You have an idea. It's got claws. It won't let go. Or maybe you've got a drawer full of ideas and you don't know which one deserves the years you're about to pour into it.
Before you bet your life on a premise, run it through these eight tests. If it can't pass every one, pick another idea. Maybe you strip that concept down and build it back until it does. Either way, you'll know.
The Dinner Party Test
Get some people in a room. Feed them. Then tell them you've been reading something wild. Give them your premise. Not your idea. Don't say it's yours. You want the raw reaction, the unguarded "what is that?" or the polite silence that means they'd never crack that book.
Here's the trick. Don't describe what the book is about. "A girl fights in a death competition" doesn't sell. "To save her sister, a girl must murder twenty-three children on live TV while the rich place bets on who dies first" does.
One sentence. One hook. Something that makes them ask what book it is. Then you get to say it doesn't exist yet, but it's going to be yours.
Most writers learn to pitch after the book is done. You're testing the pitch before you write a word. That test can save you years.
The Right Person Test
This one can sting. Ask yourself, am I the right person to write this novel? You might love sci-fi and not know a quark from a proton. You might devour historical epics and know almost nothing about history.
Loving a genre and being able to write it are not the same thing. You have to be brutal. Separate what you enjoy reading from what you're actually equipped to write. Sometimes they line up. Sometimes they don't.
An editor once worked with a writer who was brilliant at small details and interior reflection but terrible at plot. She was writing a commercial, action-driven thriller. The editor helped her finish that book, then told her to consider something more character-driven next time, something that played to her strengths.
So ask yourself, does this idea fit who I am on the page? Ask this as well. How many books in this genre have I read? If the number isn't at least thirty, you don't have enough of a map. You need to know the territory before you can plant your flag.
The Wow Factor Test
What is the wow? What makes this book something a reader has to have? You don't need five of these. One or two can carry the whole thing.
Premise is a high concept that grabs the imagination at once. Think of a star suddenly wrapped in a giant sphere, an alien civilization trapping another inside. That's a premise.
Or a strong plot. One huge twist or reveal. Gone Girl turns on a mid-book shock that becomes the engine for everything that follows. Or a setting so vivid and strange it does the work. A city in two layers, echoes and mirrors, characters moving between them.
Or a character. Someone so charismatic, so maddening, so unreliable that the book lives and dies with them. A Confederacy of Dunces leans on Ignatius J. Reilly and nothing else.
Or a style. Clipped. Short. Lots of white space. Distinct. Dark Matter works as much on how it's written as on what happens. Find your wow. If you can't name at least one, the idea might not be ready.
The Weight Test
Does the book have weight? Weight comes from somewhere. It comes from personal baggage. You went through a divorce and you're writing about divorce. That investment shows. The reader feels it.
Select a topic you care about so much that it gives you fuel to reach the end. Trafficked children. Free speech. The environment. Whatever you're willing to fight for on the page. Or it can come from controversy. Politics. Religion. Those hot buttons give you something to wrestle with.
Now imagine two things. First, you're still writing this book three, four, five years from now. Do you still want to be in that room with it? Second, you're on your deathbed. Do you regret not leaving this one behind?
If you don't feel life-or-death stakes in writing it, you might not have the passion to finish. Weight is what keeps you in the chair when the middle sags and the ending feels impossible.
The Town Versus the Brick Test
Your first novel is not the place for a nine-hundred-page epic with twenty-seven main characters. The more you try to build, the more it can collapse. The harder it is to finish. The harder it is to sell.
Do you want this book to be a practice run you eventually abandon, or do you want to publish it? Tighten the scope. Go narrower. Tell one story inside the big world you see. Save the gargantuan beast for book three or four.
There's a moment in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where someone can't describe a town. The advice is simple. You're trying to do too much. Don't describe the town. Describe the main street. Or just the bank. Or just the front of the bank. Or maybe that's still too much.
Pick one brick in the facade. Describe that brick. Its texture. Its crack. From that one brick, with enough care, the whole town opens up.
Focus on the brick in your novel. Your book becomes manageable. You can actually finish. You can actually close. Some writers are great at opening and terrible at closing. Don't be one of them. Be a closer.
The Common Denominator Test
Are there books like yours? Writers often say no one has ever written anything like this. Usually, that's not a good sign. It might mean there's no audience. It might mean they haven't read enough.
Originality matters. A fresh twist on a known kind of story is exactly what you want. But something that has no cousins on the shelf is a red flag.
Find your comp titles. Books that sit in the same conversation as yours. They don't have to be identical. They just have to be similar enough that their readers might want yours.
This is about marketability. In traditional publishing, it's often the marketers who have the final say. If they don't know who to sell it to, the editor might not get to buy it. Even if you self-publish, you need to know who your readers are. The best way to find them is to find the books they already love.
The Forget About It Test
Can you forget your novel idea? If you can, you probably should. The ideas that matter are the ones that won't leave. The earworms. The ones your subconscious keeps pushing to the front. Those are the ones it's telling you to write.
Leave the idea alone for a few weeks. See if it keeps coming back. Or keep a list of every idea you have. Every few months, read through the list.
Some will look embarrassing. You'll wonder why you ever thought they were good. Others will still have legs. You'll know you could write the hell out of that one.
The forget-about-it test is a way to check if your subconscious is on board. If your conscious mind says yes and your subconscious keeps drifting away, listen to the doubt. Your subconscious knows which stories have power for you. If it won't stop reminding you, that's the sign.
The Scene Test
Can you list five scenes from your unwritten novel that you are genuinely excited to write? Not generic beats. Not "the big confrontation" or "the inciting incident" or "the climax". You need specific moments. This scene. These two characters. This place. This thing that happens.
For example, imagine a fight between a couple when she finds he's been wearing her dead mother's glasses. If you can't name at least five scenes that are concrete and electric, you're probably not ready to start. You need a deep well of excitement to get through a whole novel. Those five scenes are your head start. They're the proof that the idea has enough heat to carry you to the end.
Run your idea through all eight. If it passes, you've got something worth the gamble. If it doesn't, you've just saved yourself a long walk down the wrong road. Either way, you're no longer guessing. You're choosing.
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