The Killer Proposal

I've talked about the proposal before, but now it's becoming that time. The elements that I am compiling are 1) the "Grab" Sheet, 2) The Table of Contents (TOC), and 3) the Sample Chapter.

The Grab sheet is about 6-10 pages designed to sell the book to a publisher: Why should we pick this up? Who's the audience? What are you trying to do here? Who are you and why should you write this book? Why now? and other good questions. In addition, I talk about the competition. What else is out there and how is this different?

The TOC is a chapter-by-chapter treatment, kind of a narrative walk-through of the book. What is each chapter about and how does it serve a purpose? What is the point or argument in this chapter, and how does the chapter communicate that?

Finally, the sample chapter. I'm not even sure whether this is an actual chapter. I haven't written anything that qualifies yet. It's supposed to be a writing sample that is chock full of examples, like a trailer that gets you wanting to see the movie. In some cases, you've seen the whole movie by watching the trailer. For a movie, that's a bad trailer. In the case of the sample chapter, so I hear, that's a good thing, to a point. That is, you want your prospective publisher to get an full idea about your climax and punch line, but you still want her interested in the book.

Right now, I am writing all of these pieces at the same time. We'll see how it goes.