With the 2025 Narratively Memoir Prize underway (and the December 7 deadline fast approaching!), we thought now was a good time to share this story, in which several writing luminaries were kind enough to offer their advice on how exactly they carved out successful essays — sometimes several — from their own books. Read on, give it a try yourself and submit your excerpt for the prize. Happy carving!
Last month, I received an email from nonfiction book coach Joelle Hann sharing the one question she gets a lot from clients: “How do I shape a part of my book for publication as a standalone essay?” She wondered if Narratively had a resource that spoke to this. We didn’t — yet. We’ve also had a lot of writers reach out to ask if they can submit an excerpt from their book to the Narratively Memoir Prize. The answer is yes! But the question remains: how to craft the very best excerpt from a book-length work?
I attempted to write an essay from my in-progress memoir a few years ago but felt like the first draft didn’t quite work. The way I’d constructed it left too many questions, which I wasn’t sure how to answer without the piece ballooning into something much longer. I put it in a drawer for another day. But faced with the question head-on now, I wanted to know, too. So, I decided to pick the brains of four nonfiction writers who have written excerpts I love — and successfully placed them in The New York Times, The New Yorker and Narratively — to see how exactly they did it.
Robert Kerbeck
Book: Ruse: Lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street
Excerpt: Narratively: “My High-Flying Life as a Corporate Spy Who Lied His Way to the Top”
After Narratively published this excerpt, it became one of their most popular stories of the year so far, and catapulted Ruse into the top 10 in numerous categories on Amazon. While I’d like to take credit, if it weren’t for the unique approach of editor Brendan Spiegel, I know that wouldn’t have been the case. Brendan’s idea was to excerpt Ruse the way Hollywood makes movie trailers. We never expect to see a full scene or even a significant portion of one in a trailer, right? Instead, we get a series of highlights to entice us to go see the movie. Indeed, when Ruse was first released, an excerpt was printed exactly as it was in a prestigious online magazine, but that excerpt resulted in few sales. Instead, Brendan went with a “Greatest Hits” approach, selecting a series of smaller excerpts from throughout the book that he thought readers would most respond to, then tying them together to give an overall sense of the narrative without giving everything away. Brendan’s “movie trailer” approach was so successful that last week Ruse inked a deal with a major Hollywood production company to develop a TV series inspired by the book.
Having an outside editor was invaluable, as authors are often too close to their project to really know what sections might best sell their book. Because the first excerpt from Ruse was largely unsuccessful, I was particularly open to Brendan’s suggestions as to what to include. His word count, though, for the initial excerpt was close to 10,000 words. I worried that readers might not buy my book since they would’ve read over a tenth of it for free. Brendan and I worked together (along with Noah Rosenberg who came in toward the end, as well) to edit the excerpt to a more manageable length. We got it down to around 7,500 words and then even created a few new sentences to string the passages together a bit better. That’s right, I wrote new material for an excerpt! Much to my amazement, the resulting excerpt made Ruse seem like a must-read (or a must-make-into-a-TV-series). Of course, it was still the same book I’d written but, by highlighting some of the best parts, the excerpt drove readers to want to know more about my story — which is exactly what an excerpt is supposed to do.
Meredith Talusan
Book: Fairest
Excerpt: The New York Times: “On Being a Trans Woman, and Giving Up Makeup” (and additional excerpts in BuzzFeed Books, Vulture and Oprah Daily)
Most of these were relatively minimally edited except for The New York Times one. The New York Times one was super extensively edited, and it was actually the third excerpt that I sent them. The Oprah one and the BuzzFeed one, I might have edited them just so that there weren’t any extraneous references that readers wouldn’t understand; the Vulture one was the second one I sent them, but I’m pretty sure the edits were relatively minimal. And then for The New York Times one, The Times’s format was very specific and their word count was pretty strict because it was appearing in print.
Alicia Wittmeyer, who at the time was The New York Times’s gender editor, expressed interest, and I sent her an excerpt. She sent a kind note back and said, “I don’t think this is gonna work.” If I remember correctly, she just wanted something more self-contained, and then I sent her another one and she gave me more feedback. And because of the format being so specific, each time that I sent her work, that was probably at least half a day of edits, just sort of making it fit that format. So then I sent a third excerpt, which was based on the prologue for my memoir, and she took it and they ran it the day of my book publication. And I do think that having that excerpt in The Times that day really helped in terms of having the book reach a wider audience more quickly. For the piece that ended up appearing, it’s a fairly long prologue, and so I had to essentially have all of the same beats that existed in the prologue, but in a truncated form. I had an intuitive sense of, OK, things need to happen faster. You need to evoke the same emotions as much as possible, but in a smaller space.
