Discovering patterns and templates people use to write non-fiction books

I have been listening to audiobooks like a madman. Not consistently as of the last two weeks, but generally speaking, my consumption of that content has been pretty...intense. Almost all of the books have been non-fiction ones, mostly written by generalist journalists who delve into interesting topics by talking to different experts and practitioners for a couple of years and writing.

So much so that it's easy to see the common patterns and templates that people use to write nonfiction books of the sort I've been listening. It seemed an impossible task, a daunting behemoth, the act of writing 'real, truthful words' for public consumption for 300+ words, and yet, it's not as incredibly hard to decipher as I had feared. There's themes, patterns, flows that one starts to unravel after understanding what's happening underneath.

They start with a general description, then a personal experience with practitioners in the field, to a remote location that will be referred throughout the book and specially the end, then they go to experts who will comment on the matter. Then they go into the general topic, explore the history of the field and the topic, reach out to a couple of experts, go back into the field practitioners, and in the end talk about modern adaptations, how the field has been changing, and how the people in the first chapter's anecdote will deal with those changes. And the scientists who are always like "there's so much uncertainty, but we remain positive".

The specific details are not important, what matters is that the books are not creations of gods anymore, they're made my mortals like me, and with enough patience and commitment to it, I can get there too. There's a clear pattern established through decades or centuries of writing tradition. One doesn't have to innovate on every aspect of book-writing, or any of it. The act of 'filling a template' is not an easy one, the effort that goes into the interviews, the practice, the historical research, and binding it all into a coherent narrative is hard work as it is, and should be respected greatly. But it means that divided into individual chunks, they're all kinda achievable, even my a random noob like me, so should I try my hand to write on the history of food culture in the Himalayas, I'll be able to!