When Should You Write Your Book’s Introduction?

Hello, hello and welcome to today’s episode of Academic Book Writing Simplified, where we are going to talk book introductions.

This is our second episode in my short series on book introductions. And today I’m going to answer this question: When should you write your book’s introduction?

This is a great question because it gets at how to organize your writing workflow. And selfishly, I love discussing workflows. And I would guess that if you listen to this podcast, you love thinking about workflows too.

What’s Behind the Question?

So in this question of “When should you write your book’s introduction?”, I think there’s a question behind the question, and it’s this:

How much do I need to know before I start writing the body of my book?

Now, in my opinion, you don’t actually need to know that much to start writing. You can and will figure it out as you go along. Writing without any direction, however, can be very unsatisfying — because you’re going to feel confused.

And I think that’s where the “When should you write your book’s introduction?” question comes from. What you’re really asking, I think, is:

• “Should I have everything figured out and then write my introduction?”
  
• “Should I know everything before I start writing?”
  

And the answer to both of those questions is no.

No, you should not know everything before you start writing.

And no, you should not have everything figured out in order to write your book’s introduction.

But — there is a little bit you should have figured out. And I’m going to explain to you what I think that is.

Start With a Placeholder Introduction

So here’s what I suggest, because it’s what I teach in my coaching programs, and I’ve seen a lot of people go through this process and get really good results:

Start with a version of an introduction — a rough draft that hits some important notes. You can call it a placeholder introduction.

Now, when I coach, the first step that I teach in this process is writing a book overview.

A book overview is a high-level, kind of like 1,000-foot description of your project. It’s just one paragraph, and it’s a cross between an article abstract and a dissertation proposal.

What Goes in a Book Overview?

This is what goes in it:

• Your book’s argument
  
• Your approach
  
• Your methodology
  
• Your contribution to the literature
  
• And why it matters
  

Now, when I coach, I teach book overview, framework, and then outlines. But I’m going to skip over that second step in the process because it’s not really important for our purposes today.

The Importance of Outlining

To answer the question of “When should you write your introduction?”, let’s fast forward to the third step in the process, which is outlining, because I think this is what helps answer the “when to start” question.

If you’re a committed outliner — if you love outlining, if you write outlines that have a lot of detail — then that’s probably enough to start writing. Because you will have information about:

• your argument,
  
• the organization of the book,
  
• your contribution,
  
• and why it’s important.
  

Most of that will be contained in the outline, so you can write straight from your outline.

For some people, outlines are like a first draft because they include so much information in them.

However — I will bet that if you are big on outlining and you value organization, you’re going to want to start with the introduction after you write that outline. Just a guess based on my experience of working with book authors.

Key Takeaways

So to conclude, here are some key takeaways:

1. You don’t need to know everything to start your introduction.

I think this is where people get in trouble. They believe that they should have everything figured out and then they can write their introduction.

And you might have heard advice like, “Write the whole book and then go back and write the introduction,” right?

But in order to write the whole book, you need to have some direction.

A Driving Metaphor

I always like to use the metaphor of driving somewhere.

You can drive from New Jersey, say, to California. You may not know exactly what’s going to happen on that ride — you’re going to hit some detours, you might decide to stop and sightsee, right?

Things are going to happen — but you’re going to have a map, right? You’re going to have some sort of GPS. You’re going to have some idea of which highways to take, what time you want to be driving.

You’re going to have some information.

So I think that when you’re starting a long project like a book — which is very unwieldy and complex — you want some structure to start with. You don’t want to just dive headfirst into one of your body chapters and tell yourself, “Well, I’ll figure it out along the way.”

The Risk of No Plan

That normally will require a lot of revision, especially in terms of thinking through the through line. Right?

If you have no idea what the through line is going to be before you start writing — and while all manuscripts require revision (it’s not to say that if you write an introduction you are magically not going to have to revise — that’s not what I mean) — what I mean is:

When you write your chapters in a kind of… this might be too strong of a word, but haphazard way, with no plan, it’s going to be difficult to retroactively figure out how they fit together.

And that’s why an introduction or an outline is so important.

Use What You Know — Even If It’s Not Perfect

So that second conclusion here is that you should have something — whether it’s an overview, whether it’s a placeholder introduction, whether it’s an outline — to orient you as you start writing.

And those don’t need to be perfect.

I know with our academic brains we’re like, “Well, why would I write it if I don’t know everything?”

Because you know something. And something, in this case, is enough.

Just having an understanding of, say, the contours of the book — what you want the reader to walk away knowing — what you think your theoretical lens is going to be — having that information and putting it down on paper can really help you.

So that when you get midway through the book and you stop and you think to yourself, “What is this book about again?” (because it happens), you have something to go back to to orient you.

To orient you to the writing, to the structure, and to the plan.

Think of It As a Preliminary Plan

So you can think of that version of an introduction — whatever it is — as your preliminary writing plan.

Preliminary. Subject to revision. That’s okay.

Sometimes I think people believe that, “Well, if I write the introduction and I change my mind, then that was a waste of time.”

And that’s not true.

Because if you write the introduction and you change your mind — you probably wouldn’t have even gotten to the point where you knew you wanted to change your mind unless you had that introduction to get you started.

Final Metaphor: Trying a New Recipe

Okay. It’s like — again, you know I love my metaphors — it’s like if you’re trying a new recipe and you’re like, “Oh, I don’t know if I’m gonna like it.”

It’s like, the only way you truly know if you like it is by making it and eating it. And you’re like, “Okay, there are a lot of things I liked about it, but I need to change these two things. It was too spicy. I’m gonna cut back on the jalapeño next time.”