I always think about A, the match to the publication I’m submitting to, and then B, the degree of self-containedness of the essay. Often you have to meet the publication halfway. A lot of times authors can get really precious about a particular vision of how they want to present their work, but that publication just doesn’t publish work of the type that they want. So, basically, I try to think about the relationship of my work to different publications, and what aspects of my work can fit the particular publication that I’m sending to.
With an excerpt, the same way as an essay, you need to understand it from the get-go, and if you need to rewrite it in order to have some sort of lead paragraph that gives something, or if a slice of an anecdote or a section seems really interesting but doesn’t start in a place where a reader can fully understand what’s going on from the start, it’s completely acceptable to edit the excerpt in such a way that people will have that information from the beginning. By the time that you get to book publication, it can feel difficult to rewrite this material that you’ve lived with for such a long time, but one of the best ways to reframe that process is actually that it’s another opportunity for you to revisit that material and make it new for yourself, imagining it in a different context with a different set of readers.
Meghan Daum
Book: The Unspeakable
Excerpt: The New Yorker: “Difference Maker” (and additional excerpts in The Guardian, Marie Claire and The Dinner Party Download)
Back in the day — and I think this is still true — you had the concept of first serial rights. So, if you have a book coming out, you want to have an excerpt of it published ahead of time somewhere in major media, sometimes a few months ahead of publication. And so the publisher, or possibly the agent, sends the manuscript around to different magazines asking, “Do you want to excerpt this for first serial?” In that situation, if the answer is yes, the editor at the publication will say something like, “I read the book, and we’re going to pull out these 3,000 words.” And they will usually edit the excerpt, and then the author can approve it. That’s kind of best-case scenario. With The Unspeakable [which came out in 2014], the official first serial was in The New Yorker, and it ran a couple of months ahead of the publication. They took one essay and we worked together to make it a bit shorter, though it was still quite long.
For a yet-to-be published memoir, you want to find something that’s going to work as a standalone piece. I would say to ask yourself, is there a story arc that goes on for seven to 10 pages somewhere in this book? And then pull that out and see if you can build around that. Often, you end up writing a new piece. Another thing to do is write an op-ed — this is what you hear again and again and again from people in the publishing business. If you’re trying to sell a book, write an op-ed about the same subject covered in the book, and then try to place it. That way, you’re showing that your subject is topical. That’s really the main the thing: You want to convey the idea that this is the moment for your book, and you are the person to be writing this book. And then even if the byline just says, so-and-so is working on a book about [whatever], that’s enough.
I think the mistake is thinking that you’re going to be able to just lift something out of the manuscript and turn it into an excerpt. If your goal is to get somebody to buy the book, you want to have it be as sexy and memorable and exciting as possible, so you have to see the excerpt as a companion to the book project and not a piece of it. It’s like at the Oscars when they show who’s up for an award and they show a little tiny scene with that actor acting before they get the award — that’s what it is. You want a tiny little piece that is the best possible moment or story arc in the book, and you pull that out and you build from there.
Ray W. Hayden
Book: Queen of the S.R.O. (memoir-in-progress)
Excerpt: Narratively: “Queen of the S.R.O.”
This piece was compiled from different sections of writing throughout the book. Choosing them wasn’t hard because I’d written and gone over the material so many times that sifting through it became second nature. I chose the pieces in this excerpt because I felt they’d give the best flow and capture the reader’s attention quicker, especially from a sales perspective.
Mostly it was obvious which scenes to include, even though I had a lot to choose from. I had the arch in my head, and stitching it together was easy. I definitely had to whittle it down and eliminate several scenes, even though they were powerful — but the flow I used felt like enough to spark interest from a reader and leave them expecting even more from the book, which I feel they will definitely get if they read the whole thing.
Ready to craft your excerpt? If you still need inspiration, the best place to start is by reading successful excerpts, such as the four from these writers, all linked above (and all so great, truly!). And then don’t forget to submit your memoir, whether it’s an original piece or a book excerpt, to the 2025 Narratively Memoir Prize. Again, submissions are open through December 7.
Note: Meredith and Meghan’s excerpts were based on interviews, edited and condensed for clarity and length.
This story was originally published on November 17, 2023.
Just in time. I have to find excerpts from my upcoming biography based upon my Narratively article.