Longer stories tend to include more characters than shorter stories, creating more complexity, but more opportunities as well.

For a novel there’s a minimum number of characters you’re likely to need. These are:

• your protagonist
• your antagonist
• what’s known as an ‘influence’ or ‘relationship’ or ‘insight’ character. This is the person who ‘helps’ your protagonist see some truth about themselves and opens their way to the story’s resolution.

In a novel, other than your core three characters, you could expect at least a few more ancillary characters, giving you a well of potential conflicts and story-lines. This potential is derived from things like:

• personalities
• cultures
• character histories
• secrets
• needs
• wants
• desires, etc.

When you’re creating a support cast it helps to think in terms of conflict – what drives characters and what that means to each other and the protagonist.

People holding hands and singing hymns don’t generally make for riveting reading until you mix in some drama, and drama is derived from conflict. If a character doesn’t bring conflict to the story they’re not paying their way, so consider getting rid of them.

For example, in the hand-holding hymn-singing scenario I just mentioned, everything is perfect… zzzz… until one of the singers keels over, foaming at the mouth from an exotic poison.

Interested now?

• Who did it?
• Why?
• (and more importantly) Who’s next?

Consider the same concept in terms of our own cast of characters. Rose:

• wakes up to discover she’s now a dryad, but thinks that’s just grand and so does everyone she tells (lots of hugs and kisses)
• wonders off into the woods to be one with the trees
• has the full support of everyone she knows.
• The end… Riveting, right? Not.

Alternatively. Rose:

• must come to terms with what she’s become (internal conflict)
• needs to save herself and her daughter from the bad guy who wants to use and destroy her (interpersonal conflict)
• has to save the dryad world (including herself) and possibly the extended magical world from enslavement and annihilation (external conflict and story threat)

Far more dramatic. To do all that though, she might need help.

Rose Thorn’s possible relationships (at the beginning of the story) could include:

• Family (parents, siblings, daughter)
• Friends (social)
• Husband, ex-husband
• Lover, ex-lovers
• Work/business associates
• Police (perhaps one specific officer investigating her case who just won’t let it go?)
• A medical person who attended to her when she ‘returned’
• The dryad who made her what she’s becoming
• Christian Godson himself? (former lover and apparent friend? betrayer?)
• The people Christian hates. Let’s call them the druids – a very secretive and powerful organisation of long-lived people.

It’s a simple question of asking who from the above list would bring the most conflict to the story on all kinds of levels.

• How are her friends going to react to her change?
• Who’s going to support her and who’s going to reject her?
• Who’s going to turn on or betray her?
• Who thinks they can take advantage of Rose’s situation?
• Who already knows about the situation (druids? Christian?)?
• Is the police officer or medic interested enough to pursue the issue – do they cause complications for Rose or her daughter Hope? Etc.

Christian Godson’s possible relationships:

• The dryad who ‘made’ Rose
• His henchmen?
• The group of long-lived relatives who kicked him out of the club and who he now wants to destroy
• Friends?
• Lovers?
• Business associates?
• Druids?
• Corrupt police?
• People he’s blackmailing?
• Rose herself?

Questions:

• Who does Christian know and how will they be involved?
• Can he blackmail the cop to ‘not’ investigate?
• Can he buy off the medic (or kill them)?
• How many henchmen does he have, if any?
• What has he promised them?
• Does he have a best friend or a jealous lover?
• What are his long-lost relatives doing about the situation?
• Is someone looking to take advantage of him and his longevity?

By asking these sorts of questions story possibilities begin to appear. Who else might be involved? How can we use these characters to provide setbacks for Rose and/or Christian? How can they be used to hurt Rose or frustrate Christian?

What about Rose’s daughter, Hope? Who does she know that could become involved in this story? What could they possibly bring to the situation? How can they influence Hope’s choices?

So ask lots of questions.

Writing the first book in a series is potentially far more difficult than writing the sequels because it needs more up-front development. As well as telling a great story, you have to:

• introduce an immersive story world (ie, do all the world building)
• set up the sequels without being obvious about it.

Turning to successful examples is a great way of seeing complex introductions done simply.

Take Dune for example – it’s epic, contained, stands alone and sets up an entire story universe, all within the first book of the series.

Star Wars and The Matrix do the same things, with the added complication of having to tell their stories visually and in an extremely short timeframe.

The first story in any epic series needs to do similar things in most circumstances, and the more epic the conclusion, the better.

