Every book worth
reading is against
something.
Answer one question at a time. Names for what your book is fighting appear as you go, sharpen as you dig, and the ones you star stay for good.
Three blanks, then we talk.
There are no wrong answers here. Rough is fine. The questions afterwards are where the real work happens.
The normal way
What gets them
Your enemy, named.
Say the one you starred out loud. If it makes you a little mad, you've found it.
A book without an enemy is just information.
Readers don't rally around a topic. They rally against something. The diet everybody's still on. The advice their boss keeps repeating. The thing quietly eating their business while they follow the rules.
Name that, and your book stops being one more title in a crowded category and starts being the one that finally said it.
The questions matter more
than the lists.
How it works
Fill in three blanks
Who you're writing to, what they're stuck on, and your take on fixing it. Rough is fine.
Answer one question at a time
Never two. Each answer reworks the board: weak names drop off, sharper ones arrive.
Star the ones that hit
A starred name is locked. It never gets dropped, reworded or tidied up. Everything else keeps moving.
The normal way,
and what gets them.
The normal way is the conventional wisdom you're fighting. What everyone in your world tells your reader to do, that quietly doesn't work.
What gets them is the consequence lurking behind it. What happens to your person if they never solve this, that they can't see coming yet.
You need both. One gives your book something to argue with. The other gives your reader a reason to keep turning pages.
I'm Chris Stanley. I've published 31 books and hit 21 bestseller lists.
Finding the enemy is the first thing I do with a client, before a single chapter gets outlined. This is that conversation, and now it's free.
Already know your enemy and want help building the book around it? See how I work with authors.