Mara has been doing a wonderful job at showing you how to create vibrant and loveable characters, but your characters will need a story to go with them, right? Though you may put a lot of effort and time into your characters, no one will even get the chance to meet them if your readers don’t have the motivation to pick up your story in the first place.
Your concept, also known as a hook, is important. It’s the thing that will grab the reader’s attention and make them want to see the rest of the world you’ve created. And I’m not just talking about the first couple pages of your story, or even the little blurb written on the back of it. I mean the very idea your story is built on. The solid foundation that, if structured incorrectly, could cause your entire story to flop, regardless of it’s elaborate plot twists or loveable heroines.
Today, I’ll show you how I create a concept, and what you can do to create a unique, reader-grabbing hook too.
Step 1: What If?
When I was younger, I saw an interview with a woman named Laura Martin, a middle-grade author novelist. She claimed that all stories start with a what-if. Her book, Edge of Extinction, began with the question: What if a girl had to dodge dinosaurs on her way to the mailbox in the morning?
This idea has always stuck out in my memory, because I realized you can apply it to any story you want. What if Cinderella was a cyborg? What if a teen writer went blind and was forced to rely on a boy with no legs for help? What if Agent Coulson from the Avengers never really died? (These are the what-ifs from Cinder, 100 Days of Sunlight, and Agents of Shield.)
To create your ‘what if’ question, all you have to do is take a look around. What if I found a secret compartment in my floorboards? You may ask. Or, if you’re like me, you may be in a social situation and think: What if I had said this instead? What if something interrupted our conversation before I could respond? What if a random messenger arrow landed just above my friend’s head in the middle of our discussion?
And though your story may grow more complex, though your simple ‘what if’ may grow to a page full of questions, this question is a guaranteed way to create an explosion of ideas in your mind.
Step 2: Expand
After creating a what-if question you’re excited about, ask yourself: Who are the characters? Why are they in this story? When is this happening? Where is this happening? What theme or moral will I try to communicate through this? This is a fairly broad step, but try to fill at least a page of ideas for your story.
Step 3: Test the Strength of Your Idea
Once you know more details about your characters and the world they live in, make sure your idea is worth further attention. Just because you may like a story idea, doesn’t mean that anyone else will. Not to mention, if your premise is especially weak, even you might not enjoy it after a few months.
Not all the ‘what ifs’ you create will be good. You may spout out dozens of questions, but only one of them may have the material to stretch into a good story. If you don’t take the time to make sure your concept has potential, you might waste time plotting it out (if you’re the sort of person that plots, that is) or even worse, if you keep your idea to yourself and continue on to actually write the story, then you have a novel on your hands that no one wants to read.
One way to test the strength of your concept is sharing. By talking about your idea with a family member or friend, you gain an outsider’s perspective on things and accountability to actually finish that project. A different point of view may show you some major flaws in yoru plan that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. And, you’ll be infinitely more motivated to write and complete your story when you have friends waiting to hear how the finished project turned out.
However, some people may want (and have the ability) to skip this if they have the time to think over their idea for months at a time, and the strength to be highly critical of their own work. Though I often have to rely on others to rip apart my precious ideas, I know some writers are perfectly capable of tearing down and reworking their own premises without any outside help. Every writer is different, and you just have to do what works for you!
Step 4: Condensing
Once you’ve received some feedback (either from others or from yourself) and you’re certain this concept will work, try to harness your wild ideas into a single sentence. This would be the header of your book blurb, or the thing you tell your friends when they ask what your story is all about. Pick the most important, most gripping elements of your idea and craft them into a coherent sentence. This condensed concept is called a premise, and you can use it to ask to advertise your story or to receive even more feedback if you wish.
This may take some time, but don’t feel upset if you can’t figure out how to phrase the sentence right away. This kind of thing is meant to take some time. If you’re really struggling to condense everything in your concept, remember that William Faulkner once said: “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” There may be some parts of your concept that can’t make it into the premise. You can’t include the details of every romantic subplot or elaborate villain backstory, otherwise you’d just be writing the whole book.
Include who the main character is, what will happen to them, what theme you will try to convey and nothing beyond that. Your premise should be the very essence of your story, no more and no less.
From your what-if question, to the expanding and strengthening of your idea, all the way to condensing your ideas back into one sentence, this method of thinking is a certified way to create an awesome concept that everyone will want to read someday.
What premise sentence did you end up with? What was your original what-if question? Did you find this workshop to be helpful?
