1) Draw on personal experience

The subject matter that you choose for your self-help book should be one that you personally have experience with. So let’s say you’re choosing the topic ‘How to Overcome Depression’- it could be that you have a master’s degree in psychology or it could be that you personally have had–and eventually overcame–a struggle with depression. But don’t shy away from all of the personal, intimate, and uncomfortable details that come along with your experience. The whole point of a self-help book is, fairly obviously, to help. You have to approach the book knowing that the way you overcame a challenge may help others to overcome that same obstacle in their lives. The sacrifice you’re making by putting yourself fully on display could end up drastically changing a lot of lives for the better. So, in the initial stages, you need to overcome any reservations you still have within yourself.

2) Use research to back up your theories

If you’ve been inspired to write this book because of your own personal experiences, that’s a wonderful thing. But you shouldn’t be relying solely on your personal experience, either. If you want the book to really help people, you’ll need to do a ton of research on your subject material as well so you can back up your claims and figure out the best way to advise your audience. For example, perhaps you are writing a book about overcoming an abusive relationship. Give examples of your life experience, but also do some research about abusive relationships. Read other self-help books to learn more about your own motives in your experience. Find statistics on abusive relationships and the psychology behind why people stay with abusive partners. It may even be helpful to reach out to a psychology expert or two to get their insight on certain factors and their advice on overcoming them. You don’t want to write this book as an account of abuse, but rather as someone who overcame that, and, looking back, now has the wisdom to advise others.

3) Balance past knowledge with present understanding

One of the more important aspects of writing a self-help book that draws on your personal experience is finding a way to balance your past and present selves. You want to present your past experiences in a detailed way, rather than merely factual. You want people to feel the struggle and the emotion that accompanied the experiences you’ve overcome. To accomplish this, you’ll want to employ some fiction writing techniques, writing detailed scenes from your past self’s perspective.

However, don’t make the mistake of writing a memoir instead of a self-help book. What differentiates these primarily is that the main focus of the self-help book is displaying practical steps to help people overcome the struggles you went through, versus reading a detailed account of your experiences. Make sure that any flashbacks you detail from your experiences also have the presence of your much wiser present-day self. Pepper in observations that you’ve had about these moments since they’ve past or realizations on why these moments, in particular, have stayed with you. Have an aside in the narrative saying things like, “I’ve often wondered why I didn’t stop then” or “This moment has always stuck with me because…” These asides are good transitions to be able to give the reader the advice that they’re supposed to be getting from witnessing your experience.

4) Decide how you want to present your information

As previously stated, the main differentiator between self-help and a memoir is that the structure should prioritize the direct advice over the telling of a story. So, rather than go in chronological order detailing the events of your life, we recommend structuring your self-help book in sections based on specific things you learned from your experience. For example, let’s use the ‘overcoming abuse’ book example. One of your chapters could be ‘why people stay with their abusers.’ The beginning could detail psychological insights on the matter, perhaps even some quotes from a few of the experts you’ve interviewed. This leads into your own experience, presenting the reader with one or two specific flashbacks to your life that illustrates the points you’ve learned from your research (peppering in advice for avoiding your mistakes).

5) Create an Outline

When you’re writing something with so many different elements intertwining, it can be extremely difficult to stay organized. We highly recommend creating an outline for your book before you even begin writing. If you were inspired to write this through your own personal experience, that’s the best place to start. Make a list of all of the specific moments/memories from your life that you feel should be included in your book. Only pull memories that you feel had a valuable and clear lesson that a reader could learn from.

Next, group memories together that have a similar lesson or relating factor. Once you start to notice patterns in the lessons that the memories show, create chapter titles and write the specific memories that will be relayed in each section. Then, dive into your research about each of the topics that the chapters outline. After you finish your research and have all of the necessary tools and sources to write your book, create an order for the chapters that you feel will convey the information in the most effective way. For example, if you’re writing a book called ‘Lessons You Learn After Divorce’- it may be helpful to put the chapters (lessons) in the order that you learned them.

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1) Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

As Vonnegut points out, reading is a really intimate experience happening between your imagination and a complete stranger. A person you’ve never met (and likely never will meet) is taking precious moments of their life to dive into your work. Don’t waste a single moment of that engagement and make sure they walk away from your work with things to think about. Whether that be about morality, history, self-help or love, try to teach them something new so they walk away feeling they gained something positive from your book.

2) Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

This doesn’t mean every character has to be perfect. Heck, it doesn’t even mean that a single one of them has to be perfect…perfect is boring. It just means at least one of them has to be likable in some capacity. This could mean a super sweet character, but it could also mean a damaged or jaded character who is trying to get their life together. Imperfections don’t make people unlikeable (in fact, they often do the opposite). But if your book is filled to the brim with incredibly harsh, evil, or frustrating characters, your reader isn’t going to care what happens to them.

We can’t overstate how crucial this one is to any and all writing. The character is the main driving force of any novel and character desire is what drives the character. A book where a character is just wandering about and events just fall into their lap isn’t an interesting read because they don’t have any stake in the events of the story. For example, a story about a character who gets rejected from a college isn’t interesting unless that character desperately wanted to get in. Perhaps it’s been their dream since they were a child and now we get to see how they react and cope with losing that dream. That’s far more interesting than a character getting a rejection letter, shrugging, and walking away.

4) Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

This goes along with the first rule, this is just more specifically what needs to happen to make your book worth your readers time. Make every sentence matter in the arc of your book. As we’ve said before, even setting and character descriptors should reveal character in some capacity.

5) Start as close to the end as possible.

Novice writers have the tendency to start their book in the wrong place. The first chapter of their book gets bogged down with exposition and backstory or even pages of build-up before the real action/arc of the story begins. You should start your book immediately in the action of the story, cutting out as much exposition and build-up as possible.

6) Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them, in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

We love our characters, it can be hard to make bad things befall them. But, as Vonnegut says, it’s in those times that we really see someone’s true self. That’s one of the key parts of any good story, revealing your characters (faults and all) to your readers.

7) Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

Write for you and for your characters- that’s it. If you’re constantly worrying about pleasing everyone your story is either going to be super jumbled and confusing or so general that it feels unrealistic and boring. Don’t be afraid to create characters with very specific quirks and personality traits instead of writing a protagonist that everyone could see themselves in. Trust us: your readers will thank you for it.

8) Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Very comically put, but also very true. Never convey suspense in a way that readers don’t understand what is happening to your protagonist. The story is driven by character and the choices your character makes is what defines them. Those choices should be very clear to the reader or the weight behind them will be lost. For example: let’s say you’re writing a suspense novel where your protagonist decides to seek revenge on the person he believes killed his father. Even if later it will be revealed that it wasn’t who our protagonist thinks it is, the reader needs to know that they had their mind made up. It says a lot about who they are and also will inform the guilt they’ll feel later upon realizing they’d been mistaken.

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