Nonfiction writing

Nonfiction Writing

Turn source material and intent into prose that a particular reader can understand, trust, remember, and act on. Treat useful communication and legitimate self-promotion as compatible when claims remain specific and supportable.

Workflow

1. Name the assignment:

   • output and mode: plan, draft, rewrite, line edit, critique, or adaptation
   • audience, situation, existing knowledge, and likely resistance
   • purpose: inform, explain, argue, teach, reassure, demonstrate, or invite
   • desired change in the reader's understanding, belief, or action
   • channel, length, language, voice, deadline, and supplied source material

2. Build a small evidence register. Separate:

   • supplied facts, quotations, examples, and measured outcomes
   • the author's interpretation or professional judgment
   • opinions, hypotheses, memories, and details that still need verification

   Never invent statistics, quotations, citations, testimonials, customer stories, personal experience, or product behavior. Mark gaps or write around them honestly.

3. State one governing idea in a sentence. Decide what belongs, what does not, and what the reader must understand before accepting the conclusion.

4. Load only the matching route or routes:

   • Structure and story for thesis, scope, leads, argument or narrative sequence, transitions, people and places, personal material, and endings.
   • Prose and revision for clarity, clutter, syntax, verbs, rhythm, voice, line editing, and multi-pass revision.
   • Persuasive nonfiction for thought leadership, content marketing, case studies, About pages, product descriptions, objections, proof, and calls to action.

5. Build the reading path before polishing sentences. Give each section one job, make the relationship between paragraphs visible, and place context before claims that depend on it.

6. Draft concretely. Prefer observable detail, precise nouns, and active verbs. Preserve the author's meaningful vocabulary and perspective rather than replacing them with a generic polished voice.

7. Revise in separate passes:

   • meaning and governing idea
   • structure and proportion
   • evidence, attribution, and unsupported certainty
   • voice, audience fit, and persuasion
   • sentence clarity, rhythm, repetition, and mechanics
   • lead, ending, title, and call to action

8. Return the requested artifact. Briefly list material gaps or consequential editorial choices only when they help the user judge or continue the work.

Operating Rules

• Write for the reader without pretending the reader is passive. Make the argument easy to follow, not difficult to question.
• Prefer clear language to status language. Keep specialist terms when they are accurate and useful; define or replace them when they merely signal expertise.
• Use active voice as a useful default, not a grammar law. Passive voice is appropriate when the actor is unknown, unimportant, or intentionally backgrounded.
• Remove words that do no work, but do not compress away qualifications, personality, cadence, or evidence.
• Use examples, scenes, comparisons, and quoted language to make abstractions graspable. Do not fabricate them to enliven thin source material.
• Open with genuine tension, relevance, movement, or specificity. Do not bolt on a sensational hook that the piece cannot repay.
• Let sentence length and paragraph shape vary with meaning. Read for breath, emphasis, and unintended monotony.
• Make persuasive intent legible through relevance, proof, fair treatment of uncertainty, and an appropriate next step. Marketing value does not excuse inflated claims, fake urgency, or disguised advertising.
• End after the work is complete. Prefer a consequence, implication, earned synthesis, image, or next step to a repetitive summary.
• When editing, distinguish correction from preference. Preserve intentional choices unless they obstruct meaning, violate a stated constraint, or weaken the piece's purpose.

Default Deliverable

For a new piece, return:

1. working title or title options when useful
2. the finished draft
3. unresolved fact or evidence gaps
4. optional alternatives for the lead, ending, or call to action when the choice materially changes the effect

For revision or critique, return:

1. the revised text or prioritized diagnosis requested
2. the most consequential structural and evidentiary changes
3. unresolved author decisions, not a catalog of every stylistic preference

Routing Boundaries

• Use linkedin-posts for LinkedIn-specific ideation, formats, cadence, and engagement context. This skill can improve the underlying prose once the channel constraints and factual basis are clear.
• Use consultant-profile to select and structure career evidence, professional positioning, project narratives, and profile facts before writing the prose.
• Use tech-docs when correctness must be derived from a software repository, public interface, executable example, migration contract, or documentation toolchain.
• Use effective-web for interface copy inside a browser experience and for implementing or verifying the surrounding web interface.
• Use locale-typography for locale-specific punctuation, spacing, quotation, number, date, and typographic conventions.