If you’ve never written a book before, it can seem like a mammoth task, but, if you get the right structure in place, writing is made much easier.
There are three elements that create your building blocks in a non-fiction book:
1: The chapters and how they flow.
2: The ‘recipe’ that you’ll apply to each chapter, so you have a pattern into which your content fits.
3: The content for each chapter.
Build your ‘story’
If you’re writing non-fiction, it’s easy to ignore the story aspect. But even in a non-fiction book there must be flow, so the chapters need to move logically from one subject to the next.
Even if you write chapters that can be read in isolation, like in a handbook or a ‘how to …’ guide, there must be some progression in from chapter to chapter. For instance, when I wrote The R.A.V.E. Toolkit, I wanted to give people a reference book that would help them to market their small businesses, but the chapters began with the basics and worked up to more complex marketing tactics as the book progressed.
With The Reputation Gap, my co-author, Peter Roper, and I started by setting the scene and then progressed through various aspects of reputation building, with sections featuring case studies and then the action plan.
Every book is unique and needs a structure that works for the subject and the author. It may not be a story in the traditional sense, but there needs to be something to lead the reader on their journey from subject to subject.
Once you have your chapter subjects established, it’s time to go a step closer to your content.
Create your chapter recipe
This is particularly relevant for non-fiction books. Before you begin writing, create a format that you will apply to each chapter.
This may include:
- Quotations
- Stories/anecdotes
- Case studies
- Models
- Examples
- Practical things to do
- A summary – either at the beginning or end of the chapter
Or anything else you want to include.
The chapter recipe means that each chapter will look similar and give the reader a ‘comfort blanket’ to keep them engaged. This means that if you start Chapter 1 with a story, you should do the same for all the other chapters. If you end with a quotation, do the same for each chapter.
This may sound tedious, but in reality it will make life a whole lot easier when you start writing.
Gather your content
Now you have the subjects and format for your chapters, it’s simply a case of gathering the information to populate them. Effectively, you’re filling in the gaps!
If you take the time to build the structure, the writing will be much easier.
