Writing Book 7 · Lesson 33

Explanatory — Plan the road map

The second plan carries forward one named lesson from the first.

What it is

A road map is what you write before you write. It fixes three things: what you are explaining, what your reader already knows, and the order your points will come in. Writers who skip it discover halfway through that point three should have been point one — and by then it is expensive to fix. Planning is not the part before the work. It is the cheapest part of the work.

Watch it built

1
Write what you are explaining as one sentence. If you cannot, your topic is still too big.
How a seed becomes a plant.
2
List the points a reader needs, in any order. Do not write sentences yet.
water · warmth · the root first · then the shoot · light
3
Number them in the order a reader needs them, not the order you thought of them.
1 water and warmth   2 the root   3 the shoot   4 light
Remember
One sentence for the topic. Then the points. Then the order.
Ask yourself: “What did I fix last time, and have I planned around it?”

Remember

Plan the second piece knowing what the first one taught you.

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