<aside> 👉🏼 Click Duplicate to import this into your own Notion workspace. You can delete these instructions from there if you wish.

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<aside> 💡 Think about who's reading your book, and why. How do they connect with your message?

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<aside> ✍🏼 Use this template to sketch out your thoughts and mesh your reader with your Big Idea—and if you don't yet have your Big Idea nailed down, this will help you to do so. This is as relevant for a book of essays as it is for narrative non-fiction, or self-help, or how-to, or fiction.

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In fiction, there’s a protagonist’s journey—how do the characters change over time? This is probably the most important element.

In nonfiction, we may have a protagonist, depending on the type of nonfiction we’re writing… but we also have a reader. And the whole point of nonfiction is to change the person who’s reading it in some way—perhaps shift their worldview, change their mind, give them a new perspective, show them how to be a better version of themselves.

That’s the reader journey, and we need to have a good idea of what that might look like before we start writing our books.

What type of book are you writing?

<aside> 💡 Think genre, aim, style.

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Are you writing a:

• How to book, in which you solve a specific problem for a reader, or teach them a specific skill?
• Memoir or personal essay book, in which you’re sharing a slice of your own life and personality, to help your reader feel seen and heard?
• Self-help book, where you’re aiming to change people’s mindset or beliefs about themselves or the world?
• Expository nonfiction, which aims to inform the reader about the subject—maybe the history of makeup, or economics, or flexibility.
• Philosophy, which asks big questions and wakes up people’s brains.

Or something else. The type of book you’re writing will inform your reader journey.

Use these questions to get started

<aside> 💡 Click the little triangle to open the question for more information.

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• Who is your reader when they pick up your book?
• Who do they want to be at the end?
• Where do you want to take your reader?