[stylist] Story development/strategy

[Homme, James]

Hi Chris,
Where did you get that book? I want it. And thanks again.

Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Chris Kuell
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2011 9:59 AM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] Story development/strategy

Jim,

One of my favorite books on writing came to mind as I read your post. It's
called 'Bird by Bird' by Anne Lamott. The title for the book came from a
story she tells about her brother when he was in high school. I read the
book many years ago, so I may have the exact details wrong, but it went
something like that he had to do a school project on the birds of North
America. He was just overwhelmed by the project and didn't know how to
start. Their father came over, put his hand on his shoulder and advised him
to go 'bird by bird'.

Lamott is a fan of breaking down a project, especially a non-fiction
project, into chunks. Here an outline is a necessity. What do you want the
book to accomplish? What are the various big areas that will need to be
discussed to cover this goal adequately? How can you break down the big
areas into smaller ideas that support the big idea, and so on. I'm not a
computer guy, but shooting from the hip, your web accessibility idea might
have the main goal of helping blind people to fully utilize the power of the
web. The big ideas might be search engines, social networks, online stores
and information/data sites. Or, perhaps these would be sub-categories under
various accessibility programs--screen readers, screen enlargers... Anyway,
you would spend time figuring out how you think you might best convey the
information, then start by setting writing goals and chipping away at it.
Since you are working at this part-time, a modest goal might be 250 words
per day. However, I should interject here that before you started writing a
non-fiction book like this, you should first put your time and energy into
writing a book proposal, which would cover most of the aforementioned
outlining. Most non-fiction books are sold via the proposal, whereas novels
are sold, especially by first-time novelists, as finished works.

chris


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