I’m in Indianapolis this weekend for the joint board meeting of American Christian Fiction Writers (I sit on the advisory board and we’re meeting with the operating board to set the vision for the coming year). We’re in the hotel we’ll be using for our national conference in September. From where I’m sitting in my room, I can see the state capitol building just across the street. I’m really excited to see how the conference is shaping up. More on that in the coming months.
I’ve got a few minutes free right now to critique another one-sentence Storyline — something we’ve been doing here for the last couple of weeks.
Today’s entry is by Rob, who posted this Storyline:
A young father searching for his abducted toddler son becomes the pawn in a terrorist plot to bomb a crowded NASCAR speedway.
Randy sez: I like this. Let’s look at the parts to see what makes this work well:
“A young father” is a strong lead. I constantly hear the comment that “young father” is redundant, since we see shortly that he’s the father of a toddler. My response to that is, “So what?” Redundancy isn’t always a bad thing. My experience is that when you’re describing your lead character, if you haven’t got any other adjectives to make him or her more precise, the word “young” is almost alway a help (if the character actually is young). I’d guess that’s because America is a youth-oriented culture. So I favor keeping it “young father.”
The phrase “searching for his abducted toddler” is very strong, for all kinds of reasons. This pushes the emotional hot buttons for anyone who’s ever been a parent and for most people who haven’t been parents.
The phrase “becomes the pawn in a terrorist plot to bomb a crowded NASCAR speedway” is also strong. It’s a little wordy. It might be possible to shave a word off here or there. But count the emotive words: “pawn” and “terrorist” and “plot” and “bomb” and “crowded”.
The word NASCAR is specific and concrete and it suggests that our author knows something about racing and will put it into the novel. If Rob had said merely “a major sporting event,” that would work less well because it’s less specific. You might imagine that “a major sporting event” would appeal to more readers than “a NASCAR” event. Not really. “A major sporting event” is squishy and out of focus. Rob has this story sharply in focus. This Storyline will appeal to a lot of people just because of the strong thriller element. It will appeal massively to racing fans who like suspense.
Good job, Rob! In 22 words, you’ve shown us both the personal and the public stakes for this novel. If I saw this book on the shelf with this sort of ad copy, I’d open the book to see if I like the writing. That’s the job of a one-sentence Storyline. If you sell this book to a publisher, your editor will know exactly how to position the book and both the Marketing and Sales directors will know how to do their jobs.
🙂 Cool. Thank you very much. I’ll tell ya, this boiling a novel down to one sentence is hard. But this has really helped me write the book and keep me on track. I’ll never start another novel without doing this first.
I loved you one line sentence, Rob. It really does spark the interest of the reader.
When I first read your storyline, Rob, I thought it sounded pretty tight and to the point. So of course I felt great when I read Randy’s critique. Now, to do that for my own novel …
I usually learn something from these exercises, and what I learned this time came in the Randy’s last graph:
“In 22 words, you’ve shown us both the personal and the public stakes for this novel … your editor will know exactly how to position the book and both the Marketing and Sales directors will know how to do their jobs.”
Those are important points to have in line: personal stakes, public stakes, positioning of the book, and marketing/sales focus. Almost like having your engines fired up and ready to go at the starting line.
Nice work.
Randy,
I think it is pretty cool that you critique individual works for people on your blog. It not only helps the person you are critiquing, but the readers as well.
I will be in Asheville, NC on April 21st, doing a workshop for the Eastern Regional Retired Teacher’s Conference. The NEA in Washington D.C. emailed me and invited me to do it. All payed for. I could get used to this! I will be doing the workshop on why I wrote a book; how I got it published, and will be encouraging the attendees to write. There is an overflow crowd of 50 or more people signed up for the workshop.
Great exposure for my book, and I can even do some pre-sales. Life is good.
Doug Bolton
I have a question about the conference: I don’t see any pricing information or anywhere to pay. Am I missing something or is this not up yet?
I agree with Randy’s comments, but find that my first reaction to the story is to wonder what on earth searching for a kidnapped child has to do with getting on the radar of a terrorist group. The conclusion doesn’t seem to follow from the premise. Speaking just for me, the disconnect is large enough that I wouldn’t necessarily want to pick up the book to find out how the author does make the connection.
Perhaps it’s an audience thing — I’m simply not in the audience Rob is after — though I do speak as someone who likes reading thrillers, and also police or detective stories about, sometimes, kidnapped children.
It’s not something that Robert Parker did (if there was a kidnapped child, he stayed with that thread), though it might come close to what Dick Francis did — matching up close observation of an industry (horse racing, in his case) with the wrongdoing plot.
I only take issue with the first portion of Randy’s critique. “Young father” is not redundant. It’s assumed erroneously that the father of a toddler is young. He may not be. My father turned 51 the year I was born.