21: Five Signs You're Ready to Outline Your Book

Before you write a single word, there's one step most aspiring authors skip. It's also the reason so many books never get finished. 

This episode breaks down the five signs that tell you it's time to stop waiting and start outlining. From knowing your why to finding your unique angle in a crowded space, these are the markers that separate women who dream about writing a book from the ones who actually do it. 

If you've been wondering whether you're "ready," this episode will give you a clear, honest answer.

And if you're ready to join a workshop, click the link here! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to For Women Who Write Podcast. I'm Michaela, a certified writing coach, editor, and self-publishing expert with over a decade of experience, helping women turn their ideas into powerful, best-summoning books. If you felt the call to write, share your story, share your experiences, and how you can help other people, then you are in the right place. Here we talk about the real importance of writing and publishing, from finding your voice to structuring a book, from overcoming resistance and imposter syndrome to launching it into the world with confidence. My mission is to show you that becoming a published and best-selling author if it is possible. It's absolutely within reach. Your story matters, and chances are you're closer to holding your finished book in your hands than you think. Hello and welcome to another episode of Four Women Who Write. So if you are new around here, there's something really important that you need to know. We talk a lot about writing and publishing a book, yes, but we actually also talk about this really important piece of writing and publishing a book that not a lot of people talk about. And I think a lot of us don't talk about it because it's not super exciting. It is kind of the less glamorous side of writing a book, but it is key, crucial, number one priority that needs to get done before you can write a successful book that you are incredibly proud of, that gets you clients, that serves whatever community it is that you serve. You absolutely need to do this step ahead of time. And that is outlining. Outlining comes, of course, before writing and definitely before publishing. And it is the key crucial piece to all of it. If you have ever like built a custom home or been a part of some kind of construction project, you know that no developer, no construction manager person, clearly I'm not in construction, but you know, people who build the houses, they do not start construction until they have a blueprint. They have a blueprint that gives them a plan of where everything goes inside the house. And they won't start working on a house until they know where everything goes because there's going to be so many people involved in the process. And because building a house is an incredibly intricate process. You need plumbing and electricity and you need structure. And if it's a two-story house, you need to make sure that everything holds in place. You need to make sure that the roof is on correctly, that you know where all the rooms go. There's so many different pieces of a house that you need to know ahead of time so that then the house holds strong, so that then people want to live in it and enjoy it and want it so much that they're willing to buy it. Your book is no different. Your book is like inviting people into your thinking, inviting people into your home. So if you're going to build a place that you want people to come, you've got to do the hard work of planning and organizing ahead of time. You're planning and thinking through where everything goes and getting it all nice and organized for people so that they want to come into your home. They want to be there. They're going to get something out of that whole experience. So outlining, outlining, outlining is something I will always talk about on this podcast. But a lot of people I have talked to, the main objection I really get isn't necessarily that they don't want to outline. The main question they ask is, like, well, when am I ready for that? When am I ready to start outlining my book? And honestly, you can get started outlining it today. Like there's nothing stopping you from opening up a Google Doc and just getting started with outlining. But if you want an outline that actually serves you well, there's a couple of things that you need to know ahead of time. And that's what we're going to talk about in this podcast episode. We're going to talk about the five signs that you are ready to start outlining your book. And these signs are things we've talked about before, but they are a couple of signs that you are ready, that you might actually have something really solid that you could create and make into a really great outline. And we're going to go through all of those today. If you hit on maybe a couple of these or all of these, then you may be ready to join a workshop with me. I am hosting monthly workshops. And this is where we essentially take your book idea and run it through a four-part assessment. We see, hey, is this something that would do really well in an outline intensive? Like, are you ready to fully, fully, completely outline your book? Because once you've got the thinking in place, that's when the writing starts to just flow so much more easily. A lot of people just sit down and want to start writing out their book, but they skip that really important step of creating the blueprint. They don't know where certain stories go. They don't know how a transformation happens. And so they're trying to build a house while also figuring out where the plumbing goes and where the electrical outlet should go while they're also putting up the walls. That is just a recipe for disaster. And it's what happens with a lot of people when they write their book. So these outline intensives that I do with clients are they're two-day intensives and they're really helpful to create that solid foundation ahead of time. So be thinking as I go through all of these signs, whether or not you have a yes or a no on this to see if maybe potentially you are ready for a workshop and to start seriously outlining your book. So number one, sign number one, is that you know your why. I know this is kind of cliche advice, but it's cliche for a reason. Knowing your why will help you move forward with this book and keep you going when you get discouraged. And I don't mean know your like overall purpose in life. I mean more of like what's your why behind this