Building Blocks | 9 Chapter Titles in 3 Sections

Your readers have questions. You have answers.

Let them ask their questions.

Answer them in the chapter.

Assignment: Write out 9 (or more) questions your readers might ask. If you don't really have a question but have a statement, that's OK, but preferably questions.

I'll do a quick example, right here, real fast, based on this course (Write).

  1. What if I don't have anything to say?
  2. Who would want to read what I write?
  3. I'm a terrible writer. Can I get better?
  4. How can I organize my thoughts?
  5. Where do I start?
  6. How do I know when I'm done?
  7. What do I do if I have too many ideas? Or too few?
  8. How do I organize the book? A chapter?

That took me all of 1 minute. If you know your topic and have worked with it for a while, you'll have questions--probably lots more.

Now let's create 3 sections to organize the questions. Again, do this fast to get to what's "in your gut reaction" and try not to overthink it. Here goes.

  1. Mindset
  2. Structure
  3. Content
  4. Audience

OK, that was 4.

Now if I cut and paste my 9 chapters into my 3 (or 4) parts/sections, let's see where that gets us.

Mindset

  1. What if I don't have anything to say?
  2. I'm a terrible writer. Can I get better?

Structure

  1. Where do I start?
  2. How do I know when I'm done?
  3. How can I organize my thoughts?
  4. How do I organize the book? A chapter?

Content

  1. What do I do if I have too many ideas? Or too few?


Audience

  1. How can I organize my thoughts?Who would want to read what I write?

Remember, I'm doing this super fast. But look what we learned here: Content and Audience don't have much in there. Could I fill them out? Maybe I should combine them?

This is all we're doing here in this exercise. If you get this far, you're good and ready to move on.

The video below is how to do all of this in Reedsy although with Veggies, Fruits, Dairy, and also the favorite "Next Book Ideas" part.

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