When my younger son was in the first grade, his teacher gave the class a writing assignment that consisted of finishing this sentence:
“The most important thing about [insert your name] is____”
My son, Alex, wrote, “The most important thing about Alex is that he tries really hard.”
Now, eleven years later, as I read over Alex’s draft college essays, I realize that this “most important thing”—he tries really hard—was true about him then and is still true about him now. In fact, this simple sentence manages to sum up and describe so much about who Alex is, what his values are and what drives his choices and actions.
Because it invites such an apt and succinct description of a defining characteristic of the person completing the sentence, this simple first-grade assignment also contains a brilliant nugget of writerly wisdom: at the heart of every character, every scene and every story lies one single Most Important Thing. It could be a sentiment, a motivation, a mood or a source of tension. But whatever it is, there is only one that’s most important.
In drafting stories, with so many strands of inspiration swirling around in our minds, it can be hard to sort out what really matters. Which characters, which scenes, which actions, descriptions, metaphors or dialogue lines are relevant. What lies at the heart of it all and how to stay centered amid the myriad possibilities pulling us in different directions is often nebulous because everything we create and imagine feels precious.
In my own fiction-drafting process, the phrase “the most important thing about X is____” is always on my mind—especially as I re-write, revise and cut. X can be any number of things: a character as a whole, a character’s mood in a particular scene, the relationship between two or more characters, a setting, a prop, a conversation. It may take multiple drafts for that Most Important Thing to become clear, but even in early iterations, I am constantly asking myself what it is. In the early stages the answer informs me about what direction to head in, what overarching choices to make, what to include and whether to continue at all. If I can’t articulate a Most Important Thing, is there a story worth telling?
As I move through the revision process, asking “what’s The Most Important thing about X?” helps me decide what to trim, what to cut, what to add and where to end. There may of course be other important things percolating under the surface, but there is always one that is more important than all the others: the single Most Important Thing. This is the beating heart of any story or story element.
Asking this question helps not only with writing fiction, but also with all other forms of storytelling. At BookSavvy PR, where my team and I promote authors and books, our secret weapon in hooking the media is storytelling. Only rarely do we tell stories about a book overall. Instead, most often, it’s a smaller, bite-sized, sub-story: a snippet of background about the book’s inspiration, for example, or an idea or theme evoked on a certain page. In crafting out pitches, the same question applies: what is the single Most Important Thing we want our media contacts to know right now? Pitches are short, and so is the media’s attention span. Every sentence and every word in the email we send must connect directly back to the Most Important Thing or we’ll lose their attention in a blink.
Ted Talks, Moth Radio narratives, ads, OpEds, short stories, personal essays… Each of these forms of storytelling is also about one single Most Important Thing. Each story wears its heart on its sleeve.
Which brings me back to Alex. When I’m reading his essay drafts, the same principle applies. If I can’t quickly tell what that Most Important Thing is, or if there are details or anecdotes that feel unrelated to it, I take out my trusted red pen.
And Alex, being seventeen, rolls his eyes.
What’s The Most Important Thing about your latest book or current WIP? About your main character or setting? Can you sum it up in several words?
About Sharon Bially
Sharon Bially (@SharonBially) is the founder and president of BookSavvy PR, a public relations firm devoted to authors and books. Author of the novel Veronica’s Nap, she’s a member of the Director's Circle at Grub Street, Inc., the nation’s largest independent writing center, and writes occasionally for the Grub Street Daily.
I’ve been re-crafting my pitch after a first bout of querying and have been learning (or trying hard!!) to switch my brain from writing to selling mode. Pitching is an art and finding that one most important thing is so challenging. You think you have it and then it slips away because as you say, there’s so much going on in a novel. But in my second WIP, I started with that question. It helped me identify why my MC does what she does and and has kept me from going down blind alleys. Going back to identify that ‘thing’ in Book One has has helped me to write the book I’d meant to write all along, and hopefully also figure out how to pitch it. Thanks for this!!
Terrific advice, Sharon! It’s so easy for me, as a mystery author, to get caught up in the devious and the complex. It’s easy to lose sight of the Most Important Thing that’s driving that particular character or scene. Many times I’ll use the secret that I give each character (some point to the crime, some are misdirection) as the way I focus the scenes they’re in…maybe that’s a variation of what you’re talking about.
Best of luck to Alex in his college quest! That process is quite fresh in our minds, now that our youngest is starting his second year of college.
From the mouth of babes! I love the MIT way to help with writing pitches. I have several wips soooo I’ll play:
The MIT about my YA historical is that only in forgiveness is there true movement forward.
The MIT about my chapter book is that despite growing up and innumerable changes, the love between a boy and his cat endures.
I’m going to do this for all my wips. I often start with one idea but underneath it’s about something much deeper. For instance, my newest PB, Little Thief! just out from Reycraft today (squeeee!!!), began as a story about a thieving incident but it’s really about questioning everything, particularly one’s assumptions.
Thanks so much for the MIT.
The most important thing ended up as the second half of my logline: To safeguard a powerful actor, a damaged writer must first salvage herself.
And that just happened the other day, when I’ve already been working on this trilogy for twenty years.
If there is a next time, I think I’ll get it in a bit sooner. Because you’re right – that is The Most Important Thing.
In my defense, the first volume was published in 2015 – my debut.
One has to learn these things.
Thank you, Susan, KB, Vijaya and Alicia for your responses and sharing your stories. I’m glad this resonated.
Vijaya – loving the new acronym MIT!
Best of luck to you all with the WIPs :)
Brilliant, thank you. I am inspired to apply another favourite hack to this one–the rule of 5 whys. For every answer to “the most important thing,” I’ll ask, “And why is that important?” And that? And that? Somewhere hiding in the many layers of the onion, is the heart.