In today’s episode, I’m referring back to the process that I went through before of all the seven steps that you take to get to the point where you have a first draft of your book. And today I’m going to focus on the table of contents. 

Sometimes people are surprised when I suggest that you do a table of contents so early in the process, but actually, it becomes a very useful tool for getting your book done. Because it’s kind of an outline almost, and a very simple form of what’s going to be in your book. So it’s very useful when you actually come to write your first draft.

But how do you create your table of contents? Well, I’m assuming that you have already done the other steps in the process, so you know what your book is going to be called, you know what the topic is — remember, not the subject but the topic — and you have some idea of the shape of the book. Is it going to be a How-To book? Is it some kind of process manual? Is it a thought leadership book? Is it a memoir? What kind of book…what kind of shape is your book going to take? So you have all that in your mind, and now you start thinking about the contents. 

One of the services that I offer is called The 90 Minute Author. When somebody signs up with me to become a 90 minute author the first thing I do is send them a form and I say, “I want you to write down on this page 10 questions pertaining to this particular topic that your clients ask you, or that they should ask you but they don’t. In other words, answers that they really need to have if they’re going to understand this particular topic.”

And most people find that quite easy, because they just think, “Well these are the things that people always ask me.” So when you have 10, usually that means that you have essentially the subjects for 10 chapters. And then it has to be filled in, sometimes more chapters appear, sometimes some are combined, but it gives you a basis of 10 chapters. 

So that’s what I’m going to recommend you do. In fact, your homework for this week is to sit back and consider what kind of information is going to go in your book. What are the questions your clients always ask you about this topic? And what are ideas that make you think, “Why does nobody ever ask me this and they really should?” Think of those subjects.

Write them down as a list, just a few lines that will describe the subject of each chapter. Write as many as you can come up with — you don’t have to stop at 10. But try to have at least 10 topics because that is going to give you a basis of 10 chapters. 

So that’s your homework for this week: brainstorm 10 topics that will become the 10 chapters of your book. 

And I’ll see you next week.