When you’re trying to sell a reader on picking up your book, the way you present it can make all the difference.  You need to be able to describe it in a way that presents a character dealing with high stakes and a visceral consequence for failure.  The kind of description that make the reader go, “I’ve got to read that!” asks an implied question and makes the reader care — all in the space of a brief interaction, or the amount of time it takes to read the back of your book cover. This is even more important if you are trying to sell a publisher or agent into investing time — and potentially money — on your project. If you find yourself unable to present your manuscript concisely, you need to work on developing your premise.  To do that, you need to understand, at its heart, what your story is about.  This means narrowing down all of your fun ideas and meaningful themes down to the most basic elements, without which the plot would collapse.

Try stating it as: Interesting character has to do crazy difficult thing despite opposition or else doom.

Interesting character —  Give the protagonist’s name plus one or two adjectives.  (Ex, widowed chocolate maker Felicity)

Crazy Difficult Thing — Give the main goal the protagonist pursues throughout the book.  It needs to be concrete and defeating it measurable.   What is the one thing the character wants?  You HAVE to choose one, even if there are two strong plots.  Which one you choose can change the genre. (Ex — Felicity solves murders AND has a continuing romance through the books.  The books are mysteries so the crazy difficult thing is catch the killer.  If the answer was decide between the love she let get away and the mysterious new guy then the genre would be romance.)

Opposition — The opposition needs to be concrete as a person the character faces off on (or sometimes the character’s own self or a force of nature. (Ex. despite every suspect offering an alibi.  The implication here is that the killer is hiding in plain sight.)

Doom — The stakes in your story need to be visceral and understandable.  They need to have enough weight to qualify as actual doom. what constitutes doom is different depending on your genre.  (Ex. or else her friend will be framed.)

It can be helpful to write out your premise before you start writing, much the same as you would look carefully at a house plan to make sure it fit on the lot and met your household’s needs before starting to build.

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