How to Write a Brilliant Novel: The Easy Step-By-Step Method of Crafting a Powerful Story (Go! Write Something Brilliant) (8 page)

Royal
daughter
Oksana
can’t
believe
her
father
entrusted
her
life
to
a
lowly
peasant.
Peace- loving
Mennonite
merchant
Anton
Klassen
is
paralyzed
by
his
charge—especially
when
he
falls
in
love
with
her. Can
two
people
from
different
lives
find
a
way
to
protect
Russia’s
most valuable
secret?

Let’s play a little game. Can you guess what movies these premises are from?

1. She just wants to prove she can be a Pulitzer-prize winning writer. He wants to be the top
   executive
   at
   his ad agency. But when two high achievers
   are thrown together to achieve their own goals, they just might discover that falling in love is the greatest prize of all.
   
2. She gave up on her future, believing her true love dead, and agreed to marry a
   king. But when her fiancé returns, ready to fight for her, can she believe in love, even
   when it seems the past has repeated itself?
   And
   will he be a man of his
   word—even
   beyond the grave?
   

Those two premises focused on the romance part of the story. Let’s try one without romance:

1. He
   believes
   he
   can prevent
   war
   with
   his
   information
   about
   a
   Soviet
   secret. But
   what if
   he’s
   wrong?
   What
   if,
   in
   fact,
   he instead pulls
   the
   trigger
   on WWIII?
   Just
   how
   far will one man’s beliefs take him . . . and the rest of the world?
   

Answers:

A:
How
to
Lose
a
Guy
in
10
days

B:
The
Princess
Bride

C:
The
Hunt
for
Red
October
(Of course!)

Pick your favorite movie(s) and see if you can create a premise.

I love crafting a premise. It’s one of the first things I do after I get a story in my head. With my premise as my guide, I know where the story is headed, the main themes, and the stakes. For those writers who are Seat of the Pants plotters (SOTPs), you can still do this. You don’t have to nail down every scene and nuance right now. But I’ll bet you have in your head the theme, the characters, and what the story is about. That’s all you need to craft a great premise.

In a premise I like to start out with the
highest stakes
, the point at which the editor or reader might care about the outcome. I boil down the action to the most important, the
climax,
wind it together with the hero’s and the heroine’s deepest fears or needs (revealing the
Black Moment
), and ask an emotion question that will propel the editor to further reading. (Some would call that the
Story Question
.) But how do you pull all these elements together into something that pops, yet encapsulates the story?

Step One:
Name your character, and their significance. For example, if the story is about a veterinarian, and her job is crucial to the story, then her occupation should be named. If she’s a veterinarian who is returning home after being gone for years, and the story is about her return, then you might want to identify her as the town prodigal. If it’s about a veterinarian who is returning to her mother’s funeral, you might want to call her a wayward daughter. Use whatever moniker that describes your character and their most important role in the story.

Step Two:
Identify your character’s goals for the story. Goals could be their greatest dream, or just the plot goals, but the reader must know what the story is about. For a romance, often the premise focuses on love, and finding the ideal mate. For a suspense, it’s about life and limb, and saving those we love. For a mystery, it’s about following the clues and solving the murder. Find that thing that is most important to the character.

Let’s consider the veterinarian. Let’s say she is returning home to her mother’s funeral— only to discover her mother was murdered.

Wayward daughter Rachel Higgins wishes she hadn’t waited until her mother died to return to Anytown, FL. If only she’d been here, maybe she could have stopped her murder. Now, she’s on the trail of the culprit . . . and discovering that the killer has turned his sights on her.

Okay, that’s rough. But it’s a start. Let’s keep moving.

Step Three:
Throw in the conflict. Often, it’s the hero, and you need to return to Step One to identify him, with a brief stopover at Step Two to also collect his goals.

Wayward daughter Rachel Higgins wishes that she hadn’t waited until her mother died to return to Anytown, FL. If only she’d been here, maybe she could have stopped her murder. Now, she’s on the trail of the culprit . . . and discovering that the killer has turned his sights on her. The last thing Detective Brett Collins needs is a grieving daughter to tell him how to do his –job—a job he’s close to losing, thanks to a fear that’s plagued him ever since he was shot.

Step Four:
Now, you want to sift through all the stakes in the story, all those pivotal events, all those themes, and find the most compelling. Frame it in a statement of conflicting values, or goals.

Wayward daughter Rachel Higgins wishes that she hadn’t waited until her mother died to return to Anytown, FL. If only she’d been here, maybe she could have stopped her murder. She’ll stop at nothing to find her mother’s killer. The last thing Detective Brett Collins needs is a grieving daughter to tell him how to do his –job— a job he’s close to losing, thanks to a fear that’s plagued him ever since he was shot. But Rachel is a good sleuth—good enough to land her in the killer’s sights, and Brett must choose between protecting her, and catching the murderer.

