Map a Book With Me! Part I: The Big Picture

Behind-the-Scenes of Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy

Soft specks of rain landed on my hair, my eyelashes, my brand-new roller skates, as I sat on my driveway in a standoff with my six-year-old.

She stared at me, emitting a high-pitched whine as she stood in her own new roller skates on the lawn. I breathed through my nose and tried to smile, to let her know that I was calm, that this little conflict didn’t bother me or change anything between us. And also—that I wasn’t budging.

She had been calling my husband mean names—something we’re working on, a boundary that we have set around kindness in our home. I’d already been waiting for her cooperation and agreement that she wouldn’t keep calling him names so that we could continue our roller skating lesson, but here we both were, each waiting for the other to break. 

The raindrops were getting fatter. 

Suddenly, she started tearing at the Velcro straps on her bright pink knee pads, taking them off. Next came the elbow pads. 

“Hey sweetie… what are you doing?” I asked.

“I don’t want to wear these anymore,” she huffed.

“Ok… Do you want to keep skating?” 

She nodded.

I reminded her of another boundary: We wear protective gear when we practice skating. No gear, no skating. (I didn’t bring up the fact that the rain also made skating more dangerous). She ignored me, slid off her wrist pads, and started towards the driveway. 

I paused for a second in disbelief. Ignoring an authority figure was simply not an option for me as a kid, and I didn’t know how to handle it now on the receiving end as an adult. I felt all the things: indignation, frustration, helplessness. I wondered what to do, what to say. 

What I wanted to say was, “EXCUSE ME—what are you doing? Didn’t you hear me?”

What I wanted to say was, “Oh no you don’t.”

What I wanted to say was (with a heavy dose of sarcasm), “Guess we can’t handle roller skating right now.”

Instead, I took a deep breath and pulled out a Dr. Becky phrase for the first time:

“I love you too much to let you do something unsafe.” 

And with that, I slipped off my own skates, ran across the wet grass in my socks, picked her up and carried her back inside—now bawling for all the neighborhood to hear. I held back my own tears, passed the baton to my husband, and left to pick up our baby from daycare. And then I did what every new mom does: I called my own parents for reassurance and comfort.

Prior to our elder foster daughter’s arrival, I had just three months of parenting experience under my belt—and our other foster daughter is one, so parenting her is a very, very different story. From the first night, we realized this six-year-old was full of sass and deep, deep desires for EVERYTHING: sugar, toys, bright colors, clothes, games, learning, attention, love. She is effervescent in the way that only six-year-olds can be. She reminds me of Anne of Avonlea; good hearted, but with a thirst for life that sometimes gets her into trouble. 

Like all kids, she needs boundaries, predictable routines and structures, consistent love and affection, help making healthy decisions, and grace by the bucket load. 

But… we just met her, she just experienced the most terrible trauma in her life, and she has absolutely no reason to love us, trust us, or listen to us. Although we’re starting to get into a rhythm, everything about us and our lives is still new to her. 

How do you parent a child under those circumstances?

I heard Dr. Becky on the Daily Dad podcast talking with Ryan Holiday and what she was saying felt like it was just for me, so I immediately got her book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be. Already, this book has been a lifeline. 

And here’s the thing: The stuff in her book is so good that I don’t want to lose it. Even though I already plan on reading it again, I want to go deeper with the ideas so that I can remember them and, hopefully, continue to apply them in real life with both of our foster daughters. And so that they’ll feel more natural and easy. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll work.

That’s why I’m mapping out her book.

In full honesty, I’m doing this for me—but I thought that you might like a behind-the-scenes look at how it’s done so that you can try it for yourself. In my next four newsletters, I’ll take you through the entire process from start to finish.

What is a Book Map?

I wrote about “The Magic of Book Mapping” a few weeks ago, so head there for a much more comprehensive explanation!

Essentially, a book map is a visual representation of your book’s content. Most of us are familiar with vertical outlines (one form of book map), but you could also use online mind mapping tools or go analog with sticky notes and index cards. It doesn’t matter what it looks like; what matters is how it helps you understand and make decisions about the organization of the content. 

Mapping your content is the #1 best advice I can give authors—so much so that my business partner and I wrote a whole book about it. 

But how do you learn to do this process? 

Well, for that, we recommend starting not with your own ideas—but with someone else’s.

Why Map Out Other Authors’ Books?

As readers, mapping helps us remember the big ideas in the book. By mapping out the book, I engage with it in a new way and the content becomes more deeply embedded in my mind. I’m more likely to integrate and put into practice the actions and lessons that the author wants me to. In other words, by mapping out the book and more deeply understanding the transformation the author wants me to accomplish, I’m more likely to undergo that transformation.

As writers, book mapping helps us understand the decisions the author made in organizing the book and learn from their example so we can apply those lessons to our own writing. Mapping out other people’s books is not just an act of copying—it’s a creative process of imagining what choices the author must have had to make in order for the book to arrive in its final form. And that’s where the magical application to our own work comes in.

