“But I don’t know where to start,” people often say about their books. It’s okay not to know where to start your book. None of us knows that until we figure it out and start.
This week’s secret strategy is what I suggest to people who know the general idea of their book, but are not sure how it all fits together—or if it fits together. It will help you get clear about your book’s structure and give you a running start at your Table of Contents. It was designed for nonfiction books, but I find it helpful for fiction as well. (I used it to write both The Soul of Selling and Chasing Grace: A Novel of Odd Redemption.)
WHAT TO DO
Imagine that your book is a colander full of spaghetti, fresh from the boiling pot. You can barely see the individual strands because they’re all mixed up together and going every which way. This strategy takes each piece of spaghetti out of the colander and lines it up on the counter in relationship to all the other pieces. You start moving them around a bit—and suddenly, you see the shape of your book! Here’s how to do it:
1. Write down the 10-15 most important ideas in your book.
2. For each of these ideas, create a “basket.” By “basket,” I mean a computer file, a paper folder, or literally, a basket! You can even put butcher paper up on your walls and use colorful Post-It’s to mark your 10-15 most important ideas. Make each “basket” a place where you can note things you want to say about that particular idea. Whenever a thought occurs to you, simply place it in the proper basket. (The down side of the butcher paper idea is that, unless you plan on doing this over a weekend, you may have inadvertently redecorated your home.)
3. Load each “basket” or file with sub-ideas, things you want to say about that important idea. You might sit at the computer, open File/Basket #1, and just ramble on about everything you want to say on that subject. Don’t worry about grammar, organization, or anything other than getting your ideas into that file. Then go on to File/Basket #2 and do the same thing. Fill up each of your “baskets” with all the thoughts that come to mind on that particular subject.
4. As you go about your life, thoughts will occur to you about your book. Jot them down and put them in a “basket” when you get home.
5. Review each basket to see if there is anything else you want to say on that subject.
6. Now that you have a broader idea of what will be in your book, go back to the original list of your 10-15 most important ideas that you created in Step 1. Put those ideas in an order that makes sense to you. How does one idea lead to the next? What do people need to understand first, before they can understand anything else? If you were new to this subject, what is the order in which you would want to read these “baskets?”
NOW WHAT?
You now have your Table of Contents and a good sense of what will be in each chapter. As you write, you may discover that you want to change the order of some chapters, or that you need to add another chapter, or that one particular chapter doesn’t really belong in this book. Nothing you have done is written in stone. You can change it whenever you wish. Remember, writing is rewriting. The good news is that now you have a place to start.
Next, you can start working on the individual chapters. If you wish, you can actually repeat this process internally for each chapter. Take the 10-15 most important ideas in the first chapter, and work through the steps above. Do the same thing with each chapter. Before you know it, you have a rough draft.
WHAT YOU GET
When your ideas are organized, it’s easier to enjoy the writing process. You know where you are going, your whole book is outlined, and you can just sit back and write without worry. You may change things around as you go forward. Often, the book’s structure reveals itself to you as you write. But having done this work, you will actually be writing–so you will be there for the discovery!
If you wonder where to find Secret Strategy #1, “The SPAS System,” it’s here.