The Writer’s Toolkit: The Alpha and The Omega of your novel

The kernel idea is the Alpha and the Omega of your book.  By that I mean it starts your creative process and it completes it.  It’s what you begin with and at the end of the manuscript, everything in the book points toward it.

The kernel idea is the foundation of your novel.  When I say idea, I don’t necessarily mean the theme, although it can be.  Or the most important incident, although it can be.  But it can also be a setting.  It can be a scene.  It can be a character.

It is simply the first idea you had that was the seed of your novel.  All else can change, but the idea can’t.  It might be a place; a person; an event; a moral; whatever.  But you did have it before you began writing and you must remember it as you write.  If you don’t, your story and style will suffer terribly.  You should be able to tell your idea in one sentence.  And repeat it to yourself every morning when you wake up and prior to writing.  Knowing it will keep you on track.

Every new book I begin, I write out this one sentence on a word document as the very first writing I do.  I print it out and put it where I can constantly see it.

A TEST:  Write down the kernel idea for your book in one sentence.

If you can’t do it, then you need to backtrack through your thought processes and find it, because you had to have had it.  Everything starts from something.  Idea is not story.  Because every idea has been done, but every story hasn’t.  The kernel idea is the one thing in your manuscript that cannot change.

In one of my early novels, the original idea was an action:  What if Special Forces soldiers had to destroy an enemy pipeline? That’s it for Dragon Sim-13.  Not very elaborate, you say.  True.  Not exactly a great moral theme.  Right.  But with that original idea there was a lot I could do and eventually had to do.  I had to change the target country after the first draft.  But that was all right because I still had the idea.  I had to change characters, but that was fine too, because it didn’t change my idea.  I had to change the reason why they were attacking a pipeline, but again, the original idea was the same.

You will have plenty of latitude for story after you come up with your kernel idea; in fact, I sometimes find the finished manuscript turns out to be different from what I had originally envisioned, but one thing is always true: that kernel idea is still there at the end as the Omega.

For my first kernel idea, I made it as simple as possible to enable me to focus on the writing because when I was in the Special Forces my A-Team had run a similar mission on a pipeline.   Since I had a good idea what would happen in the story, I could concentrate on the actual writing of the novel.

I’ve sat in graduate literature classes and heard students say:  “The author had to have a moral point in mind when they wrote that book.”  I agree, but sometimes it is not at the forefront of the story.  Many authors write simply to tell a story started by that kernel idea, which indeed might be a moral point, but sometimes is a story that they wanted to tell and the theme developed subsequently.

A moral or theme (screenwriters call it intent) always does appear in a book by the time it’s done.   No matter what conscious expectations or thoughts an author has when they start writing, a lot more appears in the manuscript than they consciously anticipated.

After you have that kernel idea, you should spend a lot of time wrestling with it and consciously uncover your feelings and thoughts about it.  I try to look at my main characters and determine what will happen to them emotionally, physically and spiritually as they go through the story.  Who are they at the beginning of the story and who are they at the end?

This is an example of being aware of what you are doing.  I said above that not all authors have a conscious theme when they write a novel, but experience has taught me that it is better to have your theme in your conscious mind before you start writing.  It might not be your original idea, but it will definitely affect your characters and story.

The reason it is important to have a theme in mind is because people want to care about what they read and the characters.  If there is some moral or emotional relevance to the story they read, they will become more involved in the story and enjoy it more.  Even if the reader doesn’t consciously see it either.

Using “What if” can be very helpful to clarify your original idea, and also when you try to write your cover letter and synopsis for submission.

Here are some examples of ideas:

• Character:  “A housewife and female assassin must uncover the truth of the men in their lives in order to uncover their destiny.”  Bodyguard of Lies

• Plot:  “What if a Federal agent investigating a murder, finds out it’s connected to an illegal CIA operation?”  Chasing The Ghost

• Setting or scene:  “An international treaty bans weapons in Antarctica:  What if the US put nuclear weapons there and lost track of them?”  Eternity Base

• Intent/Theme:  “Connection leads to a full life.”  Don’t Look Down

• “What If”:  “What if people going into the Witness Protection Program really disappear?”  Cut Out

John Saul at the Maui Writer’s Retreat ran a seminar called “What if?” where he had writers put their one sentence up on butcher paper and analyzed it.  He made sure every word in the sentence meant something.  For example:

What if Mary has to stop a band of terrorists?

How could this be improved?  What does Mary mean?  How about ‘a housewife’?  How about making her a special housewife with an anomaly:  What if an obsessive-compulsive housewife?  However, that term hints at a comedic tone.

Stop a band of terrorists from what?  How about ‘assassinating the president’? so we understand what’s at stake.

This gives us:  What if a obsessive-compulsive housewife has to stop a band of terrorists from assassinating the President? That pops, but it makes me wonder how we balance the comedic possibility of the OCD with the high stakes thriller of the assassination?  Do you see how your idea raises questions?  Both good and bad.

Sometimes the original idea could even be a way to tell a story, rather than the story itself.  Telling the same story from two different perspectives, usually presents two different stories.  For example, an original idea is “What if a person with limited mental capacity interacts with the world?”  In the film A Dangerous Woman (film works the same way) shows normal, everyday life with the main character being a woman who always tells the truth.  You want to talk about someone who is dangerous.  Think about it.  The film is an excellent portrayal of our society, but the idea was the different perspective.  What was Forrest Gump about?  It had the same basic what if.  Wasn’t it the main character’s perspective that made the story, rather than the actual events?

