What’s Your Angle? Finding Your Focus from your Reams of Research

By Sarah Albee

I like to bake, and over the holidays I brought a cake to a friend’s dinner party. The recipe called for double boilers and candy thermometers and balloon whisking, and I put some effort into piping the icing into swirls and adding Christmas-y decorations.

When the dinner guests complimented my cake, I gave a nonchalant shrug and said it was a very simple recipe, really.

“But look at the swirly icing!” they said.

“Child’s play,” I responded.

I wasn’t being truthful. Had they glimpsed my kitchen earlier that day, they’d have seen a disheveled me, with bowls piled in the sink, flour on the floor, and sprinkles stuck to the cat.

Writing a book can be like that, too. We all hope our finished product will look effortless and amazing, but the process of getting there can be . . . messy.

So how do we navigate through the reams of research and find our book’s focus? Let’s start with an activity.

Have a look at a recent nonfiction book that you admire. What is it that appeals to you? Perhaps it’s an ingenious, why-didn’t-I-think-of-that? topic. Maybe you like the way the topic is presented--the design, the writing, the illustrations. Perhaps the book is so well-structured or tightly-plotted it seems as though it sprang practically fully-formed from the writer’s pen, as though she saw the path she needed to take with her research and her writing and strode through it, with no missteps or wrong turns.

That’s the way a great book should look to its readers. But I am willing to bet that the writer of that book may have dropped a few sprinkles on the cat during her research and writing process.

I wish I could share a tried-and-true recipe that works every time for every book, but now that I’ve told you the cake story, you’d know I wasn’t being truthful. Every writer’s process is different, and every topic requires unique considerations. But I can share some of what I have learned after many—cough!— years of writing nonfiction books.

Once I’ve got my topic, I’ve learned to ask myself three questions:

1. Why does this topic interest me?
2. How can I present it in a way that a kid will care?
3. What underlying message do I most want to share with my readers?

I start my research in a fairly generalized, big-picture way. I read widely, immersing myself in my topic, always on the lookout for kid-friendly angles.

Once I feel somewhat confident about the broad strokes of my topic, I home in on my approach. How can I make my book different from other books out there? How can I make it relevant to a kid’s interests? What sort of structure makes sense for the topic? (For everything you need to know about text structure, visit Melissa Stewart’s website!)

Even when I have a good idea and a reasonable sense of the structure, question #3, the underlying message, usually doesn’t crystalize for me until I’ve done a lot more research and am well into the writing process. I use trial and error and write draft after draft after draft before the core message, the mission statement, the heart of the book (pick your metaphor) emerges from the gloaming.

When I finally nail my book’s mission statement, I tack it up over my desk and look at it frequently. At this stage I often need to go back to the research process, but because I now have a focus, the research tends to feel more streamlined and to go more smoothly. When I find a cool nugget of information, I ask myself these questions:

• Is this fact relevant to the book’s mission statement?
• Is it interesting to kids?
• Do I have room for it?

Because the process for my book Accidental Archaeologists went uncharacteristically smoothly, I’ll use it as an example. I got the idea while researching a different book. I stumbled across a 1978 newspaper article about a construction worker digging beneath the streets in Mexico City. His shovel accidentally clanged a stone, which turned out to be the undiscovered ruins of an Aztec temple. In a flash, I knew I wanted to write an entire book about accidental archaeological discoveries by ordinary people that changed what we thought we knew about history.

The structure of that book also came fairly readily. I would arrange the discoveries chronologically. Each chapter would begin with a dramatic description of the discovery, followed by a look into the historical period of the artifact, and why that history is relevant to the reader.

So I had the topic and the framework—woot! But it took many, many drafts before I understood the book’s mission statement. Here’s what I came up with: Biases have long bedeviled the field of archaeology (and history), and those biases have shaped our perspectives of human history.

I never explicitly state my mission in the book. The reader doesn’t need to know it, but I most certainly do. 

Here’s an exercise I do at school visits (remember those?) to help kids structure their personal narrative or biography.

I read my biography of George Washington to them  and walk them through my research process.

• I give examples of some of the cool facts I uncovered. I explain how I weighed each fact and decided whether or not it deserved a space in the very limited real estate that I had for my book.

• I explain that of course I needed to include the basics—where and when George was born, how he commanded the American forces in the Revolutionary War, how he became the first President, and when he died. But then there were the other facts—the more personal, interesting, kid-friendly ones. They’re the stuff that makes the book unique and interesting. Which ones fit, and how many could I include?

• Next I call up volunteers. I hand each kid one of the fact cards we’ve just discussed. I line up my volunteers, in no special order, with the fact cards around their necks.

Then I present the book to my audience. As I read the text, I shuffle around my human note cards so they stand in the order that I’ve used them.

I point things out:

• “Did you notice that I did not start my biography with the day George was born? Yes, that fact is in the book, but I don’t open with it. You know why? Because babies aren’t very interesting, except to their moms and dads.

• “Did you notice how I did start my biography?” (It starts mid-stream with something George did after the American Revolution was over, and supports my mission statement for the book.) I talk about why I decided to begin the story there.

I explain that every writer in the room could have written a different book on the same subject, based on the same body of research.

Give it a Try

Have a look at your work-in-progress. Maybe you’re just at the idea phase. Maybe you’re deep into the research stage. Or maybe you’ve completed a first draft. Ask yourself these three questions. (Try to think beyond “because it’s cool!” and answer as thoughtfully as you’re able.)

1. Why does this topic interest me?
2. How can I present it in a way that a kid will care?
3. What underlying message do I most want to share with my readers?

Piece of cake, right?

 

Meet the Author 

Sarah Albee is the New York Times bestselling author of nonfiction books for kids. Her next title will be out October, 2022, and is called Troublemakers in Trousers: Women and What They Wore to Get Things Done. Other recent titles include Fairy Tale Science; Accidental Archaeologists; North America: A Foldout Graphic History; Dog Days of History; POISON: Deadly Deeds, Perilous Professions, and Murderous Medicines; and George Washington: The First President.  She lives in Connecticut with her family. Visit her at www.sarahalbeebooks.com