In short, your protagonist needs to discover their worth and use it to defeat a stand-alone story threat which would otherwise have a ‘very big and bad’ impact on the bigger story world.

The more epic the threat and the more spectacular the response in defeating it, and the greater the impact your story is likely to have on your readers.

 To put it into a simple template:

• [XYZ Character]
• is forced to grow into [their Special Power/Knowledge/Skill] and
• use it to defeat [An Obvious and Well-demonstrated Threat].

While it appears simple, the simple concepts are often the hardest to pull off.

There are formulas for all kinds of stories, but if you’re going epic, imitate the best. The best keep it simple.

So let’s apply this simple template to our dryad story.

[Rose Thorn] is forced to accept [she’s changing into a dryad] in order to defeat Christian Godson who [intends to kill all dryads and thereby wipe out a secret society of long-lived people].

The threat isn’t world-shaking unless you’re a dryad or part of the secret society, but it fits the template well enough

To make it world-shaking, we need to apply world-shaking consequences to the possible demise of the dryads. For example, if the dryads are wiped out, all plant-life on Earth will be wiped out too. Now that’s got possibilities and far-reaching consequences.

Let’s consider other genres. For a romance, the basic formula is:

• boy meets girl (or any such combination of lovers you like)
• boy romances girl
• boy loses girl
• boy gets girl.

As a template sentence, it would go something like: [XYZ character] must fight for [the love of their life] or [lose them forever].

Like the template for epic stories, it’s very simple.

For a murder mystery, the basic formula goes:

• someone commits a murder
• the protagonist investigates
• the protagonist has setbacks (red herrings, false victories, etc)
• the protagonist solves the crime.

Why don’t you take a crack at writing this formula into a story template? Keep it simple and don’t fall into the trap of over-complicating the storyline. Too many moves kill a good story.

How would the template for your story look like if you applied the same concepts?

Google ‘Road Runner rules’ and you’ll pull up dozens of sources showcasing Chuck Jones’ rules for the Road Runner cartoon. They’re brilliant.

They succinctly set the scene for the story universe in which the Road Runner cartoon takes place, as well as all the conflict between the Road Runner and the Coyote. They are:

• Rule 1. The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going “Beep, beep!”
• Rule 2. No outside force can harm the Coyote – only his own ineptitude or the failure of ACME products.
• Rule 3. The Coyote could stop anytime – if he were not a fanatic.
• Rule 4. No dialogue ever, except “Beep, beep”.
• Rule 5. The Road Runner must stay on the road – otherwise, logically, he would not be called Road Runner.
• Rule 6. All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters – the southwest American desert.
• Rule 7. All materials, tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the ACME Corporation.
• Rule 8. Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote’s greatest enemy.
• Rule 9. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.

There’s a slightly amended version with a couple of extra rules and tweaks, but I prefer the original.

But what does that mean for your story?

As the God of your own story universe, you can come up with any number of rules for any aspect of your story want to, but be cautious; developing rules can become a form of procrastination or they grow far too unwieldy to be useful.

Think of rules as story drivers and sources of conflict, not merely world-building elements.

Take something familiar and consider its rules

In a show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the rules might look something like:

• Slayers are girls. Always.
• When a slayer dies, another rises in her place.
• You can kill a vampire with a wooden stake through the heart, with fire, or by beheading it.
• The Hellmouth spawns and attracts all sorts of demonic creatures, not just vampires.
• Magic always comes with a cost.
• Wherever possible, mix comedy with horror.

If you’re a huge fan of the show, you could probably add a few more. The point is, you want to keep your rules broad yet simple.

Why not pick a show, a movie or a book you’re familiar with, and try and figure out its basic rules?

The dryad novel

In the case of our developing novel, we could come up with specific rules for dryads, magic, longevity, immortality, the supernatural world, transformations, mundane perceptions, computer workstations, AI, vehicle emissions, shoes, handbags, etc., and before you know it we’d have the equivalent of a library’s worth of manuals covering every conceivable element and eventuality in the story (but no story because we’d be constantly developing the rules – see the previous comment about procrastination).

For the more detailed information about a story world it helps to maintain a story bible to keep track of ‘rules’ and other elements you create in your story, but that’s a separate matter. We’re not talking about a story bible today.

For now, we’re talking about the foundation rules for your story world, not elements of the story.

As with the Road Runner rules or my Buffy exercise, five to ten rules should be more than enough for most novels.