book? A book is just one way to communicate information and transformation. There's lots of other ways to do that. So, what is it about a book in particular that you are really wanting to pursue? How does this fit into your overall goals? Does it help you with your brand? Is it something that you really want to use to leverage and do other offers? Is it something that God has just told you to do and you're like, all right, I gotta do this. This idea will not leave me alone. I have to do this. What is your why? What is driving you? Not only will it help you for motivation to keep going, but it also will help you become a filter for decisions. Because if you are wanting to write a book to become a New York Times bestselling author, then you're going to choose a different publishing path and a different way to write and different people that you'll partner with in order to get to that goal. If you want a book, though, that is going to be a part of your brand ecosystem and you want to use it to leverage into offers and you know different coaching opportunities, speaking opportunities, things like that, again, you'll make different decisions and partner with different people. So when you know your why and you're very clear on that, you will have lots of questions already answered for you because you've gotten really clear on that really important question. So sign number one that you're ready to outline is that you know your why. Sign number two is that you know your reader. Who you talk to in your book is going to be incredibly important, knowing who that person is. Because if you don't know who that person is, you can't talk to them. I've used this analogy before, but I talk to my husband differently than I talk to my three-year-old. My three-year-old has a limited like attention span and vocabulary. So the way that I speak to him about things is going to be very different than the way that I talk to my husband. It's both with kindness and respect, of course, but it's just going to be different ways of communicating. And it's the same with your book. If you are talking to two people on opposite ends of the spectrum, you're not going to be able to actually talk to both of them. You can't find common language between both of them, or it's going to be very difficult to be able to speak to both of them in a pointed way that really moves them to action, that really makes them feel seen, known, and heard so that then they can take action and really transform their lives. So you need to know who you're speaking to. This is really hard for a lot of people that I talk to because they want to talk to all women or all Christians or people who are Christians, but also people who are like kind of interested in the faith, but they're not really entirely sure. Those are all very different people. Even within Christian subcultures, when I work with clients who have faith-based books, I ask them, hey, are these people who are new to the Christian faith or if they've been in the church for a really long time? Because the way that you speak to them is going to be very different. Some people just may not be as familiar with biblical stories. So it's really important that you don't talk to them like they've heard this their whole lives, or you start referencing all of these Christian subculture ideas that people just aren't going to get if they didn't grow up in the church. So you have to be very aware of who your person is. When you are aware of that person, you can speak to them way more effectively and therefore can write more effectively and plan more effectively. You have what you need to know in order to outline well. So if you are speaking to people who have been in the church their whole lives, then you likely don't need to have a whole chapter explaining a certain part of the Bible or certain part of church history because it's something that they just they know, they feel very aware of narrative. Versus somebody who hasn't been in the church as long, you may take a little bit more time. So when you go to outline your book, you know, I need a couple of chapters to really explain this idea to people. If you try to make those decisions while you're writing, you're gonna drive yourself crazy and you're gonna start second guessing everything because writing is the time to communicate what you've already been thinking through. So when you outline, is when you start to answer some of these questions of who your reader is. So sign number one is you know your why. Sign number two is you fully know who your reader is. Sign number three is you know the transformation that you are going to bring to those people. A good book is one that has clear thinking that transforms. That's all it is. When we try to overcomplicate good writing or a good book, we really lose the heart of what it is and can get very distracted. What a good book is, what good writing is, is it's clear thinking that transforms people, especially in nonfiction and the type of nonfiction that we're talking about, which is like Christian living, self-help, thought leadership, business, personal development type of books. People come to those books because they have a problem that they want a solution to. And so if you just sit in the problem the whole time and you're not giving them a solution, why would they read your book? And if you jump straight to a solution, people may not track with you because they don't even know that they have a problem or really could like identify what that problem is. They need you as the writer and clear thinker to communicate to them what the problem is and how they can get a really great solution. And the whole book is you explaining that to them. It's really kind of like a narrative arc. If you have ever seen a any movie, honestly, I was gonna call out like a specific movie, but if you've ever seen any movie at all, you will see this and understand this. Is that the beginning of the movie, the protagonist has a problem. There's something that is not going right in themselves or in their lives. But by the end of the movie, they are completely changed as people and their situations and circumstances have changed. That is called Hero's Journey. I have a whole other podcast episode on that if you want to dive deeper into hero's journey. But the idea is essentially that the hero, the protagonist, goes on this journey to become a different type of person and change their circumstances. Sometimes their circumstances change, sometimes they don't, but almost always them as a person change. They are different people