You’ve scanned the internet for help to make your decision, but seriously, how do you choose whether to turn your idea into a novel?
By: Grant P. Ferguson
Date: August 28, 2024
It’s not magic. You don’t need a committee to hash out the details. Instead, ‘Validate Premise’ is the second step in the Trellis Method, and one you don’t want to skip.
When you validate your premise, it turns an idea into your strategic guide, one that will lead you from the start to the finish of writing a full-length novel.
Decide Whether to Turn Your Idea into a Novel
As with most things in life, a process replaces worry with an action plan.
When you validate a premise, you’re following in the footsteps of some great writing teachers, such as scriptwriter Blake Snyder. For instance, in his classic book Save The Cat!*, Snyder wrote:
“The premise of a movie, its ‘What is it?,’ can only be proven to be satisfying when we see it in action. What is fun, catchy, or hooks our interest about a movie’s poster must be paid off once we get inside the theater. If it is not paid off, we the audience will consider it to be a bad experience. We will feel cheated. The promise of the premise are those scenes or scene sequences that exploit the premise to its maximum and are usually found in the fun and games section (pages 30-55) of a screenplay. This is the point where we understand fully what this movie is about. This is why we bought our tickets.”
Validate Premise then Turn an Idea into a Novel
Another excellent writing teacher, John Truby, gave us the premise validation process, and in his book The Anatomy of Story*, Truby wrote:
“The premise is your story stated in one sentence. It is the simplest combination of character and plot and typically consists of some event that starts the action, some sense of the main character, and some sense of the outcome of the story.”
Then Truby provided these useful examples:
The Godfather: The youngest son of a Mafia family takes revenge on the men who shot his father and becomes the new Godfather.
Moonstruck: While her fiancé visits his mother in Italy, a woman falls in love with the man’s brother.
Casablanca: A tough American expatriate rediscovers an old flame only to give her up so that he can fight the Nazis.
A Streetcar Named Desire: An aging beauty tries to get a man to marry her while under constant attack from her sister’s brutish husband.
Star Wars: When a princess falls into mortal danger, a young man uses his skills as a fighter to save her and defeat the evil forces of a galactic empire.
What’s wonderful about these examples is we can view the films and discern their premises in a few hours instead of spending days or weeks reading the novels.
The Importance of a Validated Premise
In The Anatomy of Story, Truby made this bold statement.
“What you choose to write about is far more important than any decision you make about how to write it.”
My mind translates Truby’s statement into this…
Writing principle: Validate your premise before you write.
After all, unqualified ideas are a dime-a-dozen, but a validated premise serves as your writing strategy, and that’s priceless!
Create Your Story’s Premise
Truby coaches how to turn an idea into a premise using these steps:
- Write something that may change your life and look for what’s possible.
- Identify the story challenges and problems.
- Find the designing principle. (Your overall story strategy, stated in one line, is what organizes the narrative and makes it original.)
- Determine your best character in the idea.
- Gain a sense of the central conflict.
- Identify the single cause-and-effect pathway.
- Determine your hero’s character change.
- Figure out the hero’s possible moral choice.
- Gauge the audience appeal.
Based on Truby’s advice, here’s my infographic of the recommended actions:
Turn Your Idea into a Novel Readers Will Love
An overwhelming number of top writers master their chosen genres.
That means they’ve read, adopted, and adapted the time-tested masterworks to come up with fresh approaches to telling great stories. The best storytellers win the war of commercial fiction, and you can adopt their practices too. For example:
- Understand how and why your competitors tell their stories the way they do.
- Choose to write, but tweak your story in fresh ways.
- Take to heart target audience comments and tell stores that not only satisfy their expectations, but surprise and delight readers.
How to Gauge Your Book’s Audience Appeal
A big mistake writers often make is thinking their idea will automatically have audience appeal.
Fortunately, we have an enormous database on Amazon brimming with examples of what readers not only want to read but will purchase. Follow these steps to validate your carefully constructed premise to determine if readers buy books like your premise.
- Visit Amazon and type into the search box key phrases from your premise.
- Analyze the sales page for each book by viewing the ‘ranking’ shown down in the Product details section (e.g., The Da Vinci Code ranks #86 in Historical Mysteries as of August 22, 2024).
- Outflank your competitors by identifying in the reviews what readers like and dislike, and then write to exceed those audience expectations.
You can keep track of your discoveries in a text file or organize the findings in a spreadsheet, but most importantly, do this:
Writing Principle: Define how you’ll set your book apart from the competition.
Validate Your Premise Using Three Criteria
If you want to save hours, improve research results, and increase your confidence, consider the three validation criteria offered by the creator of Publisher Rocket*, Dave Chesson.
Pre-existing Market: A pre-existing market is proof that people are actively looking for your kind of book. They are searching the internet and trying to find the subject you are thinking about writing.
Proof that the market will pay: There are many things out there that people type in that they don’t intend to pay for. Sometimes they do, but they find they can get it for free somewhere else. With this [process], you want to verify that your idea is profitable, and the market will pay you what you think it is worth.
Low enough competition: Even if there is a hungry market that will pay for your book, if there is too much competition or the competition is too good, then your idea will sink. A book on “How to Lose Weight” may have lots of people willing to pay for it, but your book will never be discovered in the sea of other “How to Lose Weight” books.
Try a Manual Search to Validate Your Story Idea
Type your story idea into the Amazon search field and you’ll see the platform auto-complete the phrase with what shoppers entered.
For example, let’s say your idea is a cozy mystery where the murder takes place at a local sushi bar.
- As you type ‘murder at’ into the search box, Amazon starts auto-completing your phrase with several possibilities.