Beyond offering guidance, these rules must show your story’s conflicts and pressure points.

So let’s create some rules for this story universe.

1. Magic is scarce on Earth; there is never enough to go around (a pressure point & source of conflict).
2. Magical creatures need magic to survive, just as humans need air, water and food to survive (another pressure point & source of conflict).
3. Magic can be stored, stolen, transformed, used and reused by magical creatures and natural processes, but like any form of energy it degrades with time and use (a potential source of conflict).
4. Humans cannot sense or use magic directly, although they are Earth’s major source of it and can be affected by it (humans are a resource to magical creatures = potential conflict).
5. Humans can become magical creatures, but magical creatures can never become human again (a potential source of conflict).

That will do for this story.

Hopefully you’ll have noticed I didn’t try to use the rules to explain anything in the story (such as why and how humans are the world’s major source of magic but have no access to it), and I didn’t try to explain the rules either – they’re simply a statement of fact. I know how it all works, but it’s not important to explain it here.

The broader story universe

If we wanted to take into consideration the broader story universe of which this novel is simply a small part of, we’d overlay the first five rules with five more:

1. Gods are real and constantly fighting among themselves for the control of new universes.
2. It’s possible, though difficult, to travel between universes.
3. Time moves relative to the universe you’re in, and even that’s not constant.
4. Supernatural perceptions and abilities can be attained through magic and/or the influence of Gods.
5. The past cannot be changed, though with foresight the future can be manipulated and the appearance of history altered.

That’s ten rules for this story universe, though only five will have any real effect in this novel.

As well as try and figure out the rules for a show/book/movie you’re familiar with, why not create five to ten rules for your own story universe? What are they? Do they help?

As always, please share this post if you found it helpful.

It’s time to start thinking about theme.

Why?

Story themes are tricky beasts to corner, but integral to character choices and how the story unfolds and resolves.

Without a strong theme your story is just a series of escalating events which will soon be forgotten.

While we don’t have to pin a theme down right away, it helps to be open to any hidden gems we may have buried in our planning (or later, writing) phase.

Those gems will unify our story and give it meaning.

So what exactly is a story’s theme?

Most writers struggle with the concept, usually citing things like ‘love’, ‘hope,’ ‘loneliness,’ ‘loss,’ etc.

The problem is, while single words are often thematic, they’re not themselves a theme. They’re only expressions of a theme.

So how would you define a theme? Your theme is a statement or a question. Your story is its playground.

For example, your theme might be: “You can never truly be yourself around your family.” Your story would then debate that statement, with everything that goes on in the story contributing to the final answer.

And that’s where the power of a theme comes into play; it’s what gives your story real-life meaning and keeps readers thinking about it long after they’ve read it, even if they don’t have a clue what the theme actually is.

It’s probably the most understated, least understood, yet most powerful part of any story.

Take the song Cats in the Cradle by Harry Chapin (I love the Ugly Kid Joe version). Look it up on YouTube, Google the lyrics, buy it or stream it – whatever, but check out the lyrics and the question of theme should become clearer.

Cats in the Cradle is a story of regret – but regret is only an expression of the theme. Family features strongly, but family isn’t the theme either. Another expression. The story is about both those things, but it’s much more. Cats in the Cradle is a cautionary tale of missed opportunities and poor choices, and so a statement of theme would include those things.

In your own stories, your theme should influence everything your characters say and do, but don’t force a theme if you don’t already have one. Once the story’s drafted you can figure out the theme and if necessary go back and align story elements to it.

At the planning stage it’s simply about pointing the story in one possible direction; a question or statement you think you may want to explore. If the story’s not going where you want or expect, keep an eye out for a more compelling theme. It’ll appear naturally, so don’t try to force it.

Possible themes for this our dryad story run along the lines of:

• Eternal youth is a curse, not a blessing.
• Broken relationships can never be completely healed.
• What’s truly important can never be stolen.
• What does it mean to be human?
• You must be true to who you are.

The theme we need to find is the one our protagonist carries. (For an ensemble cast the character most closely aligning with the theme represents your protagonist.)

What will this story’s theme eventually be? It’s not clear yet, but hopefully it’ll come out in the planning.

If you were to write a statement of theme for the song Cats in the Cradle, what would it be?

Following on from the previous posts where I’ve been outlining a new novel, we now know a little about the story world and its conflicts. It’s a world where:

• the supernatural intersects with the mundane
• a woman is in trouble because of her new youth.

