Being comprehensive in your research is only fair to your readers. It also prevents your book from looking like this: Your Expert Club An enthusiast wanting to write a nonfiction book faces perils that may not be apparent during the initial research. The author may be spurred by concerns about the environment or the epidemic of diabetes, and he comes to realize that the world may not be convinced just because he says so. He needs quotations from others to back up what he claims. The author starts, logically enough, with those books that he admires. Plus, those authors write so well that quoting from them makes his own book look better. The question is: how far is the author willing to go to support her premises? I’ll leave aside the well-known observation that you can find a statistic to prove anything you like. I am more concerned here with the number of experts that are enlisted in the author’s cause. I have read manuscripts where the same authors were quoted over and over and over again. While it’s nice to have friends, a writer has to consider how that paucity affects her readers. A small number of like-minded authors can be considered a club, especially in a field that may include hundreds of experts. A reader naturally wonders after a while why you keep returning to the same well. I don’t think there is any limit to the number of times the same author (and same book, often) can be quoted, but I prefer five at an absolute maximum. Roughly that number means the source will appear infrequently enough that the reader doesn’t ask the next logical question: didn’t the author bother to read other books? Passion for a topic cannot blind you to the reasonable requirements placed on any writer. You need to quote from far and wide in order to prove to the reader that you have thoroughly combed the literature on your chosen subject. When I see this problem while editing, I’ll run an Internet search on the topic, and I invariably turn up dozens of articles on the topic. Sure, you need to weed out the Internet crazies, but you also better not neglect a renowned expert in the field. An important benefit of being more rigorous is that you may come up against evidence that causes you to qualify your initial claims. While you may be all for wind farms, you can’t deny that people on Vinalhaven, an island in Maine, living within a mile of a windmill complain about the constant noise. Your qualification about the rights of neighbors makes your argument more nuanced. Your book has gained complexity beyond a world of black and white knights. Exercise: Challenge yourself to find alternate views. That’s what newspaper articles do all the time. You should know who the respected experts are in your chosen field, and you should address their concerns. If you are quoting from a 1970s-era “expert” whose views has long since been superseded, are you really doing the world a service? “I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.” —Terry Pratchett Copyright @ 2014, John Paine
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 12:01:38 +0000
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