Map a Book With Me! Part III: Table of Contents
Behind-the-Scenes of Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy
When our six-year-old first joined us, we had no idea what to believe from her. So many of the things she told us sounded true but turned out not to be.
“I need to bring more crayons to school,” she told me. After day 3 of her packing a sandwich baggie full of crayons to take to school, I started to catch on.
“I don’t think you need to bring this many crayons to school, kiddo,” I told her.
“No, I do!” she insisted.
At parent-teacher conferences, I asked her teacher if she needed more crayons. Her teacher looked at me, puzzled.
“No, I have tons of crayons here for them!” She showed me a drawer full of art supplies. “But [foster daughter] doesn’t like to use the class set. She likes to have her own.”
Ah.
There were other things, too. After buying her a new lunch box and stocking our fridge and pantry with lunch foods, we learn she actually does receive lunch at school. And upon our first time in the hot tub with her, we learn she actually cannot swim.
Before reading Good Inside, my husband and I didn’t know how to handle this. We had conversations with her about telling the truth, and questioned nearly everything she said. Is she a pathological liar?? Is it a defense mechanism? How do we make her feel safe so she can tell us the truth?
But one of the most empowering aspects of the book has been helping us understand the mind of a child a little bit better. In most cases, she’s not willfully lying to us; she’s engaging in magical thinking. She’s trying to manifest a reality for herself where the thing she wants to be true is true. (And who can blame her?!)
We’ve started to be able to tell when this is happening and can better provide her with the language to say what she means.
To her declaration, “We’re going to McDonald’s!”
I can now respond with, “Oh, you wish we were going to McDonald’s?”
“Yeah…”
“What do you like about McDonald’s?”
I now see those disguised wishes as opportunities to learn more about her inner world and get to know her personality.
It works even in more serious instances, like: “Did you take your sister’s toy away from her?”
“No…”
“Do you wish you hadn’t taken her toy away from her?”
“Yeah.”
“OK. What can you do next?”
Conversations like this now happen multiple times a day. I don’t think she’s lied to us about a single thing lately. Probably, she never did. We’re just getting better at interpreting her and understanding what’s really going on. She’s ashamed. She’s hopeful. She’s hungry. She misses us.
Moreover, rethinking how we respond to her statements has helped us shift what we believe about her. This kid really is good inside.
I’m in the process of mapping out Dr. Becky Kennedy’s outstanding book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, so that I can better understand and remember all of the incredible content within this book. So that I can be better and do better as a parent.
Last Friday, we found the audience, genre, and Big Idea, which provide the context for the mapping we are about to begin (Part I). In Part II, we discussed the transformation tale.
And today, we’re looking at how Dr. Becky is crafting a parenting journey through her book, as revealed in the Table of Contents.
Step #3: Table of Contents
Last time, we brainstormed all of the pieces of Dr. Becky’s Transformation Tale, imagining what she might have said before the book was actually written. It looks something like this:
The middle section, what we call the in-between, is going to be the bulk of the book. So once we’ve brainstormed all of the things we know we want to cover, we can start to organize it into an overall Table of Contents.
Again, mapping out someone else’s book is a bit of an exercise in imagination—but that’s the power. Trying to imagine what choices the author had to make in order to arrive at the end-result Table of Contents helps us understand what choices we ourselves will have to make.
So here’s how I imagine Dr. Becky’s book map (if she had one) might have started.
(Note, for these images I’m using an online mind mapping tool called MindMeister, which is my favorite for working on Zoom with clients!)
Personally, I like to list out chapters horizontally because I feel like I can get a better sense for the entire scope of the book.
I mentioned last week that I find in conversations with clients, the practical, more concrete stuff often comes up first because it’s the easiest. We have to dig a bit to get at the more abstract ideas and concepts that the author wants to talk about. So you can see here that I’ve got Dr. Becky’s more practical chapters that address specific behaviors listed first.
But often what feels easiest to us, the authors, isn’t what’s going to make the most sense to the reader. Underpinning all of the practical chapters are some foundational ideas that are being applied to the behaviors.
So really, the more abstract chapters revealing Dr. Becky’s principles need to come first so that the reader can learn them before they are applied to specific behaviors.
Notice a couple things about this version:
As we start to organize and rearrange ideas, we think of more ideas that need to be added.
We don’t even worry about labeling these as “Chapters” yet because they might change. What we think is a chapter might in fact end up as a section within another chapter.
Once we’ve got all of the ideas/topics listed out, we might also realize that… there are a lot of them. It would probably be hard for a reader to remember or organize all of this information in their brains, so we need to help them.
Enter parts.
If we group all of those more abstract principles together into one Part of the book, they might be easier for the reader to remember. Perhaps they could be called, “Dr. Becky’s Parenting Principles.”
That means the rest of the more behavior-focused chapters belong together in a Part 2 as well.
So now we have a book with two parts that helps the reader understand the foundations and apply them to specific behaviors.
The chapters in each part are not evenly distributed, but that’s ok, because it makes sense that there would be fewer foundational principles to hold onto than behaviors to address.
Now that we’ve got the overall structure figured out, we might start refining chapter titles to ensure parallelism, consistency, and intrigue. (These don’t need to be solidified right now; I’ve just noticed that it becomes easier to think of good chapter titles when you see all of the pieces laid out like this!)
And, of course, we’ll keep adding ideas as they come.
That’s how we might arrive at the final Table of Contents for the book—listed vertically in the book itself, of course.
The next step will be charting out a course for each and every chapter—quite a feat, especially when there are this many chapters! In Part IV on Friday, I’ll walk you through the process for just one of these chapters.
Tips & Tidbits
Get Help Pitching
We interviewed Lucinda Halpern on the Hungry Authors podcast and had a great conversation about pitching agents! If you’re in the trenches of pitching, this is the episode you need to hear—and Lucinda’s new book, Get Signed, is what you need to read!
Map Your Book in May!
Registration for the February cohort of Map Your Book is closed, but you can already sign up for our next cohort, happening in May! Learn more and register here.
What’s Bringing Me Joy
I’m excited and nervous (nervous-cited, as someone in our MYB cohort said) for our first time hiring a babysitter tomorrow night. I hope the 6yo will behave ok. I hope the 1yo will go to sleep easily. But whatever happens, they will survive, the babysitter will be fine, and we will get a much-needed break to enjoy dinner with some friends.
I’ll be back in your inboxes Friday morning!
Cheers,
Ariel