Is your love for history enough to make you want to write a history book? If yes, then you should certainly want to follow your passion. However, the question is, how would you want to present factual information in your book?
The thing is that there are countless ways to arrange and share historical facts with readers. And depending on your chosen method, several advantages are linked with each method. And while no single method is better or worse, it essentially comes down to which method works best for the historical material you want to share with your readers.
To make things easier for you, we have shared a list of different types of history books. Knowing the different types makes it easier to decide which approach will make your ideal readers fall in love with your historical subject.
1. Biography
A biography is an enlightening way to share what happened in the life of your chosen subject through the perspective of who was present at that time.
If you choose to write a biography, you will essentially bring history alive as you will be immersing the readers through your storytelling technique and transmuting them to the place and time when the event was unfolding.
If you carefully craft a biography, you will be engaging your readers in the sounds, sights, ideas, and personalities of your chosen time and place, along with its unique character.
By writing a biography, you will be diving deeply into the subject’s life by unraveling the inner aspects of their mind, which you will use to show the readers who the subject was, what happened to them, why they became what they did, and how their presence impacted human history.
2. Dissect a Historical Incident
If you are fascinated with a specific incident that occurred in history, you can take a deep dive and look at the incident from different perspectives. Of course, you will be using your excellent storytelling techniques to keep your readers hooked to the book – from the first page till the last one.
While dissecting a specific incident, you will be making your readers understand the incident from different angles through the description of the time, place, and people.
Of course, you will have to hire one of the best historical editors after completing the manuscript. While most editors don’t essentially fact-check, the historical editor will point out any factual errors, plot holes, and narrative structure.
3. Write Your Perspective
While presenting an important historical fact that you are the most interested in sharing with your readers, you can also write your personal response to that historical event.
The thing is that whatever happened in the past can often come off as untreatable in the modern and contemporary world – even though people realize the impact of history and how history has shaped the world.
That said, as an author of history, you can adopt the method of self-discovery, where you take an event from history and jot down your personal reflection about how that specific event shaped and impacted your life.
Since you will be the author of the personal response, you will be viewing the event through a personal lens, which you can then use to convey your emotions about the event and share it with your readers.
You can also include your life events in the response and share how you personally relate to the event and how it has impacted your viewpoint of life and the world in general.
4. Interpersonal Dynamics in Relation to History
We know that humans and human interaction are a crucial component of history. We also have movies where history has been twisted, and an alternative has been presented regarding how history could have been different if people reacted differently or interacted differently with one another.
You can adopt the same approach in your history book. You can present the principal figures in a different way from who they were in real history. You can describe how things could have been if the main characters had made different choices by exploring the interpersonal dynamics between the key players of a certain historical situation.
While exploring the interpersonal dynamics of the key players of the specific historical event, you will dive deep into their respective backgrounds and even represent a contrasting viewpoint that was put together, resulting in a unique historical event.
You might as well look at this approach as a way to reimagine history, as you will be changing the factual event by documenting things differently. A popular approach is to integrate the concept of time travel into your book.
Usually, what happens in time travel is that the protagonist travels back in time to prevent a certain historical event from happening. This aspect is a common theme in those history books that are essentially counterfactual.
5. Photographic Book
Oftentimes passionate readers of history love to see historical photographs in books. And if you choose to jot down a photographic history book, you won’t have to use as many words as you will be showing through pictures.
If you choose to publish a photographic book, you will want to include the following aspects in your manuscript:
- Maps
- Diagrams
- Sketches
- Pictures taken from that time
- Pictures of original documents
- Pictures of original letters
- Original handwriting
All these different materials can help you convey so much more than words. Usually, a photographic book is of utmost useful when you want to convey the feel, look, and vibe of a certain era. It is also useful when your subject or theme includes battles and significant historical inventions.
When it comes to describing wars and inventions, you are better off including diagrams, maps, documents, and other visuals. You get the point – the key is to use visuals to convey complex historical matters.
The Takeaway
Writing a history book that sells requires loads of research and an in-depth understanding of the basic historical context you are referring to in your book. Before you start writing, you can use a mind map to take extensive notes and craft an interesting plot.
Also, don’t forget to add a bibliography at the end of the book.
