I’m going back to look at my story from step one – looking at the premise again. My initial premise was probably too complicated, as I was tempted from that stage to stuff more than was reasonable into the story. Of course, things only ballooned from there.
So, now, I want to go back, make it really simple – and appealing. I think that when I started out on this book, I was too influenced by writing books designed for literary writers where the story is all about character change. Now, I believe that approach does not work for a genre novel in a series. I can’t have too much character change in a single novel, and I certainly can’t focus so much on the character’s personal growth that I neglect the progress of the plot.
My character still needs to grow, but in these early novels, her growth does not have to be personal and emotional, it can be a change in her situation. For example, in this first novel, she will go from being homeless and hunted to finding a place in a secret order that will protect her. That is growth on her path to her ultimate goal and it makes for a more compelling story about being hunted.
So, I need a premise line that fits that journey and I need to make sure that I stick to that part of the story and wander off into her emotional state all of the time.
Since this is all about creating a single, short, sentence, I did not get many words on the page today, but I did re-watch the Premise section of the How to Write a Bestseller course and start playing with the ideas. For now, the result is more important than the word count. I can’t afford to screw up this foundation again and waste another 160 days writing in the wrong direction.