What is Your Story About?

If you tell someone that you’re writing, or that you’ve written, a book, the inevitable question is always, “What is it about?”

I have a manuscript that I finished in 2006, but it’s a really terrible first draft. It goes all over the place and lacks focus. If someone asked me what it’s about, I’d have several different answers. I may never revisit this manuscript, unless I can figure out what the main point is.

Since writing that mess, I’ve read The Novel Writer’s Toolkit, by Bob Mayer (see my review here). I learned something from his book that I apply to everything I write—I condense the entire story down to three words.

My dusty manuscript has a main character who is naïve. She is married with teenage children, and is a God-fearing woman. Her best friend has never been married because she is caring for her ailing mother, but may as well be part of the family because they do everything together. One day my main character loses her job, and must go to work in another town that is much larger. She is only qualified for entry-level work, so she becomes a file clerk. She meets some edgy people and starts to change. She’s never seen this side of life before, and it’s intriguing.

Of course her family and best friend are wondering about her change in personality. She starts ignoring them, and her best friend sort of takes her place in the family. The main character is infatuated with someone she works with, but he may or may not be interested in her. Her co-workers think she’s odd, and they try to make her what they are. In the end, are they her friends?

What I’ve boiled the entire 90,000 words down to here seems semi-coherent, but if you had to read all 90,000 words, you’d see what muddled chaos is. I can’t tell you what the main point is in three words. It could be that “change isn’t good”, she should “stick with family”, it’s a “mid-life crisis story”, “friends are flighty”, etc. The only one that has any truth with me is the mid-life crisis, but that is so vague and doesn’t bring in the essence of the whole book.

As I said before, I may never go back to this manuscript. But who knows? Maybe I’ll have a great epiphany and it will all come together for me.