So what do we know about the protagonist, Rose Thorn, and her situation?

• She wakes up with no memory of what’s happened to her.
• She’s much younger than she was.
• Time has passed – several months.
• She has a daughter called Hope, and Hope’s going to be used against Rose by the antagonist.
• Depending on your definition of what it is to be human, Rose no longer is. She’s transforming into a dryad. I think a ticking clock might be useful here.

We don’t really know much more about Rose at this stage, so let’s focus on fleshing her out a bit.

What she knows

Rose has to realise she’s ‘different’ very early on in the story, but can’t remember what happened too soon. It’s a question that will be answered as the story progresses.

All she knows initially is that she had a normal life until she woke up youthful again after going missing for several months. As her foggy memories return they will be balanced with the physical changes she’s going to have to rely on to survive.

She quickly learns someone is after her, and because of that her daughter is at risk. This needs to become clear during the first quarter of the story to develop the story’s main conflicts and threat.

Story drivers

Her lack of knowledge creates story drivers. She needs to figure out:

• how she was gifted or cursed by a dryad
• what becoming a dryad means
• why this happened to her. Red herrings (or real scenarios) could be:
  • something she did (is what happened to her some form of payback, or a gift for some favour/help she gave)?
  • something she found/stole – a Magic McGuffin which turns her into a dryad?
  • wrong place – wrong time (bad luck)?
  • she escaped some supernatural attack and this was the result?
• did the dryad have her own motivations?
  • does the dryad have a secret?
  • is the dryad playing her own game?
• how can she use her ‘gift/curse’ to help herself and her daughter.

What happened to her can either be directly related to the antagonist (ie, Christian inadvertently caused it, for instance), or totally unrelated. Either way, it draws her into conflict with him as she has something he wants.

What does she know about Christian Godson, the antagonist?

She doesn’t know who’s after her or why (initially), though she eventually discovers Christian wants to use her gift and has the means to take it from her. The main things I need to figure out here are:

• How exactly will Christian gain from this?
  • Just a long life, or something more?
  • How is this furthering his goals and hurting his enemies?
• How will her ‘gift’ affect Christian?
  • Will it make him instantly younger?
  • Does it take time to work?
  • Will it cure any illnesses he has?
  • Does he have minions he can share it with?
• What does he need to do to attain it?
  • If he catches her, can she be forced to just ‘hand it over’?
  • Does he need to do something drastic to extract it?
• Could Christian be someone she trusts (plot twist?)?

How will the secret of her youth hurt Rose (emotionally)?

There must always be consequences/effects.

• Does she go into denial?
• Is she determined to find a cure and return to being human?
• Does it affect her in other ways?
• What will be the effects on her family?

How can she use her new knowledge about what happened to her advantage?

• We can’t drop her secret into the story and give it no impact, or fail to provide her with any means of taking advantage of it.
• It’s essential that it be part of the story’s resolution to produce a satisfying ending.
  • How can she use this change to defeat or destroy the protagonist?

Who can possibly help her?

She needs both allies and people she cares about. As well as help her, these ‘extras’ can also be used against her (they can be threatened, hurt, or killed, for example). Possibilities include:

• Someone associated with Christian (an untrustworthy ally who plans to double-cross him (or her)).
• Her best friend (I assume she has one).
• Family/daughter.
• A third party who knows about her gift/curse but is content to let her keep it
  • Why would they do this?
  • Christian’s enemies?
• Someone who’s been through what she’s going through – the person (dryad) Christian really wants to get his hands on?
• More than one of the above?

I don’t know that I want a mentor for Rose in this novel – it’s not a coming-of-age story, though it has similarities. I think it needs to be more of a ‘finding yourself’ or ‘figuring out what’s most important to you’ story, which implies signposts rather than a guide.

Lets put everything we know into a timeline

The beginning:

• Christian (and friends?) seeks the fountain of Rose’s youth, and has for generations.
  • For him, it’s a temporary thing, requiring ‘top-ups’ at regular intervals to stay young.
  • Perhaps it has a law of diminishing returns – every time he ‘uses’ it the effects don’t last as long, requiring more and more.
• Rose is transformed (is she left for dead and saved by a dryad/forced to change by a desperate dryad?).
  • She wakes up alone, in the woods, with no memory of what happened.
    • She has to claw her way out of a shallow grave
• Rose discovers she’s youthful again
  • perhaps after being taken to hospital/a police station
  • some sort of test shows she’s the same person, despite appearances.
  • How does this affect her? How does she react? (does she go through the seven stages of grief over the course of the novel? – I might need to do a little research for this)
  • How do her family react?
    • her parents/siblings reject her
    • her daughter accepts the truth, and can therefore be better used to hurt Rose.
• Rose tries to lead police to the place she woke, but can’t find it. No one can. This casts doubt on her story.
  • The dryad who transformed Rose is either gone or dead and all evidence of what happened to her removed.
• Her family reject her – despite the evidence – they don’t believe she’s the same person.