by the end. That's what fiction does. In nonfiction, we want to take that idea and actually bring it on the reader. And the reader is now the protagonist. They are the hero, and we are their guide to help them have this big transformation. We want for them to be different people by the time they finish that book. We want for them to have the power and information and mindset that they need to change a certain part of their lives. They want something different. They want a transformation, and that's what that book gives them. That's what we give them as the writer. So when you are really clear on the transformation that you are going to bring people, that's when you can start to see your book really come to place, especially when you pair that transformation with the reader. Now, there's good transformations and bad transformations. And what I mean by bad transformations is like shallow ones, things that are really actually pretty easy problems to solve, or ones that are so very big and deep to try to solve. And we're trying to tackle this huge, you know, mental crisis in America type of like problem, all in a book. That's gonna be a really, really big book to read. It's also gonna, we're gonna have to go down a lot of different avenues and things like that. And so you want to have a transformation that feels doable, that feels possible for people, that gives them the tools that they need, maybe not necessarily to solve this huge major problem in their life, but to make forward progress in it. And so if you can find a transformation that's not too big and wide and deep, but also not too shallow at the same time, that's when you have a really solid transformation that's going to give people the tools that they need in order to be successful in whatever it is that they're trying to be successful. So sign number one, know your why. Sign number two, know your reader. Sign number three, you know the transformation that you want to bring your people. Sign number four is that you have a unique angle that you want to take. So this is where a lot of people start to get a little discouraged, potentially, is they see that so-and-so has already written on this topic that they've always wanted to write on. And so they think, well, then I guess I just shouldn't write on it. I'll just move on. Or they'll say something like, it's just too noisy out there, it's too saturated, too many people are writing on this topic. And the reality is, probably pretty much every topic out there has a lot of people writing on the topic. So the truth is that nobody at this point is really new on something. At this point, the only newness is the way that you talk about it, the angle that you take, the way that you frame a message. So in our house, we love to put up lots of different pictures. We have really cute kids and we like to frame them. And I have found, as I'm trying to decorate my home, the power of the picture frame. Because if I put up a really like antique, ornate kind of frame, it's going to have a different vibe. But if I put up a really modern gold, sleek one, it's also going to create a different vibe in the room. The picture is the exact same, but the way that I frame it and where I put it in my house is going to look different depending on what frame that I use. And it's the exact same thing with your book. The message or the idea might kind of basically be the same as somebody else, but you're going to frame it in a very different way. You're going to come at it at a different angle than other people will. And that's what we need. That's what we want. Whenever I personally have something that I'm trying to understand in my life or a problem that I'm trying to solve, I like to pick up lots of different books on the topic because I need lots of people's perspectives, lots of different ideas that people have of how to tackle this problem. And the way that one writer writes may not really resonate with me in the same way that another does. And it's simply because of personality and stories and experiences all speak differently to different people. So just because somebody has already written on your topic does not mean you shouldn't write on it too. And again, I have a whole other episode if you want to scroll back on the podcast to see, you know, what do you do if somebody else has your book idea? And there's lots more that we could talk about that. But just because somebody has already written doesn't mean you can't. Your job, though, is to find a unique angle that you can take on it, a different way for you to frame it. And there's lots of ways that you can do that. You can create like a proprietary framework for it, like a step-by-step process that you take people through. You can take the way that you think and kind of wrap it in this really pretty gift or really pretty frame, if you want to keep the metaphor, and you know, have a step-by-step process that you take people through that's very different than how other people do it. Or you can have different stories that you include when you're explaining this. You can also have a different tone than other people do. Some people come in as an authority. You could come in as a journalist. And instead of trying to say, this is how I've lived my life, and I now I'm gonna show you how you should live your life because this is what I did, you can say, Hey, I am a student and I studied so many different people and the way that they lived their life. And let me show you the patterns that I found. So the tone could be a different way that you could have a different angle. You could also disagree with some of the really big books out there on your topic. If you don't really like the way that some of people have handled your topic in books, then you can write the exact opposite way that they do. And of course, you don't have to like call them out and be like aggressive about it. But if you feel like so-and-so is always talking about how blue is the best color in the entire world, but you feel like blue is good, but there's lots of other good colors out there too. And so you write a book on how yellow is a great color and green is a great color, and blue sure is great, but we're missing all these other colors. So you just have a different perspective than other people have, and you are going to present that perspective. So maybe you're a single mom, maybe you're a woman of color, maybe you have lived in different countries and have different experiences that are not being talked about. You just need to find whatever angle it is that will add a different voice