Neil Turner asked Neil Turner:

How do you decide if a plot idea will make a good novel?

Neil Turner What a great question! I play something of a game with myself when I land on an intriguing potential novel idea. Step one is posing a string of questions to myself to work through possibilities. Some examples are: What if this were to happen? And then what? Who would do this or that? What does the protagonist want/need to achieve? Who and/or what stands in the way of the protagonist achieving his or her goals? How will our hero overcome this opposition? What can go wrong to make it harder? What will make the situation worse? How can I make things desperate! If I feel confident the idea can be developed into a full length novel, I’ll flag it as a potential book and allow the idea to further develop. By whatever alchemy these things work themselves out, a point will come where the story crystalizes, and then it’s time to start writing. Sometimes the idea works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

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