The middle:

• The supernatural world intrudes (don’t know how yet, but it needs to play a part)
  • Her nature is changing – that is the intrusion on her normal world
  • She resists what’s happening to her, though she’s forced more and more to rely on those changes to get by.
  • Possibly someone from her new world also intrudes at this point (another dryad? Someone from Christian’s line – distant relative he has issues with)?
• She discovers someone is after her – they want her secret/gift.
• Her family is threatened: not too serious yet.
• She’s increasingly caught between worlds, with the supernatural world a huge temptation
  • The supernatural world offers safety and a way out of the mess, but it comes at a cost: her family remains in danger, keeping her from accepting.

The end:

• Christian goes directly after her family (Hope) and tries and force her hand.
• She must accept what happened to her in order to save her daughter, herself, and the bigger threat to the supernatural world.

That’s it in very broad strokes, with a lot of detail yet to fill.

How do you think it’s shaping up so far?

Following on from the last post about creating your story’s premise, I thought I’d continue the thread and go through what my next steps (ideally) would be in planning this particular story.

While the premise I came up with is in the ball park of what I’m happy with, it needs… more. I’m not sure what ‘more’ is at this stage, but that’s part of what I need to figure out.

If you Google ‘questions to ask before writing a book’ or ‘questions to ask when planning a book’ you’ll get a tonne of responses with some pretty nifty ideas to consider.

They might include:

• Who’s your story about?
• Why should anyone care?
• What does your protagonist want?
• Who’s your audience?
• How are you going to surprise your readers?
• What are you promising your readers? etc.

They’re big, broad, generic questions, and worth considering, but they’re largely taken care of by the story premise or questions that require a premise before you can answer them.

If you missed the previous post, I’d recommend reading it first so you know how I arrived at my story premise. The premise I came up with was: A missing woman who reappears as a teenager tries to protect her grown children when they’re hunted for the secret of her youth.

It’s a little bit of a mouthful and not as tight or specific as I’d like. Generally, it doesn’t suggest enough about story world or protagonist, but there’s plenty of time to refine it. It’s not something you want to get too hung up on.

For now, well ask some questions that might make that clearer while developing the story at the same time.

Let’s revise what we already know

I kept the previous iterations of the premise because they contain some gems. Let’s pull out what we can, remembering that this is largely brainstorming – there are no right or wrong answers, and it doesn’t matter if ideas conflict at this stage.

Ideas we’ve covered:

• She wakes up in the woods
• time has passed – decades perhaps – yet she hasn’t aged
• or – only a little time has passed (days, weeks, months?), but she’s decades younger. I’m leaning toward this option for two main reasons:
  • it makes the story more immediate and contemporary rather than a missing persons case
  • it’s a little more original. Missing persons who come back from the dead (sometimes after centuries) have had a bit of a run on television lately.
• When she disappears, she’s:
  • a young woman (new mother? – doesn’t really work with my preferred option above, but it’s worth noting)
  • an experienced mother (kids are perhaps 8-10ish)
  • a career woman who probably doesn’t have as much time for her kids as she’d like (maybe in her forty’s with kids who have already grown up or are in their late teens).
• She and society struggle with the fact she’s younger now.
• Her family totally disbelieve her story
  • she’s shunned/on her own?
• She tries and fails (at least initially) to reconnect with her extended family (mother, father, siblings?)
• She tries to reconnect with her immediate family (teenage daughter, husband, other children?)
• Someone/something/some organisation (antagonist) is trying to discover her secret and/or steal her gift
  • is the antagonist supernatural, or mundane?
• She is forced to protect her family
  • her child/children are actively being hunted so they can be used against her with the intent to force her hand and reveal the secret of her ‘eternal youth’ or hand over whatever power she’s been invested with
  • if she’s got more than one child, does that mean the others are considered expendable by the antagonist?