to the overall conversation. Books are like one giant symphony. You don't have one instrument that's constantly playing. That is kind of boring. Not always. I love a cello. I love a cello performance. So not always, but if you have this big grand performance, you're going to have lots of different instruments in it, right? And that is ultimately what you are doing, is you are adding another instrument to create this really beautiful, big, bold music. And your job is to find what that unique angle is. So that is sign number four. Let's talk about the last sign, which is that you know your publishing path. So I've talked about this extensively on other episodes. So if you want to go back, you can listen to previous episodes on self versus traditional publishing. But knowing what path you want to take is really important. The reason for that is because if you choose to do traditional publishing, then you will want to do a proposal and then you will write your book. If you self-publish, you want to outline your book and then you'll write it. And those are similar processes, but they are actually very different in lots of ways as well. When you are traditional publishing, you definitely need to have the publisher's interests in mind first if you want for them to pick up your book. Now, of course, you can find a great arrangement and deal with all of that, but a publisher is definitely going to have their agenda first. When you self-publish, you have your interests first, not a traditional publisher, because you are ultimately the one publishing and you are the one who gets all the rights and the royalties with your book. And so you have your agenda first, not the publisher. And so you can just outline according to what works best for you, not a publisher's agenda, but what works best for you, what works best for your book, and then you can just run with it. So it's really important that you know which publishing path you want and that you feel really good about it. Now, I've worked with clients who are like, yes, I want to traditionally publish, and then a couple of years down the road, they're like, this is not working for me. I want to self publish. And so it's okay for you to change your mind. Absolutely okay for you to change your mind. But you need to know before you start moving forward so that you do this the right way and don't waste a lot of time trying to write a full manuscript and trying to pitch it to a traditional publisher, and that is just a recipe for disaster. So know your publishing path ahead of time. What are some things that you do not need to know? What are some signs that you don't need to be looking for? So you do not need to know your book title right now, or even like what your chapter titles would be. That is like trying to figure out the color of a room before you build a house. That's something you will decide later, and likely your title will come up as you are writing your book. So if you are delaying because you don't know your title yet, you are procrastinating. You just need to start working on actually writing the book. The title will come to you if it hasn't already. And even if you do have a title right now, I would say hold it loosely, hold it very loosely. So many of my clients are like, nope, I'm married to this title. And yet, as they work out the details of the book, as they work through the outline and clarify what the book really is about, they start to see that it actually might make a better chapter title than necessarily a book title. And that's okay. That's totally normal. Actually, that's a really good sign because that shows that you have done some really good, clear thinking and outlining and you know exactly what your book is about. So you do not need to know your book title or your title chapters. You don't need to know what stories you're going to tell and not tell. That will come out as you are working on your outline. We'll start to see this is a really great story to emphasize this point and this one maybe not so much. So you don't need to worry about what stories to include or what not to include. Third, you also don't need to have like your framework or your quote unquote hook. So a lot of books that I have studied, both like just professionally as I'm like reading them for my business, but then also studying them to see how they write really well. I have found that most of them have some kind of a hook or framework that people can hang ideas on that they can really track and follow through. It's like a step-by-step process or really easy, alliterated idea that people can constantly remember and refer back to. It's kind of like this hook or framework. You need to have one of those, but you don't need to know what it is ahead of time. Those often come out as you are outlining the book, as you are thinking clearly through the book and starting to organize your ideas. That's when the hooks and the frameworks come out. If you were going to use the analogy of organizing your thoughts, a hook or framework of the book are like finding the cute little bins that you put everything into. You don't need to have those bins in place first when you start taking everything out of the closet. You just need to take everything out of the closet first. Then you'll need those bins to put everything back into the closet nice and organized. So as you are outlining is when you will come up with that hook or framework that you will ultimately need in order to organize your book, but you don't need it ahead of time. So, quick recap: five signs that you are ready to outline your book. The first one is to know your why. The second one is to know your reader. Third, know the transformation you're going to bring them through. Fourth, your unique angle that you're going to take, and five, your publishing path. If you feel like you roughly have an idea on some, if not all, of those signs, then you absolutely need to join me for a workshop. In these workshops, we're going to work through your book. Just like I talked about at the beginning of the episode, we're going to work through all this. We're going to kind of beat up your transformation a little bit, your reader, see if it holds. Like, is this still something that will be really excellent that could carry you through a whole outline and through writing and publishing a whole book? So I hope this was really, really helpful for you just to see like where you're at and get a really good assessment of where you're at and how you can move forward. So so excited for you and can't wait to see you in a workshop.