How an Idea Becomes a Book, Part 7: The Reader Transformation Journey
This is the seventh part in a series. You can catch up by reading the other parts here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six.
Last week I said that this week I was going to write about what other writers are writing in your space and when might be a good time to explore that, but I was jumping the gun. Before we get to that, we need to spend more time on structure. Because once you have the basic shape your idea is going to take, you need to flesh it out. The way to do that is to pay attention to the transformation journey your reader is going to go on in this book.
People come to books because they want to be changed by the experience — and that is as true of middle-grade novel about a magic tree house as it is about a book about the history of the caste system in America or a book about how to be a leader in difficult times.
In fiction, we nail down the reader transformation journey by looking at the protagonist’s arc of change, because in fiction, the reader steps into the protagonist’s shoes to experience the world from their point of view as they struggle to achieve something they desire. The opening and closing scenes are bookends that contain the story, and the path from one to the other is the transformation journey. I teach the process of laying out this transformation in fiction using a tool called The Inside Outline. (You can read a bit about it HERE and simultaneously sign up to get news about my forthcoming book on The Inside Outline.)
This blog series is focused on nonfiction, and in nonfiction, the reader transformation journey is about the reader. They start out in one place: a place of being unaware or unsure or uninformed or uninspired. And they end up in another place: a place of knowing something new, understanding something new, embracing something new, believing something new.
So the question is, how do they get there? Within the container you have selected to hold your idea (the shape, the TOC), how do they move through it?
Although writing a book demands creativity, it is creativity built on logic.
Where to Start and Where to End
The first step is to figure out where exactly the book will start. This goes back to your ideal reader and their pain, and to the point you are making in the book. What is it that your ideal reader wants or needs? Where exactly are they in the process of acquiring the knowledge you’re going to give them? Are you, for example, teaching someone the basics of how to plant a simple vegetable garden or are you teaching an advanced course on growing enough food to feed a family? Are you teaching someone how to get over their fear of public speaking or are you teaching someone how to deliver a talk on the main TED stage?
Once you know where it starts, you can determine where it ends — which will be at a place that makes the point you want to make.
Even if you are not teaching something, per se, there is a journey the reader will go on, and therefore a place that journey will begin. For my migraine book, I originally conceived of it as a kind of guided journal for a migraine sufferer to identify their triggers. That reader would have gone on a journey from having a vague awareness of what tended to give them migraines to having a crystal clear analysis — and in knowing, they could presumably control their health. But that was a reader transformation journey I never really believed in. That was a book I realized didn’t want to write.
Once I reimagined it as a book about the nature of pain — what it means to be human, to be alive, and how we all face the certainty of being in physical pain — the reader transformation journey completely changed. This is a rough draft of that journey, the first time I have put it to words:
- I want my reader to go from feeling somewhat sorry for themselves about whatever pain they happen to suffer (and probably hoping for some kind of way to alleviate that pain) to feeling a kind of kinship with their pain — or a kind of welcoming openness to it — since feeling pain means you are still alive.
What About the Middle?
To track the logical progression of your idea, I use a simple tool called an Outcome Outline. It gives you a framework for asking yourself what outcome each chapter will drive to, and how that outcome is linked to the next. It prevents you from going off on tangents or putting in material that doesn’t help move the reader forward. It keeps you on track.
It’s a simple tool that is much harder to complete than it might at first seem. It looks like this:
You can download the Outcome Outline HERE and noodle around with it. The whole goal is to put the reader at the front and center of the reading experience.
Once you develop an Outcome Outline, you are now ready to consider other people writing in your space.
