Tuesday’s writing tip for authors

Focused, step-by-step books are usually easier to write than broad, unfocused books. By focusing your book on a specific goal, organized around the steps needed to achieve it, you can take advantage of the structure the steps provide. Without a goal, or end point, it is difficult to create a logical framework or structure for your book. It is also harder for you to decide which topics and details should be included, and in what order.

“How to” books, however, are easier to write, because the book’s structure emerges from the steps needed to solve a problem or accomplish a goal.

Often, even the most complicated process can be broken down to a relatively small number of steps. In these cases, after a brief introduction and overview of the process in the first chapter, the steps necessary for solving the problem or achieving a goal are covered in the following chapters. All that remains, after the last step, is to summarize the benefits readers will enjoy after solving their problem or achieving their goal.

Changing for Good: A Revolutionary Six-Stage Program for Overcoming Bad Habits and Moving Your Life Positively Forward by James O. Prochaska, John Norcross, and Carlo DiClemente is an excellent example of a step-based “how to” book. In this case, the steps are grouped into sections.

• Section l: The Science. This section containing 3 chapters describes the relevant research and the theoretical basis of the book.
• Section 2: The Applications. These 8 chapters describe the characteristics and issues associated with each of the 6 steps, plus 2 chapters providing additional perspective.

Using the 6 steps as the obvious framework for their book provided a ready-made structure for the book, one that encouraged its authors to focus on the pragmatic do’s and don’ts associated with each step. Instead of being faced with theoretical questions, like “Where do we start?” and “What should we include in each chapter,” the steps of the change process, itself, provided book’s topic organization.

After completing each chapter, instead of asking “Did we include everything?”, the authors could ask themselves, “Did we omit anything that would help readers master this step?”

Meet the author
On July 29, 2008, Dr. Prochasa will be addressing these, and other, questions about writing Changing for Good and the changes that occurred in his life, and his co-authors lives, after the book’s appearance in an exclusive Published & Profitable interview. Published & Profitable friends and members are invited to attend this call.