Book Planning with WorkFlowy: Self Publishing Case Study
September 2, 2011 
11 Comments
Last time, I talked about ebook design, focusing mainly on covers. Today, I want to talk about content – specifically, planning the content of my ebook. Many writers swear by mind-mapping as a brainstorming and planning tool. That’s never worked that well for me (which probably says something about the way my mind works). Ever since I started writing professionally, as a magazine writer and editor, I’ve used lists. It’s more or less the same process, but organized differently. And lucky for me, there’s a web tool that’s perfect for this planning process – WorkFlowy.
Introducing Workflowy as a Writing Planning Tool
I’ve been using WorkFlowy for about a year as a to-do list manager with a difference. One of the things I like about it is its simplicity. When you login, you get an almost empty page, with a plus sign prompting you to create a new item. I set up items for Projects, Tasks, Goals and random things. The beauty of Workflowy is that you can create sub-items and sub-sub-items, making it an excellent planning tool.
Let me give an example from my work as a professional blogger. I set up a blogging task, created sub-items for each of my clients, and sub-sub-items for the posts and post ideas I was working on for them. For each post idea, I then created five further sub-items (or sub-sub-sub items, if you’re keeping track) for the points I wanted to cover. When I was ready to write, I used this list as a reference. This process works well, so I began to wonder if I couldn’t use it for a bigger project. You’re in the front row seat for this experiment.
Getting Started With Workflowy
To get started, I input the title of my ebook as a main item, and created sub-items for each of the chapter headings. Workflowy autosaves as you go, which is handy. This gave me an overview of my book, which was useful. I could immediately see that key information was missing. As I mentioned before, there is no copyright page, so I added that to the list, as well as an entry for the cover page, as a reminder to do it. As well as adding items and sub-items, you can also add notes to each entry. For example, under ‘about the author’, I’ve added a note to update the sites that are linked there, as one of those is now defunct. In the entry for another chapter, I’ve added a note to update the section with a new traffic building technique.
Extending The Ebook Plan With Workflowy
Then I started going through the book in more detail, making notes on planned changes as I went. Since the book is about five years old, it’s not surprising that I’ve made notes on almost every section about planned changes. In fact, it will almost be a whole new book by the time I’ve done, because of all the changes in the way search engines operate, improvements in blogging technology and the rise of social media. And if I happen to come across useful resources, I can also add links to the entries. At the end of the original list of eight chapters, I’ve added two more prompts to remind me to cover a couple of these issues. Once I have fleshed these out, I’ll use Workflowy’s drag and drop function to put them in the right place.
Now that I’ve got the plan fleshed out, I’ve got to decide how to write the book. I’ll talk more about that next week.
Your Turn:
What do you use for outlining your books?
Check out the rest of the series:
- Lessons From My First Attempt at Self-Publishing
- Thinking About Ebook Design: Self Publishing Case Study
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It’s Cool.I guess it’s time for me to try this tool.
Bhavesh Sondagar recently posted..Ehowportal is now Dofollow Commentluv Enabled Blog
I’ve heard that workflowy is very useful in organizing your plans.I guess it’s time for me to try this tool.
I reviewed Workflowy and from efficiency standpoint of view it’s not doing that great as opposed to competitive applications.
There are 7 concepts on how to make Workflowy better:
http://alphaefficiency.com/workflowy-review/
Bojan Efficiency recently posted..Workflowy, example of bad productivity app and 7 features that would make it awesome
Twitter: shurleyhall
September 9, 2011 at 2:50 PM
Thanks, will check out your review.
We are a new startup that is all about propagating stories instead of letting it die inside some one’s head or on a desk! May be our project management tools can help you all with workflow management etc. Its absolutely free!
Collaborate, Create, Publish
Twitter: shurleyhall
September 6, 2011 at 11:13 AM
Happy to check it out, Authorator.
This is very cool, Sharon! I will click on over there in a moment and sign up to check it out. I like the reorganization part, as a project always changes along the way, often half way through and then you either have to redo it, or make huge changes. Thanks for sharing.
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Twitter: shurleyhall
September 6, 2011 at 11:12 AM
That is one of the best features, Ana. I’ve used Workflowy for other projects, too including planning a major trip (I’m at the start of the process). One of the best tools I’ve discovered in the past year.
I agree that Word is lacking. I’ve played with Dia and envision my next project as some sort of super org chart.
Thanks for the link to the review. I’m adding it to Evernote.
Cheers,
Mitch
Mitchell Allen recently posted..The Ho-hum Blog Reset of 2011
Twitter: shurleyhall
September 4, 2011 at 7:21 PM
Mitch, like you, I’ve used all kinds of planning tools, including Word, which isn’t as useful for this purpose as you might think. I found Workflowy has really helped to address the gaps and the drag and drop functionality makes it easy to organize and reorganize at will. (By the way, one of the best books I’ve read on structure and pace, though geared towards screenplays, is Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat. See my review on Crafting Fiction).
Sharon, believe it or not, my book writing organization is a mess. Here are two examples. The first is an abandoned niche (membership sites) and the second is my first draft of a long short story.
The niche ebook was outlined in Microsoft Word. While that was nice, similar to your sub-items, I got caught up in the styling, headers, footers and table of contents. I managed to get more than half of it done before I decided that I had nothing compelling to offer as a follow up.
The story was outlined in Excel! It’s science-fiction, so I was tossing ideas into worksheets (this was before I started using Evernote.) Things like timelines and continuity benefited from this approach but it is unwieldy, to say the least.
My next story is going to be flowcharted. I have so much fun playing with the concepts and it serves to immerse me into the project. I recently downloaded Dia, an open-source program that has been compare to Microsoft’s Visio. In addition, I’m studying story structure from Larry Brook’s books, so I think a flowchart will be very helpful.
Cheers,
Mitch
Mitchell Allen recently posted..The Ho-hum Blog Reset of 2011