The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook: Exercises for Developing and Revising Your Book Manuscript (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

**Writing an academic book is a daunting task. Where to start? This workbook.** So, you’ve written a dissertation. Congratulations! But how do you turn it into a book? Even if you know __what__ to do when revising your dissertation, do you know __how__ to do those things? This workbook by Katelyn E. Knox and Allison Van Deventer, creators of the successful online Dissertation-to-Book Boot Camp, offers a series of manageable, concrete steps with exercises to help you revise your academic manuscript into publishable book form. __The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook__ uses targeted exercises and prompts to take the guesswork out of writing a book. You’ll clarify your book’s core priorities, pinpoint your organizing principle, polish your narrative arc, evaluate your evidence, and much more. Using what this workbook calls “book questions and chapter answers,” you’ll figure out how to thread your book’s main ideas through its chapters. Then, you’ll assemble an argument, and finally, you’ll draft any remaining material and revise the manuscript. And most important, by the time you complete the workbook, you’ll have confidence that your book works as a book—that it’s a cohesive, focused manuscript that tells the story __you__ want to tell. Indispensible to anyone with an academic manuscript in progress, the prompts, examples, checklists, and activities will give you confidence about all aspects of your project—that it is structurally sound, coherent, free of the hallmarks of “dissertationese," and ready for submission to an academic publisher. "Even if you know what to do when revising your dissertation, do you know how to do those things? This workbook, based on the successful online Dissertation-to-Book Boot Camp, offers a series of manageable, concrete steps with exercises to help you revise your academic manuscript into publishable book form. The authors--a scholar and an academic developmental editor--show you how to distill and sharpen your core argument, discover an organizational schema that works, develop a compelling narrative arc, and identify what each chapter adds to the story. They also provide a method for drafting and revising new material. While the exercises are specifically designed for scholars in the humanities and qualitative social sciences revising their dissertations, they are useful to anyone with an academic manuscript in progress. The prompts, examples, checklists, and activities will give you confidence about all aspects of your project--that it is structurally sound, coherent, free of the hallmarks of "dissertationese," and ready for submission to an academic publisher"-- Provided by publisher Contents Introduction: The What, Why, and How of This Workbook Chapter 1: Considering Your Book on Its Own Terms Chapter 2: Reviewing Your Book’s Organizing Principle Chapter 3: Drafting Your First Book Question Chapter 4: Drafting Your Remaining Book Questions Chapter 5: Revising Your Book Questions Chapter 6: Assessing Your Chapters on Their Own Terms Chapter 7: Checking Your Chapters for Parallelism Chapter 8: Crafting Your Book’s Narrative Arc Chapter 9: Producing Your Chapter Answers Chapter 10: Revising Your Chapter Answers as a Group and Refining Your Book Questions Chapter 11: Reviewing Your Book’s Changes and Tying Up Loose Ends Chapter 12: Assembling Your Book Argument Chapter 13: Assembling Your Two-Page Book Narrative Interlude: Transitioning from “Working on” Your Book to “Working in” Your Book Chapter 14: Assembling a Chapter Collage Chapter 15: Reverse Outlining Your Chapter Collage Chapter 16: Citing with Confidence Final Words Acknowledgments Appendixes Notes Bibliography Index