Some of that’s very usable and not bad for no extra effort.

What we need to figure out now are the big issues: the story drivers. Knowing these will help with the detail.

Story driver 1: Conflict

My definition: Conflict is immediate – it’s happening now, and it can be broken into three categories: internal, external, and interpersonal.

The obvious sources of conflict are:

• She doesn’t know what happened to her (internal conflict).
• The people she cares about don’t believe her (interpersonal conflict).
• The antagonist does believe her and wants to take advantage of her (external conflict).
• Her family is in danger because of whatever made her different (external conflict).
• The antagonist wants whatever she has (external conflict).

That’s probably more than enough conflict at this stage, so let’s consider the bigger picture.

Story driver 2: Threat

My definition: Threat is the potential for conflict, and usually has big consequences.

The main threat needs to stem from the story’s premise. In this case: she has something the antagonist wants. That alone isn’t enough. If there were no consequences, she could simply hand it over, right? For this to work, she can’t afford to lose it or let the antagonist have it.

The question here is: What would happen if the antagonist did get it? This is the source of the story’s main threat.

Consider the potential consequences if she loses it for:

1. Herself:
   1. Will she die?
   2. If she survives but reverts to normal, will she lose the power to save her family/world etc? (the only answer is ‘yes’ if we take this path, which would mean she has to get it back or find another way.)
2. Her family:
   1. Will they be harmed/killed if she resists?
   2. Are they likely to suffer more (long term) if she gives in?
3. The mundane (normal) world:
   1. Something bad. For now, let’s go with the obvious and say the antagonist is a power-mad world-domination type and the consequences are dire. Bit of a cliché, but it’ll do for now. Think big and change it if something better arises.
   2. Nothing at all. This isn’t the mundane world’s fight.
4. The supernatural world:
   1. Will it be destroyed forever? Again, bit of a cliché, but the higher the stakes the better. We can peg it back later if necessary.
   2. The antagonist gets to rule forever (as they’ll be immortal and therefore unstoppable?).
      1. To do either of these we’d need to tie the protagonist to the supernatural world very strongly – give her something far bigger than herself to care about.

Considering the info above, I’m leaning toward developing the main threats to her family and the supernatural world, and leaving threats to the mundane world alone, otherwise it gets too complicated: too many moves. I’d like to see it played out in the mundane world for contrast however: the supernatural world intruding into the mundane. Considering I write fantasy, having the main threat directed at the normal world doesn’t provide as much fun (or impact).

So now we’ve considered some of the major issues we can start making choices and building something of a working document/outline. We know the premise and have some good ideas for the main conflicts and big threats.

Plot-wise, it’s lacking a little in originality, but we can compensate in the world-building, characterisation and delivery (or come up with something more original as we develop the story). I don’t want to stray too far from reader expectations though.

Have you considered your story’s main conflicts and threats? What are they?

A few years ago I developed a method for distilling a novel-length story into a premise or elevator pitch. It’s quite simple and effective, yet difficult to pull off and it can take quite a while to get right, even with practice.

After experimenting with it, I found it’s much easier to do the exercise before you write a novel than after, as you don’t have to try and figure out what doesn’t go in and you won’t get frustrated by the problems it may highlight.

As well as define your story, your premise needs to imply genre and tone while providing an idea about who the protagonist is without actually naming them.

One more point – you have to be able to see a whole story in your premise.

To create your story premise in a single sentence, you need to know four things:

• who the story’s about
• what they want
• who or what’s standing in their way
• the story’s hook (usually found in the irony).

Unless you’ve already written the story you probably don’t know those things. A bigger problem is that if you’ve written the story and still don’t know those things, you’ve got a major issue that’ll take some serious editing/restructuring to iron out.

So the best time to figure out your story’s premise (elevator pitch, logline, whatever you wish to call it) is before you write it. You can always change the premise later if you come up with better ideas, but its a signpost at the very least, and if you get stuck while writing at least you’ve got something to guide you.

So how do you apply this when you’ve got nothing to start with?

Obviously you have to start with something – an image, character, situation, whatever. A kernel of some kind.

Now try to figure out the answers to those questions above. If you can’t, start with what you have. The answers will probably come to you.

