What's the Big Idea?

Undertaking any big project, but especially a book is a daunting proposition. The way to make it less scary is to have a map for the journey, and ideally, some experienced fellow travelers to ride shotgun—friends who know the road well and can help you make it to your destination. That’s what we are aiming to provide.

We’re two editors with over twenty years of experience between us, writing and editing many types of nonfiction. In the pages that follow, we distill some of the lessons we’ve learned in the trenches applying Shawn Coyne’s Story Grid methodology to the work of our clients, all of whom are leveling up their skills as nonfiction writers.

We’ve chosen to use several masterworks—with the most considerable emphasis on The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan—as the maps to guide us throughout What’s the Big Idea?

Although Baldwin and Pollan write on different topics and in different styles over half a century apart, both men had an enormous cultural impact. They extended that influence to a broad popular audience with these works. We could have chosen many other titles, and we’ll include examples from some others where it’s helpful.

After reading this short, macro-principles primer, you may want to take a microscopic dive into Big Idea nonfiction by looking at The Story Grid Masterwork Guide to Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, which provides a scene-by-scene analysis of another exemplary title. We hope you’ll be inspired to find your own favorite masterworks to learn from and apply Story Grid Methodology yourself. We’ll provide some tips on how to do that too.

With Baldwin and Pollan as our touchstones, we’ve organized this book around a series of questions and answers that will explain how and why Big Idea books work.