STEP #5: EXAMINE THE STRUCTURE OF YOUR BOOK

Goal: Create a table of contents (TOC) for your business plan, and evaluate it.

Delineating Chapters

1. Exercise: Create a TOC to include in your business plan. Break down your book idea into the steps you want to take to ensure you fulfill your promise to the reader. Aim for ten to fifteen (or as many as necessary). If you need help, try one of these methods:

•  Create a list of ten to fifteen topics you know you want to cover and put them in the order you want to cover them. Write a compelling title for each topic; you can refine it later, but this will eventually become the chapter title.

•  Think of ten to fifteen common questions you want to answer for your readers. Then write creative chapter titles for each one of those questions; you could leave the titles as questions.

•  Think of ten to fifteen most pressing problems you want to solve for your readers. Then write creative chapter titles for each one of those questions; these could be “how-to” titles.

•  List ten to fifteen benefits you want to offer readers. Write titles that entice readers into those chapters by telling them the WIIFM? factor—the added value that speaks to their interests.

•  Create a timeline. Draw a line with the start date and end date of the period about which you plan to write; begin placing dates on the line that indicate major events you want to include in your story. Then organize these into chapters.

•  Plot vignettes you plan to write on a storyboard. Once you have organized them in chronological order, identified themes, and considered the narrative arc, write your TOC.

•  Create an outline. List the events you plan to include, and organize them logically with lesser events “under” more important events. (Add in flashbacks in appropriate places.)

•  Profile your characters. Give them backstories and motivations so you get to know them before you set them within the dramatic or comedic arc of your creation. Then outline your storyline. Write down the scenes you plan to include in that storyline (like a timeline) with your characters. Consider how the themes of your novel play out on that storyline and where the dramatic arcs occur. Then break this down into chapters, and create a TOC.

•  Create a storyboard. Break this down into chapters and then a TOC.

•  Number the lines on a sheet of notebook paper, and put a word by each one that best represents what you want to happen in each chapter. That becomes the chapter title. Then make notes about specific events that will occur in that chapter.

•  Use a spreadsheet to block out chapters and the scenes within them. Move events around as necessary. (You can also write biographies of characters as part of this exercise.) Then create a TOC.

2. Exercise: Organize your research, if you have any, into potential chapters. Explore programs such as Scrivener, Evernote, Excel, Dropbox, Box.net, and Google Drive. Options to using these sites include creating folders on your favorite browser or on your computer, or using index card boxes, filing cabinet files, boxes, or piles. It’s important to get organized in some way.

How to Mind Map Your Book to Create a TOC

3. Exercise: Mind map your nonfiction or fiction book using posterboard and Post-it Notes.

•  Put a larger Post-it Note in the middle of the board, and write your topic, book title, or storyline on it.

•  Start writing related topics, events, memories, scenes, or characters on the smaller sticky notes. If you are writing fiction, brainstorm all the things that might happen in your story, elements of your character development or story development.

•  When done, organize the notes into related topics, time periods, or storylines on the board.

•  Pick up the sticky notes, and move them around. The new groupings become chapters.

•  Use a different-colored note at the top of each grouping to indicate the chapter name or topic.

•  Type each chapter name, category, or subject into a TOC.

•  Each of the sticky notes in the groupings below the chapter becomes a topic, event, or issue to write about in the chapter. You might also use them as subheadings if you are writing nonfiction.

4. Exercise: Here are mind-mapping instructions for using a posterboard and colored pens or pencils for a nonfiction book. You can also do this using a white board.

•  Get a large, blank piece of paper. In the center of the paper, print your book’s topic.

•  Draw a circle around the keyword or phrase. (For example, if you are writing a book on the topic of training dogs, you might use the key phrase “dog training.”)

•  Draw a line from your keyword and write down the first word or phrase that pops into your mind. (For example, stay.) Circle the word or phrase. This is a subtopic that may become a chapter in your book.

•  Now draw a line from that word and jot down the next word that comes to mind (For example, tips.) This represents a sub-subtopic, or a subhead in your chapter.

•  Repeat until you’ve run out of word associations.

•  Now, return to your keyword or key phrase, and repeat the exercise. Come up with another subtopic and as many word associations (sub-subtopics) for that subtopic as possible, and then move on to another. Continue until you have created ten to fifteen subtopics, each with several sub-subtopics.

•  Arrange the related subtopics and sub-subtopics into a table of contents for your book. It will look like this:

Book Subject (or title and subtitle)

Chapter 1 Topic

     Subtopic

     Subtopic

     Subtopic

     Subtopic

Chapter 2 Topic

     Subtopic

     Subtopic

     Subtopic

     Subtopic

Evaluate Your Book’s Structure

5. Evaluation: Go back to what you wrote in Step #2: book pitch, summary, and list of benefits, and read what you wrote. Imagine this is the back-cover copy. This is what you see when you click on the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon.com and click to read the back cover. This is what the author promises will be inside the covers. Now, imagine you open the book to the TOC or you click on the “Look Inside” feature and ask to read this page or pages. Read this “list of chapters,” and answer these questions:

•  How would the reader you profiled in Step #3 respond to the question, “Is there anything in this book that interests you?”

•  Why would an agent or acquisitions editor feel your TOC has followed through on what you described in your Overview in a compelling manner?

•  How does your TOC reflect the information you have accumulated so far about your markets and competition?

•  What does your TOC provide that is different and unique compared to competing titles?

•  How does your TOC show what your book is about, why it is unique, and why it is necessary?

•  How does your TOC provide an order that reflects a beginning, middle, and end of your topic or story?

6. Exercise: Do market research. Give your TOC to someone who doesn’t know about you book but is in your target market. Let them read it, and have them explain what the book is about. If their description sounds exactly like the one you plan to give to an agent or editor, you are on the right path. Now ask them if there is something in the book that addresses their interests. What else would they have to see in order to take it to the register? (For novelists, you will need to have descriptive chapter titles for this to work.)

7. Exercise: Compare your TOC to the competition’s. How is yours unique?