applies to mine. If you’ve struggled with illness or shame or sin, you are not alone. Walk us through insight to help us gain from your hard-fought, better perspective. The story is not that you suffered; it’s that you changed—and why. 

Like a good judge on a television courtroom drama, readers will allow you some latitude in your line of questioning, but know your point and get to it quickly. Connect the dots for your readers. Your stories need firm structure. Edit your illustrations ruthlessly so that the details you allow to remain reinforce your chosen principle and thesis. 

The Naked Draft with No Muscle Tone 

I have nothing important to say. 

Writing about a topic is different than having a thesis. Every book needs an embraceable message and an articulable, hopefully actionable, take-away. That power statement should include an understanding of angle, audience, tone, and main point. When manuscripts come to me for evaluation, they tend to suffer from too many “main” points or a main point that is too ambiguous. A clear thesis requires the author to take a “mature, informed opinion toward a concept . . . that animates prose style.”[1] A stand. A book should take a stand yet realize it can’t fight every battle. Pick one Goliath and decide how to bring him down. You might use several stones, but you’ll kill one giant. 

The Naked Draft with Saggy Tattoos 

I have nothing new to say. 

It seems everyone wants to write a book, but not everyone has something to add to the conversation. The same old truths expressed in a new way does give fresh insight when targeted to the right audience. But if your insight is merely you understanding and rehashing other authors’ theses, then maybe it is a private insight and not a public one. The dividing line here fades in and out of view. You might question your ideas to see if they’ve been around the block a few years and are saggy and worn, like an old tattoo. Have you refreshed any of the color, firmed up the lines? Does the image look like someone else or a new part of you? What would the book world be missing if your version weren’t a part of it?  

Read on the Nudist Beach, But Don’t Write There 

I’ve heard a shocking tale, which truth be told, I have no way of verifying, so let’s just take it as legend. I have heard that our beloved Clive Stapleton Lewis enjoyed sunning on a nudist beach from time to time with some academic colleagues. The story goes that one lovely afternoon as they sat reading in beach chairs, along what they thought was a secluded shoreline, a boat from Oxford rounded the corner carrying people they knew. After the boat had passed, Lewis’s colleagues were aghast. While they had taken their reading material and covered their private areas, Lewis had taken his and covered his face. 

Lewis, apparently, knew something none of his colleagues did: it’s one thing to let it all hang out in your private moments, but when your name is going on it, make sure your book is well-dressed. 

[1]. DE p. 15