(Notice that I took out the sentence:
Now, she’s on the trail of the culprit . . . and discovering that the killer has turned his sights on her
. I decided I wanted to use the word “sights” later to ramp up the tension in the last line. I also don’t like the use of the word “stop” twice in the beginning. I’ll change that later when I polish the premise.)

Step Five:
Now we’re onto the last line, the Story Question, or the ominous statement. I could probably stop the premise where it is right now, because there is enough information to know what is at stake. However, because it is also a romance, I’ll add a line to focus the theme.

Wayward daughter Rachel Higgins wishes that she hadn’t waited until her mother died to return to Anytown, FL. If only she’d been here, maybe she could have stopped her murder. She’ll stop at nothing to find her mother’s killer. The last thing Detective Brett Collins needs is a grieving daughter to tell him how to do his

–job—a job he’s close to losing, thanks to a fear that’s plagued him ever since he was shot. But Rachel is a good sleuth—good enough to land her in the killer’s sights, and Brett must choose between protecting her, and catching the murderer. But worse than putting hislife on the line is knowing that he just might lose his heart.

That’s still rough. But we’ll fix it:

Step Six:
Using strong, colorful words to add to the theme and tone of the premise.

If only wayward daughter Rachel Higgins had returned home sooner,
her mother might still be alive. Now, Rachel’s last act of atonement will be finding her
killer.
The
last
thing
Detective
Brett
Collins needs
is a
desperate
victim derailing
his
investigation—especially
since
his
job
is
at
stake.
He’s
been
off
his game
ever
since
he
was
shot.
Rachel
is
a
good
sleuth,
—however—good
enough
to land
her
in
the
killer’s sights.
Brett
must
choose
between
protecting
her,
and catching
the murderer. And
when it
all
goes
south,
the
biggest
casualty
of
all just
might
be
his
heart.

I used some pop words to give it energy: atonement, desperate, killer’s sights, casualty. Finding words that shape the premise will give your entire story color.

Those are the basic steps to crafting a premise! Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

Premise Steps:
Recap

Step
One:
Name
your
character,
and
their
significance.

Step
Two:
Identify
their
goals
for
the
story.

Step
Three:
Throw
in
the
conflict.
Step
Four:
Find
the
highest
stakes.
Step
Five:
State
the
story
question.

Step
Six:
Use
strong,
colorful
words
to
ramp
up
the
tension
and hone
the
theme.

Premise Examples:
Sometimes it’s easier to see an example of what you’re trying to accomplish. Here are a couple of premises from fellow
My Book Therapy
Voices who allowed me to work on their blurbs. Let’s examine how they break down.

It’s the Roaring Twenties and Evie Kimball bucks a life of wealth and privilege for big dreams and true love. Naively believing she can have it all, Evie leaves her true love waiting in the wings and sets off for the bright lights of Broadway. As the Great Depression envelopes New York, Evie returns home, ready to make amends with the one she left behind. But love doesn’t wait forever, and Evie finds a hopelessness greater than that which the loss of fame and fortune has already brought her. Eventually, Evie reclaims some semblance of the good life and focuses on raising her family, but secrets and unforgiveness are always there threatening her happiness and tearing apart her family. So, on the eve of her one hundredth birthday celebration, Evie sets about to break the legacy of despair that has plagued her family for three generations.

I love Roaring Twenties books! And this one sounds very epic. It also sounds like the story might start on her 100th birthday, and we got a great introductory blurb about her backstory. Let’s go through the six steps and see what we can do to restructure this premise a bit:

Step One – Evie Kimball – socialite, heiress, dreamer, aspiring actress. Probably the actress characterization is the strongest in this lineup.

Step Two – She dreams of being an actress, and naively believes true love will wait.

Step Three – Conflict – the Great Depression, and her true love doesn’t wait. There is no hero point of view (POV) here.

Step Four – Evie marries someone else, and secrets and unforgiveness threaten to tear about her family’s happiness

Step Five – Can she learn to forgive before it’s too late?

Step Six – dazzled, empty, broken, sweeping. These words add just a bit of color to the premise.

One of the interesting elements is the legacy of despair. I think that is an angle that could really be explored.

Aspiring actress Evie Kimball is dazzled by the bright lights of Broadway.
Believing her true love will wait, she heads to New York, only to return years later to her
hometown, empty and broken, thanks to the sweeping despair of the Great
Depression. Worse, her love has chosen another—something she can’t forgive. Despite the fact
that she
marries,
and
has
a
family,
she
seems
destined
to
live
a
life
of
brokenheartedness,
like her mother, and grandmother before her. Will Evie learn, before it’s too late, how to forgive?

I left out the 100-year-old birthday, because maybe that’s not the crux of the story, and I brought in the legacy of despair. I also put the premise in active voice, which adds energy, and added some punch words.

Because of the lecherous bailiff who once accosted her, Annabel is afraid of men and horrified at the thought of marrying. Instead, she dreams of becoming a nun and of one day being allowed to read the Holy Writ. When her family's debts cause her to become indentured to wealthy Lord Ranulf, all hope seems lost.