Literature

I have used a couple of Dummies books and I think they tend to be pretty good at going over the basics of a topic, although some are probably better than others. They really are just books that assume the reader is coming in with very little knowledge of the subject. For example, if you get something like “Cooking for Dummies” it might spend time explaining things that a normal cookbook would not, like what a spatula is used for.

People are constantly writing things in the style of the Dummies books. The entire r/explainlikeimfive subreddit is a good example. I don’t know if lemmy has a similar community yet, but it probably will at some point. You’ve probably also seen that some people have been writing up how-to guides for people new to Lemmy that go into the basics and explain things step-by-step. Starting with something small like that on a topic you are interested in would be a good place to start. Spelling and grammar can be fixed, so I wouldn’t let that hold you back.

Even if you don’t end up publishing a book under the “Dummies” name, developing the skill of taking a subject and breaking it down into a format that can be easily understood by others is an incredibly valuable skill. Many times in my career I’ve been handed a task to do something I barely know anything about and then I also end up having to train other people how to do it. It does really take a lot of practice, and I still constantly have to edit when I realize that people are misunderstanding my writing because I wasn’t clear enough. You have to try to put yourself in the shoes of someone reading your writing and think about what questions they might ask, or if they could interpret something you wrote in way you didn’t intend.