Book Building: The Sandwich Method

Ideas are flooding your head, grasping for your attention during every waking moment and demanding to be written. It’s good that you decided to START your book off on the right foot, but now it’s time to write and you’re stumped. This isn’t regular ole writers block either. This is the fundamental challenge of how to pull together all your great ideas from outline form into a cohesive story.

Well, make a sandwich! A book building sandwich! I suppose if you’re hungry, a real sandwich will help energize your creativity, but this special sandwich will help you organize and thrive as you begin pounding the keys or scribbling words to paper. Imagine that your novel is a tasty beef on weck, or pastrami on rye, or turkey club- whatever metaphor you’d like. When you make this delicious meal, it doesn’t just appear before you, there are ingredients that need to be layered and combined, just as in your novel.

The Top and Bottom Bread: This is the beginning and end of your story – One, it should be hearty enough to withstand the interior elements and Two, it is the first and last taste of your tale readers will receive, so make it great!

The Meat: Your characters solidify the story. Without them, you have nothing but crust. You can load up on the meat like in a dagwood and enjoy the harmonies of several players or keep it simple like fried bologna.

The Additional Flavors: Events, subplots and major twists are your add-ons that give the story body and depth. Notes of cheesy love, crisp corruption or tangy terror added into a plot are always enjoyable.

The Dressing: This pulls together the meat and flavorings of your narrative using a theme or concept that ties all the loose ends. After all, without the dressing, your story would fall apart!

The Secret Ingredient: Finally, put in something with a bit of kick, something unexpected for readers to really sink their teeth into.

There you go! One made-to-order, cleverly-constructed, perfectly-layered book building sandwich. A product that you, the creator, can be proud of serving to the public and something readers will devour and then beg for more!