First Time Book: Structure and Story Arc
Life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens.
- Atul Gawande
Avoid the Angel Hair Effect
If you write 150 pages of expert material and don’t give it any kind of structure, it’s like serving up a plate of angel hair pasta to your reader; it’s a “dump of lump” and very difficult to separate the strands.
One of your main goals as an author is assist comprehension of your expertise, not inhibit it.
I find many subject matter experts are challenged to simplify complex concepts into simple terms an uninitiated reader will not only understand, but act upon. Where you really extend the value of your thought leadership is not only in the act of reading but the transformative audience behaviors of application, integration and adoption.
This is where reader loyalty and word-of-mouth momentum arise. You want a reader to say, that book transformed my business or, it really changed how I think about digital marketing.
And best of all: let me know when your next book is coming out!
Classical Structure
Think in threes for your overall structure. Somehow the concept of three things resonates across history: The Holy Trinity, The Bermuda Triangle (Miami, Bermuda, San Juan P.R.), and the Triple Crown (Kentucky Derby, Preakness, Belmont Stakes) for starters.
The third time really is the charm.
In basic structure, a story can be told in chronological order:
1. Beginning
2. Middle
3. End
Or use the standard, tried-and-true dramatic arc in a movie:
1. Boy Meets Girl
2. Boy Loses Girl
3. Boy Wins Girl’s Heart For Good
Or
1. Boy Meets Girl
2. Boy Loses Girl
3. Boy Meets New Girl He Likes Even Better Than First Girl
There’s also a classical business structure to follow, which mimics the main pillars of start-up venture pitch:
1. Introduce a Market Problem (Compelling Pain Points)
2. Reveal a Market Solution (Benefits the Why)
3. Solution as Product (Features; the Where, What, How)
Here’s another story arc you can borrow. The cultural mythologist Joseph Campbell developed a seven-part circuit that he named The Hero’s Journey:
1. Call to Adventure (Known to Unknown)
2. Threshold
3. Challenges and Temptation
4. Abyss (Death and Rebirth)
5. Transformation
6. Atonement/Redemption
7. Return to Jumping Off Point
Organic Structure
I’ve provided you above with four, count ’em four, potential organizing templates for your book. An even more compelling and engaging structure would be something organic to your subject. This is a structure that mirrors or mimics the overall topic and lets the reader understand exactly each step along the way.
Let’s say I’m a plastic surgeon in the highly competitive Florida market, writing a book to influence prospective patients of plastic surgery, an elective surgery not covered by health insurance. I want to educate potential patients about why they would choose plastic surgery in the first place and why they would choose me over other plastic surgeons.
Here’s a plausible structure for that book that follows a story arc exactly the same as the patient journey:
1. Patient dissatisfaction with personal appearance
2. Investigation of all possible surgery options
3. Screening prospective surgeons (what to ask)
4. Financial Considerations
5. Potential Complications
6. What Will I Actually Look Like post-surgery?
7. Selecting a surgeon
8. Pre-op
9. The Day of Surgery
10. Post-Surgery/Recovery
11. The New Me, transformed.
One thing I did learn working on liposuction book many years ago (this particular surgeon branded his magic lipo-sculpture) was that most patients tend to opt out of the surgery following the initial consult. They leave the consult room and don’t ever schedule the surgery.
Some of that has to do with the lack of finances and fear of complications, but much of it is around the patient being unable to envision what they would look like and feel like as transformed individuals.
As the author, I must structure a book around the areas I want to emphasize based on my unique knowledge of the market and patient behaviors. In the case of my Tampa lipo-sculptor, he cleverly made artistic line drawings during the initial consult, to show a patient how they might actually look in the long term. Here, take the line drawing home with you, he would say. He was planting a seed. We included sample line drawings in the book.
A Preoccupation with Pillars
One of the most iconic examples of antiquity is the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. The Parthenon dates from 447 BCE, so it’s about 2,500 years old.
Look at those impressive Doric columns! There are eight columns at either end and seventeen on each side, as part of the post-and-lintel style of construction.
Your book is the Parthenon. The Doric columns represent your structure, your main organizing points. The stone rubble in the foreground represents all the other books on your topic, which collapsed into ruin for lack of structure.
Every industry and field of expertise has its pillars.
In baseball, you have three main pillars: fielding, slugging and pitching, and in the background, the lesser arts of bunting, base stealing, getting on base with a walk, and defensive maneuvers like pick-off plays.
In the automotive field, the main pillars used to be: horsepower, safety, and a roomy, family-friendly interior. Now you can add five new pillars: fuel economy, alternative fuel sources, a luxury interior, digital infotainment system and self-driving vehicles.
When I worked at Wake Forest University’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine, we had 10 pillars, known as research cores, some of which I still remember almost a decade later:
1. Cell Biology
2. Animal and Bench Research
3. Bio-imaging
4. Non-Cellular Matrices
5. Tissue Engineering
6. Kinesiology
7. Surgery
8. Bioinformatics and Biostatistics
9. Nanotechnology
10. Bio-manufacturing
At the time, we had over 200 scientists in a four-story research building allocated across these cores. And then we translated our therapies across ten additional fields of influence, also pillars:
1. NIH and NSF Funding
2. FDA (Regulatory Approval)
3. Medicare and Medicaid (Reimbursement)
4. Military Applications
5. Pharmaceutical Industry
6. Medical Device Industry
7. Healthcare Industry
8. Healthcare Public Policy
9. Physician Education
10. Patient Advocacy Groups
To operate successfully in the field of Regenerative Medicine, there are (at least) twenty pillars to consider in a wide-flanking strategy. On any given day, the leadership on the Institute had to be able to make a “deep dive” in any one of these topical areas, some of which had never existed before in the field of medicine. You could also cross-weave numerous medical specialties against this matrix: immunology, cardiology, neurology, hepatology, urology, endocrinology, pediatrics and geriatrics.
You should not only know your pillars in depth, you should understand and articulate how they inter-relate. Think of an Interstate highway and all its components: on-ramps, off-ramps, road surfaces and striping, shoulders, drainage, bridges, overpasses, median dividers, signs. Those are nine essential elements acting in unison to allow the high-throughput of two-ton small automobiles and large 75,000-pound tractor-trailers along 47,000 miles of Interstate in both remote rural settings and dense urban environments.
Most everyone can sit down and write something informative and interesting, a blog post or a series of informative blogs or an attractive eBook.
To be an author means you are changing behavior for your reader, and potentially a greater community. You will need to think structurally and strategically, as well as word-by-word on a tactical level.
But there will be an immense benefit for you. When you do the “heavy lifting” of organizing your writing, your own thinking becomes clarified and focused. Writing rewires your brain, even with a subject where you are one of the top experts.
When you write, you refine.
And when you refine, you move the needle, and create a fulcrum for transformation.
Note: This blog post is a chapter excerpt from “Big Splash: Writing Your First Book” (November, 20180
Photo credit: Serendigity