- Data: … the pumpkin pageant, … the white palace, … Karlov manor mtg, … the book club, … The Vicarage by Agatha Christie, … The Breakers, … Vinland by Alyssa Maxwell, … The White Palace by Allison Montclair, … Spindle Manor, … Vinland
- Conclusion: You do not have an actionable sense of how many people actually searched for these phrases.
- You can force Amazon’s search box to give you another range of answers by entering an additional letter (e.g., ‘murder at a’), and you’ll often see several additional possibilities.
- Data: … a cape book store, … an Irish wedding, … an Irish Christmas, … an Irish bakery, … an Irish baker by Carlene O’Connor, … an Irish chipper, … an English pub, … Ashton steeple Heathcliff Lennox, … a Scottish castle, … Archly manor
- Conclusion: You may see nothing that helps you decide if your story idea is valid.
- If you type ‘murder at a sushi bar’ into the search box, you would expect to see more auto-complete possibilities.
- Data: Amazon’s search engine listed nothing else.
- Conclusion: If you hit enter, the results page shows a list of books that have nothing to do with either sushi or sushi bar.
Questionable Results from a Manual Search
You could type ‘murder at’ followed by one letter of the alphabet and discover many possibilities, including books that might parallel or compete with your story idea.
Still, it’s unlikely your research will produce enough quality information for decision making, and that’s frustrating to spend all that time if you can’t:
- Discover a pre-existing market.
- Find out whether people will pay for your story idea.
- Determine if the competition will allow your book to compete successfully.
Fortunately, there’s an app that helps you:
- Identify the actual keywords people type into Amazon to search for books.
- Decide whether your story idea is viable commercially.
- Determine if the competition allows enough room for your book to succeed.
Use Publisher Rocket to Validate Your Story Idea
The Publisher Rocket app captures the key phrases people type into Amazon’s search engine and converts those details into information you can use to validate your premise.
For example:
- Publisher Rocket lists all of Amazon’s auto-complete suggestions.
- The software tells you how many people typed keyword phrase into Amazon each month.
- The app makes it easy for you to interpret the results by color coding the keywords that are more likely to work.
Here’s an example of Publisher Rocket’s results when you type ‘murder at’ into Amazon’s search box:
Searches that Shout ‘NO GO!’ for a Story Idea
If we enter ‘murder at a sushi bar’ into Publisher Rocket, we get this result:
This result shouts ‘NO GO! and we need to search for an idea with more potential.
Search for Profitability and Competition
Publisher Rocket enables you to test whether a story idea has potential profitability and reasonable competition.
Step 1. As an example, let’s type the keyword phrase ‘murder mystery’ into Publisher Rocket’s Keyword Search field.
Step 2. We review the results, and keep searching for a satisfactory combination of the ‘Average Monthly Earnings,’ the ‘Number of Competitors,’ and the ‘Competitive Score.’
Note: Ideally, you want to find keyword phrases for a story idea that has a reasonable ‘Number of competitors’ (i.e., a pre-existing market), a high number of ‘Estimated Amazon Searches/Month’ (i.e., people hunt using a specific keyword phrase), a low ‘Competitive Score’ (i.e., you have a favorable chance to enter this market).
Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you find the right combination of story idea that allows you the greatest potential to discover a pre-existing market, prove people will pay for your story idea, and the competition is low enough for your book to compete.
Research the Potential of Story Ideas You Like
I love a good murder mystery, so let’s see what Publisher Rocket shows for the keyword phrase ‘murder mystery’ as we scan down the multiple pages.
Two of the listings show green codes for the Estimated Monthly Earnings and Competitive Score.
- The keyword phrase ‘murder mystery cruise ship’ gives us green highlights for the ‘Estimated Amazon Searches/Month’ and the ‘Competitive Score.’ However, the ‘Average Monthly Earnings’ are only $237.
- The keyword phrase ‘murder mystery for teens’ has green highlights for the ‘Estimated Amazon Searches/Month’ and ‘Competitive Score,’ plus the ‘Average Monthly Earnings’ increases to $3,282.
The excellent potential for the second keyword phrase deserves more research.
Use Publisher Rocket to Mine Gold from the Data
The estimated monthly revenue of $3,282 tied to the keyword phrase ‘murder mystery for teens’ suggests an opportunity to mine for more insights.
With a quick click, Publisher Rocket provided this information based on the keyword ‘murder mystery for teens:’
We’re looking for ways to turn your idea into a novel, and Holly Jackson’s results stand out, so I entered her name into the Competition Analyzer and here’s the first page of the results.
In the next phase of our research, here’s what happens when you click the ‘Check it out’ button for this author:
- Each click opens your default browser to Amazon’s sales page for that book.
- Once on the page, you can see the many details, including the book cover, sales blurb, book sales ranking, and the target audience reviews.
- By viewing the sales page for each book, you can learn more about Holly Jackson’s writing style and her fans.
As you research top-selling novels, you’ll gain more market-proven ideas, concepts that have already proven successful, like the keyword phrase ‘murder mystery for teens.’
Validate Premise and Turn Your Idea into a Novel
Consider the principle of finding your premise’s ‘sweet spot’ before you start writing.
Are there exceptions to this writing principle?
It’s a principle, not a rule, so there’s bound to be exceptions, but if your goal is to write a book readers will love, do the research first.
- Find a pre-existing market.
- Choose a keyword phrase used by people who buy books.
- Make sure the market has room for your book to get noticed.
And if you want to simplify the process, blast off with Publisher Rocket*.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll enjoy the ride!
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How do you go about creating the premise for your story idea and how much effort do you put into validating the concept before you write?
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