Week 6: Research & Chapter Headings

Posted by Aaron McMahon on Feb 11th, 2009 | no comments

This week’s class featured two different topics.  Both are relatively short so I decided to combine them.  First, I spoke about Research, then talked about Chapter Headings & Sub-Headings.

Research

I taught about the six basic steps for researching a topic for a teaching book.

1. Read about your chosen topic

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Download a 68-minute MP3 of this class to listen on your iPod, MP3 Player, or computer media player.
2. Underline key words
3. Ask questions
4. Look for patterns
5. Summarize information
6. Consume more information (back to step 1)

Chapter Headings & Sub-Headings

When I was thinking of writing my first teaching book, I happened to be flipping through Bill Johnson’s book When Heaven Invades Earth.  As I looked through it, I noticed there were 17 chapters in his 190-page book.  Each chapter was relatively short.  I also noticed a lot of bold sub-headings in each chapter… usually about 5 to 8 sub-headings.  Under each sub-heading, there were maybe 3 to 5 paragraphs.  He seemed to have broken up his book into bite-size chunks which made it very easy to read.  But even more, I realized that might be a very easy way to write.

I took one of his chapters and wrote out each of the sub-headings so I could see it in front of me.  I then wrote out the list of chapter headings with one chapter’s sub-headings included.  I realized that if I continued doing this for the entire book, I would have a pretty good outline for Bill’s book.  In fact, I wondered if such an outline would be virtually identical to an outline that Bill had used to write his book!  I don’t know how Bill wrote his book, but that didn’t matter to me at the time.  I knew that I could write a book this way!

Although I previously had no desire to write an outline (I just wanted to start writing!), I decided that an outline might be a great place to start so I could see an overview of my book before I started the writing process.  I spent a couple months working on it until I felt like it had everything I wanted to talk about.  I then re-arranged the chapters and moved some sub-headings into and out of various chapters.  Finally, I had an outline that was about 7 or 8 pages long.

The best part of this process was that when I actually did begin writing my book, I would just pick one of those 90 or 100 sub-headings I’d created for my book.  I’d pick whichever one caught my eye or that I felt like writing at that moment.  I’d write anywhere from 1 to 6 paragraphs on it (enough to speak about that sub-heading’s main point).  And then I would consider that sub-heading to be done.  Every day I would pick one or two of these sub-headings and simply expand it.  I did this day after day until I had my entire book written.

I didn’t write my book sequentially.  I didn’t need to because my outline became my road-map.  I could write any part of my book that I wanted to, always knowing that my outline would connect all the pieces perfectly because I’d spent enough time creating it to know that it was seamless.  Writing became fun instead of a chore (well, mostly) because I got to pick and choose what I wanted to write about each day.  Yes, there were some sub-headings that were difficult to write because I wasn’t sure exactly how to teach about it but the rest of it went pretty smoothly.

At the end of this class, I gave the book authors two assignments:  first, they were to take one teaching book from their bookshelf and write out every chapter and every sub-heading they could find in it.  I wanted them to analyze the book’s structure so they could see how the book was arranged and laid out.  More than likely, they would be re-creating the author’s original outline in this simple process.  This exercise also helps the future book authors to train their mind to think about the structure of their writing.

Secondly, I had the book authors write down 10 chapter titles for their book.  These titles are not permanent, but they will be a good starting point for next week’s lesson on Outlining.  If they wanted to create more than 10 chapters, that’s okay too.

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