Welcome to the very first day of PREPTOBER! This is a series of daily questions and prompts to help you prepare for this year’s upcoming NaNoWriMo!
Today’s question is:
What is the number one thing people should know about your book and your main character? What is their defining detail?
Feel free to share your answer in the comments! I would love to see what you are working on!
I’m not asking these questions for my own health. There is a method to the madness.
The reason why it may be helpful for you to think about this question is that it will help give your story focus. What I am really asking for is what is the flavor of your story?
For instance, when I think of Harry Potter I think of whimsy, when I think of the Hunger Games I think of— well hunger. When I think Star Wars I think Space.
And each of these words helps focus the story. We can see this flavor palate extending to each of the stories I shared above.
Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone for example screams whimsy. From the internal alliterations of Harry Potter to the mystical, whimsical notion of the legendary Sorcerer’s Stone, we can capture the tone of the book easily.
This of course extends to the content, Harry Potter is filled with ordinary objects that suddenly hold new often silly meanings (Like the Toilet Entrance to the Ministry of Magic, The Weasley’s House, The Flying Car, Quidditch, Platform 9 3/4). And that one word, Whimsy, seems to hold the entire story in focus. Or at the very least, it is the element that separates it from other wizard/magic/fantasy stories.
For The Hunger Games, I think hunger, survival, starvation, deprivation, kill or be killed, and survival of the fittest. All of these ideas can be encompassed by that one word which is cleverly used as the title and the name of the competition. It perfectly encapsulates the tone of the book.
Star Wars, even though there is not much talk of space, takes place in space. It is often referred to as a space opera, and much of the plot doesn’t work if it’s not in space.
This may seem a bit obvious when I refer to these examples. But when it comes to your own story, you may struggle to find that one defining word or detail that truly dictates the tone, feel, and flavor of your story.
Share this post with a friend so that we can all write together!