The Writer's Roadmap for Students

Information overload.

It’s a disease, and most writers, once they’ve done their research, suffer from it.

How do you sort through all the facts, examples and ideas? How do you decide what point you need to make? How do you choose what stays, what goes, and in what order?
 
The process begins by asking questions.
Look at the information below, and I’ll show you exactly what I mean:

It is April 1865. On the night of April 14th, President Lincoln and his wife went to Ford’s Theatre to attend a showing of Our American Cousin.

Near 10 p.m., a shot rang out from the President’s box.
A man jumped from the balcony to the stage, caught his spur in a flag draped near the box, jumped up, waved a dagger, and shouted “Sic Semper Tyrannus!”

He then fled the theatre through a back door and escaped on horseback.

Mrs. Lincoln’s screams alerted the crowd that the President had been shot through the head. He was removed to a house across the street where his Cabinet gathered.

Mr. Lincoln died early the next morning, at 7:22 a.m.

Investigators discovered a hat known to belong to the actor John Wilkes Booth in the President’s box. Further, the spur on the stage was identified as Booth’s. A note in Booth’s trunk also indicated he was the assassin.

Booth had previously worked in the theatre and knew the way to make a quick exit.

Booth fled to Maryland. He hid in the boardinghouse of Mary Surratt, got his leg set by Dr. Samuel Mudd, and then fled to Virginia.

He was pursued by the cavalry, who tracked him down to a barn in Bowling Green, Virginia on April 26, 1865.

The cavalry set the bar on fire, then shot Booth in the neck. He was dragged from the burning barn and died on the porch of the nearby farmhouse.

How to begin:

The first step is to ask yourself three questions.

1. Who is my audience?
2. What do they want to know?
3. What is my bottom line point?

Who is my audience? This question focuses your attention on who’s reading, and what they already know. In this case, imagine you were writing this story for the public back in 1865, the day after Booth’s death.

What do they want to know? First of all, what do they already know? They clearly know, by April 27, 1865, that President Lincoln has been assassinated. What they don’t know is what happened to his assassin. Therefore, the answer here is: My audience wants to know what happened to the man who shot the president. Has he been captured?

What is my bottom line point?  The bottom line is the ultimate point of a whole piece of writing. Many details, examples and facts will help you build that bottom line, but the answer you’re looking for here is – what do I want my reader to walk away with when he or she has read what I’ve written? Since the reader already knows Lincoln is dead, and wants to know what happened to his assassin, your bottom line has to be that the cavalry shot him.

Once you know where you’re going – to the scene of a cavalryman shooting Booth in the barn – you also know where to begin. You know that because, as in Jeopardy®, when you’ve got the answer, the question comes naturally.

So how do you use this to begin writing?

Simple. Make the reader ask the question for which you’ve already got the answer. Doing that is the next crucial step in organizing any piece of writing.

Make a statement that prompts the reader to ask the right question, the question for which you know the answer. For example, in this case, you want the reader asking: What happened to the assassin? Did they catch him?

What will prompt that question? The right information. It’s right there in the notes – the fact that the assassin escaped. The escape immediately creates tension in the reader. We’ve got a problem on our hands. Booth shot the president, and ran. The obvious question is – well, have they caught him yet? And if so, how?

So setting up a PROBLEM for the reader is the next crucial step in any good piece of writing. Set up a PROBLEM that prompts the reader to ask the question that will lead to your RESOLUTION. And that is: Yes, dear reader, the assassin did get caught, and here’s how . . .

With a compelling PROBLEM and RESOLUTION, with your eye on the reader and what he or she wants to know, you’re almost done structuring your draft. Your next step is to organize the other relevant information so that it takes your reader along the straightest path from that PROBLEM to that RESOLUTION.

To learn how to do that, read my upcoming books in The Writer’s Roadmap Series. There you’ll learn:

How to make the reader ask a question so he or she will want to read looking for your answer.
How to decide if, where, and how to use each piece of information you have.
How to organize your facts to yield a message of maximum power, no matter how complex your subject.
And much, much more.