As a writer, the hardest choice to make is what to write about. Ideas for novels are everywhere, but can they be developed into a good story? How do we choose the best ideas for the best chance of success?

Way back in 2019, I wrote review of Erik Brok’s book , “The idea – the seven elements of a viable story for screen, stage or fiction”. https://jmjwilliamson.com/2016/03/12/creative-story-ideas/

Bork identifies 7 attributes of a good story ideas with the acronym PROBLEM:

• Punishing. The character must be driven to their limits. During the story, they should develop an all consuming desire to deal with the problem or opportunity despite the potential consequences of failure. That means pain and suffering and dealing with almost impossible opposition.
• Relatable. The characters should be engaging such that the reader/ audience can connect with them and relate to their dilemmas. That means they should have some redeeming qualities, but should not be flawless. They need to be human.
• Original. They’re a very few truly original plots left today. But the story should at least be fresh approach to an existing problem.
• Believable. It must be plausible in the reader’s/ audience’s mind.
• Life altering. It must be in a life changing experience for the character. The stakes should be life or death in a literal or figurative sense.
• Entertaining. I prefer the word ‘emotional’. It must spark an emotional response from the audience/reader.
• Meaningful. It should explore elements of human nature that the reader/audience can relate to.

The next stage is to develop a story premise: a one liner to describe the story. These are often referred to as log lines. The three components of a longline are, the protagonist, their goal, and central conflict.

Here are some examples taken from the Industrial Scripts website:

“The aging patriarch of an organised crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.” The Godfather

“A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.” Titanic

“A fashionable sorority queen is dumped by her boyfriend and so decides to follow him to law school, where she figures out that there is more to her than just looks.” Legally Blonde

“A computer hacker is led by a stranger to a forbidding underworld, where he discovers the shocking truth – the life he knows is an elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.” The Matrix

“A young man is transported to the past, where he must reunite his parents before he and his future cease to exist.” Back to the Future.

Industrial Scripts

So, can you develop a longline for your story? If you were seeing it for the first time, does it grab your attention? Hopefully the answer to that question is ‘yes’. If so, we can move on.

A story premise is useful in that it identifies, the main character and his goal and gives and idea about the central problem that will form the guts of the story. But it doesn’t tell you how that central problem will develop and escalate over the course of the story, or how the story will end. That’s next.

All stories are about a central problem or opportunity that is so big that it will take over the lives of our main characters. The central problem needs to escalate during the course of the story until finally it reaches a climatic point and is resolved.

This escalation usually arises as a result of a major reversal or revelation at the mid point of the story – a complication that raises the stakes at risk for the protagonist. It also changes their perception of the problem and gives them some insight into their failings. It’s like climbing a mountain only to find that you have only scaled the foot hills, and the mountain (the real problem) now towers up in front of you.

In Star Wars New Hope the Mid Point was being caught in the tractor beam of the Death Star and later finding out that Princess Leia was been held and awaiting termination. It sent the story in a whole new direction – a new goal to rescue the princess.

So now your know the central conflict, and how it will escalate. The next thing to this about is how the story will end? Maybe the good guys will win and ride away into the sunset, or lovers finally commit to each other. Sounds very predictable, but don’t make it too predictable. Give the reader/ audience the emotional payoff they expected from the ending, but maybe your can have some surprise value in the ‘how’ you bring that about.

So, we have a story premise, or log line, a good understanding of the central conflict and how it will escalate, and an idea about the ending. By this stage you should be able to decide whether your big idea will work or not. If not, it’s back to that list of unexplored ideas, which I hope you have been keeping.

A great idea will not guarantee success as a writer. There is still the major task of taking the idea and implementing it into a polished draft. And that requires immense creative wordsmith skills. JK Rowling is not successful writer because she came up with a good idea – a school for wizards. She is undoubtedly and amazing wordsmith.

But as a writer if you start with an idea that doesn’t have a chance of working, then it will almost certainly lead to failure.