You have a great idea for a book, you’ve already done quite a bit of writing, but how do you present your idea to a publisher? You need to be able to explain your book idea with clarity.

Most of us are visual learners. If we look at something then we often understand it better than being told about it. Try this for your writing. Put your ideas into a mind-map where you can track the connections between different thoughts and ideas. This is a great exercise for getting everything out of your head and onto paper, and will help you organize your thoughts. Your book will make more sense to you, your publisher, and your readers if you bridge the gaps between different plot aspects, characters, and settings early on in the process of writing rather than filling in the gaps later. Mind-maps are helpful visual tools for keeping track of the relationships between numerous aspects of your story, and they might even make you find connections that you weren’t consciously aware of before. They will also help you form chapters based on the groupings of your mind-map thought track, as well as eliminate any irrelevant thoughts that you previously had tangled up with your book ideas.

Now look at your mindmap and start organizing your ideas. This can be done through a number of options that will each help different types of books. Some of the options include taking the information from the mind-map and creating a chart with columns and rows, or a timeline that allows you to keep a logical chronologic sequence of events. You want to avoid confusing yourself or your readers about the sequence of the plot. Keep it simple and you’ll thank yourself later for not making it too convoluted. As you organize your ideas, you will be able to determine the framework from which you want to write your book. This will add structure to your book and it will be easier to write different parts when you are organized.

For creative non-fiction or fiction, create character sketches. To inspire creativity when developing your characters, you can embellish upon someone you already know personally, or create an entirely new specimen from another world, or maybe create a character with traits that fall somewhere in between these two options! You can build on aspects of personality or mannerisms that you observe in other people, even if they are strangers, to make your characters more realistic. If you are writing about someone you know but you don’t want them to realize it, then you can protect their identity by making them fictional: change their name and ethnicity or gender, but keep all of their other traits the same.

Once you have more clarity about your book by going through this process, you can now write your synopsis to include in your proposal. Watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPc30AuBGMM&feature=youtu.be&a and then read the blog “Target a niche” to help you do this.