One question I imagine many of you may be asking: Should you map out every single chapter of a book? That could take a while. You certainly can if you want to, but you don’t have to. Just map out the chapters that are most interesting/compelling to you, as we’ll do in a later newsletter.

For now, we just want to get our bearings and gather some preliminary information about the book.

Step 1: The Big Picture

The first thing I do when mapping out another book is ask three foundational questions:

1. Who’s the audience?

2. What’s the genre?

3. What’s the big idea?

You can most often find the answers to these questions in the marketing/positioning of the book, and in the Introduction.

For Dr. Becky’s book:

Audience: Parents of children, from toddlers to preteens

This is abundantly clear in the marketing, but also in the very first lines of the Introduction, when Dr. Becky quotes real requests she’s received from desperate parents:

“Dr. Becky, my five-year-old is in a stage where she’s mean to her sister, rude to us, and melting down at school. We feel totally stuck. Can you help?”

“Dr. Becky, why is my potty-trained child suddenly peeing all over the house? We’ve tried using rewards and punishments and nothing is changing. Can you help?”

“Dr. Becky, my twelve-year-old never listens to me! It’s infuriating. Can you help?”

Considering the story you just read about my own parenting struggles, you can see how starting her book this way is like a neon sign flashing, “HEY ARIEL, THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU! READ ME NOW!”

Genre: Prescriptive nonfiction (self-help)

Genre is sometimes so obvious that it gets forgotten, but it’s important to be in the habit of noticing and naming books’ genres—because often that is key to understanding the decisions the authors make in organizing the book.

In this case, the genre has been made clear by words used in the marketing of this book, like the subtitle: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be. Right there, we know that we (the readers) are the heroes of this book. It’s not a memoir about Dr. Becky’s transformation to being a better mom; this is a book in which she’s going to help us change the way we parent.

In the description in the book flap, I also see words and phrases like, “effective approach,” “a model,” “techniques,” “actionable strategies,” “specific scenarios,” and “comprehensive resource,” which not only confirm the genre but also tell me something about the narrative style of this book. It’s going to be practical and usable, with clear takeaways that I can apply to my own situation.

Exactly what I need and want right now!

The Big Idea: “Rather than shaming our kids for their shortcomings, making them feel unseen and alone, we could help them access their internal goodness, improving their behavior along the way.”

The answer to this question is a little less obvious—we have to go searching for it. I know it should have something to do with the title, Good Inside. So I carefully re-read the Introduction, the most likely place for the Big Idea to be stated explicitly for me to find.

Often, it can be found just after the hook. In this case, though, Dr. Becky uses the hook to dive into a statement about what the reader wants (“All parents want to do better”)—the very first part of her transformation tale, which we’ll talk about next week. 

I keep reading, knowing that the next most likely place for the Big Idea to be is at the end of the Introduction—but I don’t want to miss it, in case it happens to be buried further up. Dr. Becky lays out the frustrations she experienced as a clinical psychologist working with parents, which tells us about her expertise and credibility, as well as the core problems this book will address. Then she guides us through an overview of the book’s chapters, her response to those problems.

The Introduction ends with a hint at what the Big Idea might be: “We all want to see our children as good kids, see ourselves as good parents, and work toward a more peaceful home. And every one of those things is possible. We don’t have to choose. We can have it all.”

It’s not as clear as I’d really like it to be, though, and I also see that it’s an amazing transition, moving us along to Chapter 1. So now I expect that somewhere in Chapter 1 is where I’ll find the Big Idea (thesis/argument) of this book.

It’s there at the end of the first section of Chapter 1: “Rather than shaming our kids for their shortcomings, making them feel unseen and alone, we could help them access their internal goodness, improving their behavior along the way.”

The argument is more fully elaborated on in this section, and it’s actually a variation of Jeff Goins’s formula, “Every [person in my audience] thinks X, but the truth is Y.” 

So I can rephrase her Big Idea more fully as, “Most parents think their kids are acting out because they are inherently flawed/bad—and their parenting is therefore focused on correcting behaviors without addressing the underlying problems—but the truth is that if we believe that our kids (and we) are genuinely good inside, then we will change our parenting approach to bring out the best in our kids.” 

You could also rephrase it more simply using the formula Liz and I came up with: “Change X, change Y”: “Change the way you think about your children and parent them, change their behavior.”

We’ll unpack this Big Idea more thoroughly next week when we get to Dr. Becky’s desired transformation for parents!

As of yet, we haven’t done much “real” mapping—we’ve just laid the foundation for the work to come in the next couple weeks:

• Part II: The Transformation - coming on Monday!

• Part III: The Book Structure - coming next Wednesday

• Part IV: The Chapter Structure - coming next Friday

But with the answers to these three questions in hand, we’re well on the road to understanding what Dr. Becky wants us to understand. And, as a writer, I’ve got some excellent examples of how to convey this information, especially my own Big Idea, to my readers.

