how to write a good essay

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Arizona, Oklahoma, Arizona, Vermont, Missouri, Florida, GA, Wyoming, Oregon, DE, Minnesota, West Virginia, Tennessee, MS, Kansas, Austin, Albuquerque, TN, WA, Maryland, Kansas City, New Hampshire, NJ, Miami, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, Nevada, Massachusetts, California, AL, Nashville-Davidson, Seattle, Minneapolis, Hempstead, LA, District of Columbia, Fresno, Oakland, MO, Nebraska, Kentucky, IA, Hawaii, San Diego, ND, Cleveland, New Mexico, MN, Long Beach, KY, Colorado, Houston, second favorite is teaching your book to a friend right so imagine that someone whos a friend of yours you care about has the exact problem your ear book solves and theyre really interested in listening to anything you want to say what would you teach him right like where would you start will be the second thing would be the third thing what are the things you tell them to watch out for so like if you just start going through your book this those one of those two frames work for like 80 90 percent of figuring out what are the chapters going to be right whats the argument in the book gonna be the third one this is kind of a catch-all for everyone else is what do I want to say right because sometimes people and if youre one of these people its totally fine they dont they dont do well when they have to think in a structured way so they kind of just have to dump everything out which is why its called brainstorming all right I want to say this and I want to say this and I want to say that they dont problem just put it all down write it all out in the brainstorming section then you can start arranging right now the thing to remember for this is your only brainstorming chapters youre not brainstorming everything in your book okay so real quick let me answer this because we get this question a lot whats a book chapter a chapter can be a single cohesive idea a step in your process if you are teaching the process or a single argument or position in your five minutes ten lets take lets take five minutes here start working on table of contents all you really need to do is if you can put one or two chapters in youre good to go thats it one or two chapters into your table of contents just you know what it looks and feels like right and then you can come back and finish it later next were going to again if your structure is not done dont worry I just wanted you get a taste of it wanted to get used to it so when you come back to it you can you kind of know what youre doing right now lets talk about outlining the chapters this is the hardest part of the workshop okay but if you do this work right youre gonna its gonna make writing your book ten times easier now Im gonna give you a warning we do not teach this the the outline method you learned in school right you probably learned this in school you know a big point a small point one etc tiny point I what we dont use this right the reason why is because the school outline method is about showing your work you got to prove that you know something to your teacher so you get a grade I dont give a our outline method is about getting the best possible book out of you and getting it done schools not about results were about results that so we measure ourselves based on if you finish your book or not and if your book impacts people so we have three goals for an outline it clear its gonna help you clarify your book idea its gonna help you quickly organize your idea and its gonna provide writing triggers how to write a good essay sort of larger argument right all right now below so thats chapter brainstorming below brainstorming we have a parking lot this is part of brainstorming - this is where you put all your really good ideas that do not fit into this specific book remember how I told you have to make decisions and positioning and youre gonna have to leave things out right parking lots were you were you leaving because heres the thing I do this all the time whenever oh man I like I was just working on another book another book and it was like really good and then I got an idea for a better book and I never I spent like two hours outlining this other book Im in the editing phase of this book and Im outlining this other book Im like this is brilliant and then Im like oh god how did I fall into the same trap that I tell everyone else not to do its a super normal thing so youre any brilliant idea you get put in the parking lot so you know you dont lose it its still there if you want it and then go back to working on your your chapter Ill make sense all right lets take ten minutes right now I want you to brainstorm all the chapters in your in your book if you if you do that really quick and you want to work ahead you can ten minutes is not much time and Im doing this on purpose I only want ten minutes because then you cant get stuck in your head and most people if you if they have to do things fast they kind of get to the core but if you give them too much time they start spinning in circles so ten minutes max step to create a right the whole point of the outline once you get it done like okay you got your ideas clear youve organized them exactly how you want them in your book now the only point of the outline is when you sit down to write you know okay chapter two is about this topic I want to write about these four things in it and then you go make sense all right good so lets go over the outline structure so if you scroll down beneath the orange section you can see an example outline structure right and so Im gonna go through each each heres all the different points Im going to go through each one the first taught the first part of the chapter is the hook now hook can be anything they get someones attention so it could be a personal story and historical anecdotes a question to the reader at any attention-grabber right so from the book consulting economy I think the book starts off with or the first chapter starts off with Ill never forget the first time I learned the consulting was a job and it goes on to tell the story about how he was you know like at a company and then the consultant came in and people whispering about the consultant and all that sort of stuff and so its like its good if you care about consulting in corporations somewhat interesting story right now tomorrow when we do Im gonna give a whole section on book introductions and conclusions Im gonna really dive into hooks because there a lot theres a lot more there than justtable of contents from your chapters so if you look down part two in the orange it has like just a format its got ten chapters you dont have to use ten you can use less or more I just put ten because thats the our base numerical system is based hence I use that the table of contents is nothing more than the chapters in order with a thesis sentence explaining each right so this is about what it should look like when youre done chapter one politics and a sentence chapter two blind spots and a sentence exactly like that thats it very very simple very straightforward right now a thesis sentence is literally just a summary what the chapters about thats it so chapter one politics politics causes all sorts of problems and prevents focus on what matters and you need to deal with politics even though you dont want to okay I know what the chapters about chapter two just like people have blind spots related to areas they need to improve organizations have blind spots that hold back the performance okay I know what the chapters about thats it thats all it is lets take what Im going to take that but I just want you to understand exactly what that part is next part is thisis this is the same thesis is thats in your table of contents thats it but what the chapter is about put that there next is supporting content so this is basically all the points you want to make in your chapter all the arguments the facts the figures the data which is your process the relevant information that the reader needs the next section are stories examples these are the stories you want to tell or examples you want to use to teach a reader and obviously you want to make them specific and relevant now look we separate stories and content in the outline obviously youre gonna integrate them when you write the chapters like it would be a terrible chapter of like heres all the information heres three stories you dont want to write chapters like that it will all explain why in a second and then the next is a readers key takeaway this is the summary at the end of the chapter that lays out what the reader needs to take from the chapter so we give this question a lot whats the difference between a thesis and a key takeaway the thesis is the