The Strategic Underpinnings of Book Coaching
Today’s blog post comes to us from Author Accelerator CEO Jennie Nash. If you enjoy today’s content, you can sign up for Jennie's weekly newsletter here.
My new book, Blueprint for a Book: How to Build a Novel from the Inside Out, shares the framework that we teach in the Author Accelerator Book Coach Certification program for starting, rescuing, or revising a novel.
The word framework has become one of my go-to words for talking about what book coaching is and how it works. Dictionary.com tells us that a framework is primarily “an essential supporting structure of a building, vehicle, or object.” It makes me think of the branches of a tree or the arch supports of a bridge — something tangible and solid. The second definition, however, is “a basic structure underlying a system, concept, or text.” Here we get into more ephemeral things such as the framework of a law, or a philosophical framework for understanding the moral values of a society. But within those ephemeral concepts, you can still picture the tangible support of the first definition. You can see the importance of having a basic structure to hold up the idea — some kind of architecture, some kind of form or shape.
This concept of an underlying support structure works beautifully for understanding the process of writing a novel, because the process of writing a novel is not actually a random or chaotic undertaking, as we are sometimes led to believe. It is not mysterious and out of control. Even though writers move through the process in their own way and at their own pace, they are following a pattern of creation. Note that I am not referring here to plot elements — to the three-act structure or the hero’s journey. I’m talking about the creative process itself. There are replicable things that happen in the process that all writers must undertake: universal constants of creativity. What this means is that there is a framework for writing a novel that can be taught to both book coaches and writers.
In our Blueprint system, we learn to develop a foundational structure or framework to support the writer and the writing.
We step back and ask the big questions about the story and the writer’s motivation for telling it so that there is something solid for the writer to build on.
In Blueprint for a Book: How to Build a Novel from the Inside Out, I present the framework in a linear 14-step process, because books are linear. But coaching the Blueprint is a very fluid, collaborative, and iterative process. I listen to what the writer is saying and what they are not saying. I look at where their answers are solid and where they are vague. I try to catch a vision for the book the writer is imagining so that I can reflect back to them what I think they are trying to do. It’s innovation and creativity within a framework, and it’s a very powerful process.
The 14 Steps of the Blueprint
The first seven steps of the Blueprint get at the big-picture strategic elements of a book. A writer has to be able to “see” their book as a whole — to know why they want to write it and who it’s for and what it is trying to do or to say. They have to know what other similar books are out in the marketplace and how they might position their book to sell. Some of these strategic questions are impossible to answer before the book is written, but it’s critical to try — to delineate the target you are trying to hit even if you can’t yet see the bullseye. It is the way to give the story a context — a framework of its own.
Part One: Story Fundamentals
Blueprint Step 1: Why Write This Book?
Blueprint Step 2: What’s Your Point?
Blueprint Step 3: Write a Super Simple Version of Your Story
Blueprint Step 4: Choose a Working Title
Blueprint Step 5: Define Your Genre
Blueprint Step 6: Get to Know Your Ideal Reader
Blueprint Step 7: Write Jacket Copy
The next five steps of the Blueprint address the structure of the story — the shape, the design, the container that is going to define it and hold it.
Some of the questions in this section may seem obvious (Who is telling your tale? Where does the story start and where does it end?). But it is staggering how many writers have not stepped back and thought about these questions, even if they have already written hundreds of pages. They leap into writing, focusing on the craft issues of character and plot, without ever having considered the structure of their story.
Plot, or what happens, is a very poor substitute for overall narrative design, and it’s why so many writers get lost in their own stories. They get stuck in the middle or write endings that fall flat because they have not done this fundamental structural work.
Part Two: Design a Structure
Blueprint Step 8: Who Is Your Protagonist?
Blueprint Step 9: Who Is Telling Your Tale?
Blueprint Step 10: Two Questions About Time
Blueprint Step 11: Where Does the Story Start and Where Does It End?
Blueprint Step 12: The “Because of That” Story Summary
The final two steps of the Blueprint are where we begin to sketch out the plot of the novel, but we do so in a very specific way.
We help the writer marry the plot to the way the character makes meaning of it at every single turn. We use a tool called the Inside Outline. It has two tiers: the inside, or character level, and the outside, or plot level. Thinking about the story in this way helps prevent the most common mistakes writers make before they make them.
Part Three: The Inside Outline
Blueprint Step 13: Develop the Inside Outline
Blueprint Step 14: The 10-Point Inside Outline Checklist
A Blueprint for Coaching the Blueprint
In our Book Coach Certification program, we start with the Blueprint, too — doing the Blueprint with a client is the first practicum that our coaching students do. By helping a writer think strategically about their book, and answer these fundamental questions, coaching students begin to experience that there is so much more to writing than just the story. They begin to see that there is so much more to coaching than just giving editorial feedback. There is emotional support and strategic visioning and project management. It is rich and resonant work.
On September 24, I am going to be spending an entire day doing presentations on what it is like to be a coach, using the Blueprint as my lens. I’ll be bringing on several Author Accelerator certified coaches to share their experiences and I’ll be doing some live coaching with one of my clients, a New York Times-bestselling novelist.
You can also pre-order Blueprint for a Book: How to Build a Novel from the Inside Out HERE.