---

Want to Learn More About Book Mapping?

If you are interested in the book mapping process and want to learn how to apply it to your own nonfiction book idea, my partner-in-books Liz Morrow and I are excited to announce the February cohort of the Hungry Authors Map Your Book experience!

In four 90-minute teaching sessions and two live Q&As, we’ll teach you our book mapping process from A to Z - or, er, from current state to transformation, that is! This is the process we use for ourselves and our clients. We’ve also written over a dozen books between us, so we know that it works.

In the online cohort, you’ll receive:

• Access to this intimate learning experience (space is limited to 15 people!) so you can learn and grow with other writers

• Video lessons and an in-depth custom cohort workbook to walk you through the process

• Access to an online library of sample book maps across nonfiction genres and topics (memoir, prescriptive, devotional, business, education, etc.)

• Two Q&A sessions where you can pick our brains all you want!

We taught this course for the first time last summer, and we were BLOWN AWAY by the positive feedback we got about it. We’ve been working hard for the last SIX MONTHS to make it even better for you in 2024.

Here’s what past participants had to say about it:

“I was 17K words into writing my first book when I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I stumbled upon the opportunity to beta test the Hungry Authors Book Mapping Course and I am so glad I did. The course takes away the mystery of how books progress from the blank page to finished manuscript. Thank you, Ariel and Liz!” - Pam Brown

“If you are contemplating joining this course, DO IT! You will thank yourself later for making an investment with such exponential payoffs. I came in with a couple of fuzzy book ideas I was struggling to articulate and choose between, and I walked away with my whole book mapped out from beginning to end and even a couple of chapters outlined. I am clear, energized, and ready to get writing!” - Claire Williams

“I made more progress on my book structure in four weeks than I’ve made in a few years by myself. Ariel and Liz are so insightful about seeing structure, and their feedback is priceless. I loved this course.” - Beth Chardack

“With the book mapping course our teachers provided and explained a great tool to find out if your idea works, if you can bring it into realisation and to an end, and finally if you have the structure you have the template you just need to follow to write your book. Thank you, Ariel and Liz, so much!” - Gianna Kay

“Liz and Ariel know how to write, they know how to teach, and they know the publishing business. They don't make you feel like they are keeping industry secrets and they don't act like you are their competition - quite the opposite! They are generous with their knowledge while they support and encourage you to write the book you are meant to write.” - Christina Sachtleben

“After finishing this course, I know I will finish my book because I have a map to follow from the intro, through each chapter, to the conclusion. The process has helped me clarify my Big Idea and I can see where it will keep me on track offering my reader solid, transforming information. I purchased supplies, set up a table in my study, and have allotted a month to the process.” - Susan Cort Johnson

We know the reality is that most aspiring writers don’t finish their books, and it’s because they’re trying to both plan on the fly and do the actual writing. We believe, and we’ve seen with our clients, that you can beat the odds when you create a comprehensive book map so you can start writing with confidence.

Let us show you how.

The cost of this experience is $499, but subscribers to Notes From the Editor can get 25% off by using this direct registration link.

---

On the Hungry Authors Pod

This week, I chatted with Dr. Camden Morgante about how mapping out her book helped her refine her proposal, write the manuscript, and built her confidence along the way! We also talked about her forthcoming book, Recovering from Purity Culture, which is coming from Baker Books in October this year.

---

Tips & Tidbits

The Four Kinds of Writers Who Get Book Deals

Literary agent Lucinda Halpern (author of Get Signed) is offering a free webinar next Tuesday to help you figure out what kind of writer you are and what your best options are for getting a book deal! 

A Brilliant Prompt for Getting Unstuck

Author coach Jen Louden is full of amazing advice—including this simple prompt that can work wonders for figuring out your transformation and getting you unstuck!

What It’s Like to Ghostwrite a Cookbook

I am not a big cookbook reader (I don’t particularly like cooking), but I found this episode about ghostwriting cookbooks fascinating! I love learning about little-known areas of the publishing world. This short episode is the perfect little amuse-bouche if you’re curious about ghostwriting.

Hook Them With a Strong Lede

Kirsten Powers coming in strong again with another great article about how to hook readers with a strong lede (first sentence). This is a must-read for newsletter writers—and her tips work for book writers, too!

---

What’s Bringing Me Joy

Besides practicing on my roller skates and preparing for the Map Your Book cohort starting next Tuesday, I’m feeling renewed energy around some of the long-term client projects I’ve been working on (books I’m ghosting). After many months of working on the same thing and pushing so hard last year, my excitement for these topics was flagging. But somewhere in the last week, I made some really good headway. I got unstuck on one particularly annoying chapter (by taking a few steps backwards and mapping it out again from scratch), and that boosted my confidence around both books. 

Sometimes, you need a bit of a restart, to come back to a clean slate, in order to see things clearly again. 

Happy weekend—I’ll be back in your inboxes Monday morning with Part 2 of this quick little series!

Ariel