A different point of view can be a way to tell a story that’s already been done in a fresh way.  In Beowulf the monster had his story to tell and John Gardner did it in Grendel.  Who was the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre?  She had her story and Jean Rhys told it in Wide Sargasso Sea. Jane Smiley put King Lear on a present day farm and called it A Thousand Acres.

Whenever I watch a film or video I try to figure out what the original idea the first screenwriter had.  For example, in the movie True Romance written by Quentin Torrentino, there is a scene at the end where there are four groups of people in a room all pointing guns at each other in a classic Mexican standoff.  Rewatching the film, I can see the entire movie driving to that one climactic scene.  In an interview, Torrentino said that scene was the kernel idea.  He didn’t know who the people with the guns were (that’s character); where the room was (setting); why they were in the room (motivation); whether it was the beginning, end or middle of the movie (story and plot); what the result of this stand-off would be; etc. etc.  He just had this vision to start with.

Here is the clip. Warning there is a fair amount of bad language.

When I watched the movie The Matrix, the scene that stuck out to me was where all those people were plugged and being tapped for their electrical power.  I almost sense that was the kernel idea—the screenwriter read or heard that the human body produced X amount of electricity and sat down and thought what he could do with that idea.  I think he then came up with the concept of the Matrix itself as a follow on.

Let me give you more examples of ideas I’ve used and gotten published:

What if the force that destroyed Atlantis ten thousand years ago comes back and threatens our world?  Atlantis series of books.

What if mankind didn’t originate the way we think we did?  Area 51 series.

What if Japan succeeded in its atomic bomb program at the very end of World War II and one of those bombs was hidden at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge?  The Gate

Original ideas, especially for genre books, should be exciting.

How about this:  Jaws meets Jurassic Park?  That was the idea behind a blockbuster novel some years ago: Meg. Combining two great ideas into something new is a technique many bestselling writers use.

A critical question I often ask writers at conferences and workshops is:  Why did you write this book?  I have found that writers tend to get lost among the trees once they enter the forest that a novel is, and they forget why they started the journey in the first place.  Something excited you enough at the very beginning, enough that you ended up sitting down and writing thousands upon thousands of words.  What was it?

Another way to try to figure out what the core of your novel is this:  What is the climactic scene?  This is when the protagonist and antagonist meet to resolve the primary problem that is the crux of the novel.  This is what the entire book is driving towards.

Beware the Fictional Memoir:

First novels tend to be blood-lettings.  You go to a therapist and she tells you to keep a journal.  Three years later, when you’re feeling better, you believe your journal is so fascinating, that it should be made into a novel.

Not.

Well, okay, occasionally, it is that fascinating.  But rarely.  Usually the fictional memoir is focused on the writer, not the reader.  Most of our lives aren’t that interesting.

I said that the kernel idea is not necessarily the theme of the book.  It can be, but the two are not necessarily synonymous.  If they aren’t then, again as I said above, you should know what your theme is anyway.

Instead of the word theme though, I like to use a term I’ve stolen from screenwriters and that is INTENT.  It took me almost ten years of writing and 15 manuscripts to realize the absolute critical importance of having an intent to my stories, beyond the one I used to hold onto of simply being entertaining.  And having that intent in my conscious mind.

I’ve heard someone in the screenwriting business say you should be able to state your intent in three words.  For example:

Love conquers all.

Honesty defeats greed.

There are others who say you need to be able to state it in one word:

Relationships.

Honesty.

Faith.

Fathers.

Think about what you want the reader to feel when they’ve finished you book.  Filmmakers have to think about what they want the viewer to feel when they walk out of the theater.  This is one reason there are so few negative endings in films.  That’s not to say you can’t have a dark ending.  It’s more to point out that you need to be aware of the effect of a dark ending.

I’ve seen some excellent films where the ending was dark and bleak– and often most realistic– but most of those films were not box office blockbusters.  The original screenplay for Pretty Woman was called Five Thousand Dollars.  And the Richard Gere character drives away at the end.  Realistic, yes.  Would it have succeeded as much as the rewrite?

I’m not saying you have to have happy endings and make your reader happy.  I’m saying you have to know what feeling you want the reader to experience and make sure you deliver.  Larry McMurtry is a master writer and most of his stories have rather bleak endings.

I think that the more negative the intent, the better you have to be as a writer to keep the reader involved.  To take readers on a dark and relatively unhappy journey, you have to be very good to keep them in the boat.

Where’s the shiver?

What excited you so much that you decided to sit in the dark and writer 100,00 words.  That’s not normal, in case no one’s told you.  What excites people you talk to about your book?  I know I’m on target with an idea if others pick up my excitement when I discuss it.

Remember, as a writer, you are selling emotion and logic.  And Kirk always trumps Spock.

A key to selling your book is being able to communicate this shiver to other people.  To get them as excited as you were when you first began writing.

The longer I’ve been in this business, the more I’ve realized that it is one based not on logic, but on emotion.  That is why predicting if a book will sell or if a movie will be a blockbuster is so difficult.  The more a reader feels about a book, the more he or she will get into it.  I believe feeling comes out of the three aspects of a novel:

1. Idea.
2. Intent.
3. Characters.

Most particularly the third factor.  If you know and, more importantly, have a good “feel” for each of these three before you begin writing, you increase the quality of your work.

How is the Kernel Idea the Omega of your book?  Because everything you put into that story has to support that one idea.  This keeps your book focused and tight.  You keep a consistent theme and tone.  As you write, and especially once the first draft is done, you have to ask yourself if every scene supports the Kernel Idea.  If it doesn’t, no matter how brilliantly written that scene is, you must get rid of it.

Write It Forward