SAMPLE NOVEL WORKUP

Premise (What your story is about in no more than four sentences: Your Title. Your premise here. (SAMPLE: A woman, adopted as an infant, unknowingly traces the roots of her identical twin and mistakes the path for hers.)

Decide when:

Decide where:

Decide who:

Elements in the story: (EXAMPLES: A kidnapping, white enslavement, pirate attack, bombardment, etc.)

Ask Logical Questions about the premise:

SAMPLE:

How do twins get separated as babies?

The Possibilities:

-1. Typical: One was stolen and kept by the kidnappers.

-2. Typical: One was stolen, sold, and later adopted out for profit.

-3. Typical: One was given up [or both to separate individuals] due to poverty.

-4. Used: Each parent, after a divorce, takes one [Walt Disney’s Parent Trap].

-5. Mildly Wild: One was thought dead in a hospital emergency, but lived.

-6. Mildly Wild: Both were stolen to be killed because they were heirs to a royal position someone else wanted for their own offspring.

-7. Very Wild: One was lost in a gambling bet (the actual one chosen for the premise).

SAMPLE QUESTIONS:

Questions of Circumstance (the logic that brought things about):

1.

2.

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4.

Questions of plot (action that moves the story):

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2.

3.

4.