Today I decided to create a premise about a woman who wakes up alone in the woods (covered in dirt, scared, and with no memory of what had happened or where she’d been). It was little more than an image. I only knew two things about her (which I made up on the spot):

1. As I write speculative fiction, I decided she needed something from the fantasy realm, so she quickly finds out she’s been missing for a long time. I wasn’t sure if she’d been gone a years, decades or centuries, but it had to be a significant amount of time.
2. She’s younger now than she went missing. Much younger – physically. A teenager perhaps.

That’s all I had to work with.

The following premise statements show how I worked through ideas until I had something reasonably tight and strong.

1. A young woman wakes up in the woods only to find she’s been missing for years, yet she hasn’t aged. (20 words)
   This is a starting point, and lacks quite a few things like conflict and the protagonists desires. It’s a statement about where the story starts and therefore doesn’t work as a premise because it doesn’t give me any idea as to what it’s about or where it might go.
2. A young woman who wakes up a decade after disappearing struggles with the fact she hasn’t aged as she tries to reconnect with her disbelieving family. (26 words)
   This one is a bit convoluted, though at least it introduces some conflict and gives a hint about where the story might go, but its not nearly enough. There’s only a little bit of conflict implied, and that’s mostly internal.
3. A young woman who hasn’t aged tries to reconnect with her disbelieving family a decade after disappearing. (17 words)
   This is clearer and implies genre, but its not where it needs to be. The implied conflict still isn’t very strong and it leaves out the disappearing part.
4. A young woman who returns youthful after going missing for more than a decade tries to reconnect with her disbelieving daughter while dark forces try to discover her secret. (30 words)
   Even though it’s a little more detailed, it’s getting convoluted – you almost need a deep breath to get though it. I think it’s on the right track now though.
5. A woman who returns as a teenager after going missing more than a decade ago tries to reconnect with her disbelieving daughter while dark forces close in. (27 words)
   Who are the dark forces? Why are they closing in? At least the first part is getting stronger, though still convoluted.
6. A mother who returns as a teenager after going missing for more than a decade tries to reconnect with and protect her disbelieving daughter while enemies try to discover her secret. (31 words)
   Not really an improvement on the previous version, and ‘enemies’ is just a tad too vague.
7. A mother who returns as a teenager a decade after disappearing tries to reconnect with and protect her disbelieving daughter while enemies try to discover her secret. (27 words)
   No real improvement, though it’s a bit shorter.
8. When a career woman disappears and returns youthful a decade later, she tries to reconnect with her disbelieving teenage daughter while being hunted for her secret. (26 words)
   So she’s a career-woman now? Okay, that tells me a bit more about the woman. The conflict is getting more personal as well and the story shaping up a little clearer, but it’s still not very sharp. Also, if you need a comma to ensure it makes sense, rethink it.
9. A career woman who disappears and returns youthful a decade later tries to reconnect with her disbelieving teenage daughter while being hunted for her secret. (26 words)
   I’m still a fair distance from being happy with it.
10. A career woman who disappears and returns a decade younger is forced to protect her daughter while being hunted for the secret of her youth. (25 words)
    I think this is getting closer – its sharper, clearer, implies plenty of conflict and reads fairly well.  Even if I keep all the information I’ve got in some of the above versions, there’s no need to state it here. The irony’s stronger now too: discovering the fountain of youth might just kill her.
11. A missing woman who reappears as a teenager tries to protect her grown children when they’re hunted for the secret of her youth. (23 words)
    I’m liking where this is going now. It’s clear, straightforward, concise and flows really well.

I might play with family members (should I have just the daughter or half a dozen children? Is the husband still in the picture? What about her extended family and friends – do they rate a mention here [probably not]?), but I think I’ve got to the heart of it now, and the hook is solid.

Hopefully you can see the path where the last iteration gets it closer to a tightly focused story with a single story problem. That’s all that matters here. Leave your subplots and excess characters in the ‘extras’ pile. They’ll find their place in the story eventually, just not here.

What I’ve produced isn’t perfect by a long way, but I can see a whole story in it now when I couldn’t before, and it’s one which I might be interested in writing.

The next question for me is: “Will I continue planning it out and perhaps even write it?”

Maybe.

This was an exercise, but I think the idea has promise. Considering I’m one of the world’s worst planners (in the sense that planning’s the last thing I want to do when it comes to writing, so I either procrastinate or find ways not to), I might work though the concept here, start to finish, and see where it goes.

Or I might just wait for NaNoWriMo and belt it out based on the premise alone.

Please try writing your own premise and let me know if this method of distilling your story into a single sentence works for you.

The next post in the series: Conflict and Threat.