So you’ve got this un cours en miracles. All you need to do is finish writing it. You’re sure it will sell a million copies. It will change the lives of millions of people. And it will make your name forever.
And all you have to do is develop that idea into a book. But how?
In this article, I’m going to ignore the lack of realistic dreams inherent in the first paragraph. Instead, I’m going to focus on developing your idea into a book. In short, I’m going to show you how to turn an idea into something useful when writing a book.
There are three basic steps between generating an idea and writing a book.
1. Turning the idea into something the reader wants
2. Checking that there are people who want to read it
3. Converting the idea into a book
1. Turning the idea into something the reader wants
There is little point in writing a book that no one wants to read. So the first step is to determine what problem your idea will solve. Then put your idea in those terms. Your reader will be motivated to buy your book if it solves a problem they have. They will also read it if it avoids a pain they are experiencing. And sometimes they will read your book if they achieve a dream through it.
2. Checking that there are people who want to read it
Just because you’ve turned your idea into a motivator doesn’t automatically mean that you will sell copies of your book. You need to know that there really are people who are experiencing the problem or pain your book resolves. The easiest way to do that is to check the number of searches in Google on that topic. If there are enough searches then it indicates that a large number of people are also experiencing the problem or the pain. On the other hand, if there are not enough searches then you know that there is no point in writing the book. To make life a little easier, the Google AdWords Keyword tool may show you an alternative variation on your idea that does have enough interest.
3. Converting the idea into a book
We’re not talking about actually writing a book. Although in some ways, this can be considered as writing a book without using words. What we’re talking about begins with taking the idea. You then need to determine what information the reader really needs around that idea. And finally, you need to outline the book that you will be writing. This latter step is not your traditional outline. Instead, it involves a detailed design of the book down to the paragraph level. When you finish, you will have a complete structure for the book. All that will be required is replacing each link in the outline with a 100-word paragraph. In many ways, you will have written the book without having to use words.
