Book Writing Help Step 4:
Write a Summary Sentence

Award-winning writer Kathy Widenhouse has helped hundreds of nonprofits and writers produce successful content and has gained 600K+ views for her writing tutorials. She is the author of 9 books. See more of Kathy’s content here.

Updated 10.1.24

Good news! In just a few minutes, you can be finished with book writing help step 4 and be ready to move on to the next step in writing your book. 

A book is just a series of small bits of writing, strung together. To write a book, you simply break down the whole into smaller parts. Then you work to complete each small part, one at a time.

In step 1, you zeroed in on the problem your book will solve and how your book will solve it. Then in step 2 you went on to identify who will read your book. You used step 3 to discover what specific niche your book will fill in the marketplace.

Now you are ready to string those those elements together.

Book Writing Help Step 4: Write a Summary Sentence

Your book summary sentence puts together your target audience's main problem, how your book will solve it, and what special niche your book fills.

(You can also use a summary sentence to help you expedite any kind of writing project.)

Your summary sentence is a key element in writing your book. You’ll use your summary sentence to describe your book to editors (if you plan to sell the manuscript to a publishing house), in your promotional material (if you plan to self-publish and self-promote) and to friends (who are wondering why you cannot spend time with them while you’re writing your book.) 

In addition, your summary sentence also makes the writing process much easier. It allows you to create a book outline, as you’ll see in Step #6. Each chapter will support your summary sentence. And your summary sentence allows you to create a writing plan (which you’ll do in Step #7)  to keep you on track. 

In other words, your summary sentence saves time. There is a lot of legwork in steps 1 through 3. But in the long run, that investment pays off. Once you write out your book’s summary sentence, you’ll shave off dozens of hours in writing your book.

If you’ve done a good job in Steps 1 through 3, then writing your summary sentence will be easy. Just fill in the blanks! If you can’t write your summary sentence by filling in the blanks, then repeat the first three steps until you can.

Use the content you’ve compiled from your previous steps to write your summary sentence. 

Take A Step

Fill in the blanks:

My book will be the only one on the market that _____________________________

(Step #3: your unique niche or approach) 

for __________________________ readers

(Step #2: target audience) 

who want to know more about ___________________

(Step #1: problem)

to help them _____________________. 

(Step #1: solution)

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