Writing for a Living: HotHive tips – Helping you write, publish and market your book
7 August 2009
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Tip 2. Planning the structure of your book, by HotHive
Start off the process by planning the structure for your book. If you are a visual person a mindmap can be a great way to work. I’ve recently started using MindManager from MindJet and it’s such a brilliant tool I can’t imagine how I ever worked without it.
Some people prefer to draw their mindmaps – it’s just a matter of personal preference. Others may like to use the traditional outline approach.
Whichever way you choose, write down the main elements of what you have to say. These will form your chapters, which you can then begin to break down into smaller chunks. Or you may even find your information lends itself to having, say 3 or 5 parts to the book, which could then be broken down into chapters. You can then add to your mindmap or outline the detail in each chapter, thereby creating your subheadings.
Always be thinking about your audience – the reader. How can you make your structure work for them? When you are an expert it can be hard to put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Be careful not to make assumptions about how much they know. Your structure will help them to be guided through the information, especially if you create introductory explanations in each part, chapter, or section.
The beauty of creating your book structure first is that when you start to write you can then take a piece at a time to expand on. You will have created yourself a roadmap for your journey and as we all know, it’s much easier to reach our destination when we know where we’re going!
In the next tip we will look at starting to write your book. For more information about MindManager plus a free trial from the brilliant Andrew Wilcox of Cabre click here.
