Writing a business topic book

... in 3 easy steps

Say you wanted to write a book on publishing a newsletter.

3 steps to writing your business topic:

Step 1.

First of all, using your word processor, you would write 3 headings. These headings would be the three most general areas you'd want to break down the process. Say this would be "writing", "designing" and "producing".

So write these down, one per line, leaving 4 lines in between each heading.

You'd want to tell your reader what he/she will need to do first. For example, what would be the first things you'd need to do if you wanted to publish a newsletter? You'd need to know what you'll write about. You'd have a specialty area that your newsletter would cover. Then you would have an audience to whom you intend your newsletter to go to. So write these things in the "writing" section.

Write down everything you can think of regarding this area that you would want to tell your reader. Just write it all down, one word or one phrase per line with a line space in between. You'll come back to that later.

Then under the next heading "designing", begin to do the same as in your first heading but this time it has to do with the designing of the newsletter.

You might want to suggest a particular program to use or talk about the one you use yourself. Or you might tell the reader what is available and them him/her choose that would be relevant to the design.

You might want to talk about style and number of pages you'll plan.

So think of everything you want to discuss in this section. Again just write down what comes to mind.

Then under your "production" section, do the same again. For example you would list the production steps on what will need to be done... the printing, the distribution, etc...

Just keep wirting down the thoughts in the same manner. Think of everything that would be involved: planning, where to get information, headlines, graphics, paper types, how it's going to be distributed, etc. etc.

Step 2.

Once your mind is depleted of all the ideas, go back over your list and expand on each one. Put yourself in the place of the reader, reading as you would want to be taught by someone about your subject of interest.

Write as you would speak to a person, a friend.

As you write, you will re-arrange the words you listed and place them in order of discussion, as you need. And then continue expand.

Re-read and make sure it is the way you want everything to be. If not make adjustment. That's one nice thing about word processing, you can just insert or delete anything you want. Mke yourself a copy in case you ever want to return to the original thought, as you go along.

Step 3.

Once you’ve written all that you have, go back and edit, re-arrange, organize, change as you see fit.

Then wherever appropriate, add a heading that relate to your paragraph topic. Make sure the flow is right from the start of the process to the end.

Go through the whole work again and edit. Take out anything that is redundant or unnecessary. Read it as if you were your audience. Split up long, confusing sentences into shorter, more spiffy phrases. Use action verbs that show rather than adjectives and adverbs that tell (example:

"The large wild dog came toward me as if he was going to tear me to pieces." Replace it with, "The killer dog lunged at me viciously."

Then, go over it again and edit some more. No kidding. The secret to good writing is "edit, edit, edit" until there is nothing else to edit. You might ask some people you trust to read it and comment on it. Listen to them and incorporate in your work the criticism and ideas that you find constructive.

Once this is done and you are happy with your work, find appropriate titles within each area that you can use to name your chapters or sections. Look for a phrase that will describe the main idea or point of your section or chapter. You may find that some section need to be split up to better formulate two chapters.

Then you’re ready to write it up into your manuscript - click here for information on that.

Good writing!

Blessings and success,

Diane

(There will be more articles added, just keep checking the web site regularly).

Click on this link for a free e-course on Internet Writing

__________________________________________________________

Sign up to our Monthly "Business Resources" newsletter of Information, Inspiration, Motivation, Business Tips, and more...
__________________________________________________________