Guest Post (and free e-book): Milos Mitic

Today I have a young author named Milos Mitic, who has overcome significant obstacles in reaching his goal of having a stable, good relationship, and writing a book. His self-help book is How to Start a Relationship: the Ultimate Adviser for Finding your True Love. (It is currently free on Amazon for download to your Kindle and will remain so until the 17th)

Today I have a guest post from Milos, about how to write a book, so without further ado: here he is!

Milos Mitic: How to write a book

Writing a book can be complicated. You have an idea, a lot of thoughts flying around and no system. But with very little preparation, writing a book can be a real pleasure. And it can be done very fast.

First thing is to put your idea on paper. Grab a sheet of paper (or use a computer program if you like) and put your idea in the centre. Then start to develop a mind map. Each branch going from the center represents one idea. Sub-branches are your subchapters, ideas, story flow, whatever you want. Aim is to put all ideas on paper.

Don’t spend more than 20 minutes on that. Don’t go in details, just cover the basics. In the end you’ll have a nice mind map of your complete story.

Now when you have all ideas on paper, it’s time to start writing.

Take a few hours of each day just for writing. You want to do that at the same time, just as if you went to work. That helps you to be organized.

Think of using a professional typing program like Scrivener. MS Word is good for typing this text, but when you have a book with bunch of chapters and subchapters it can be a nightmare to navigate through all that.

Since I’ve wrote a “how to” book, I’ll explain the framework I was working in. This
framework is very good for that kind of book and with little adjustments it can be applied to any kind of writing (blogging, for example).

We’re starting to write…

First thing is a promise, what your reader is going to get when he or she applies your advices. Start with the end, with conclusion. If your book is, for example, about how to enhance a golf swing, you can describe that actual moment when your reader performs a perfect swing, his feelings, pride, happiness and admiration of other people.

After that you can list the results he’ll achieve – he will stand correctly, be less tiered and have a better swing, for example.

Next to list are the problems your reader will encounter. You only need to describe
problems, not to solve them. Just inform your reader about what to expect.

If you have any testimonials now is a good time to present them. That gives you a great credibility and positions you as an expert in a field.

Even if you are an expert in a field, you weren’t born with that talent. You were going through problems and struggles before you succeeded. Describing your struggle connects you with a reader. You want that “Aha!” moment, you want your reader to think, “That’s exactly what my current problem is!” Deeper the connection, deeper is the trust.

Of course, everybody loves to hear a good and uplifting story. Now it’s time to tell the story of your success. Describe how you did it, your feelings, what you achieved. Don’t brag.

Another thing that can position you as an expert is if you dispel myths around your topic. Describe myths and hint that you will dispel them. Don’t dispel them here but…

Here – your new solution. Here you will write about everything. Here you will describe
your solution and how to get to the goal.

Each of these items can be as long as it needs to be. They can be one sentence or ten
pages. For example, in my e-book, all up to “new solution” (promise, results, problems, struggle, success and myths) I have covered in one page. That’s how much space I needed. Then in “new solution” I have written the rest of the e-book.

I hope these tactics will help you to write your book.