Tuesday’s writing tip

One of the easiest ways to make significant progress on your book, and meet your deadlines, is to begin by writing the introductions and conclusions of each of the chapters in your book. These chapter introductions and summaries help you create a content plan for each chapter that will help you quickly make significant progress finishing your book.

Once you have prepared and printed chapter introductions and conclusions, you’ll find it easier to make daily progress until you’ve finished your book.

Beginning each chapter
Start by reviewing your book’s table of contents. Then, begin to write by summarizing the important points you’re going to cover in each chapter. You can present chapter introductions in paragraph form as an “Executive summary,” or you can summarize the important points in each chapter in list format. The point is to “sell” the chapter by describing what will readers will learn in each chapter. Here are some questions that you can ask yourself to jumpstart your writing:

• Contents. What is the “big idea” described in this chapter?
• Relevance. Why is this important important to your readers?
• Benefit. How will readers benefit benefit from the information you’re going to share?
• Takeaways. What are the main ideas you want readers to remember from this chapter?
• Details. What details, or proof, are associated with each of the main ideas?

Ending each chapter
Likewise, there are several ways you can conclude each chapter. For example, you can conclude with a:

• Summary. Review the main ideas covered in the chapter and how they will benefit readers. This summary can be in either paragraph or text form.
• Questions. Another option is to provide a list of questions that will help readers review the ideas contained in the chapter, or will help them apply the chapter’s lessons to their specific situation.
• Segue. You can also combine either of the above with a brief “teaser” that describes the contents and relevance of the following chapter. This helps keep readers engaged with your book.

Consistency
As always, consistency is important. It doesn’t matter which of the above alternatives you choose, as long as you faithfully apply your chapter content formula to each of the chapters in your book. Published & Profitable members can learn more about chapter elements by referring to a special Power of 12 feature entitled: The 12 Building Blocks of Chapter Architecture.