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Here’s my book premise. Would you want to read it?
Young and confident missionary Evelyn Kendsol is contributing to the War effort in the Australian Women’s Land Army, but desperately wants to help people medically. When the Japanese bomb Darwin, she is finally allowed to become an army nurse. With Japanese soldiers close on her heels, Eve must safely destroy the contents of a mysterious safe and save the Pacific before disaster strikes.Official Member of the Certified Club of Aussie Kapeefers
@clairec I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “alternative history”. If you just mean historical fiction, I think this sounds like a cool book. If you mean you are going to totally mix up major historical events, that’s probably not the best idea.
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I would read it, but I would advise making the last line a little more dramatic. Maybe give a little more info without giving everything away? We don’t quite know what is at stake here.
@ClaireC it sounds very interesting— not the typical nurse/patriot/combat story premise, which perhaps is what you meant when you said ‘alternative… premise’?
@clairec I would definitely read your novel! It sounds very interesting. 🙂
Hmmm…maybe. I might be more interested in reading a book like that if it had more about the character’s personality or struggles on there. Though I don’t know if that’s something you could put on it or not…
And also, if the Japanese bombing Darwin isn’t something that really happened, I don’t know if I’d like it; I don’t care all that much for invented history, because if it’s historical fiction, I like the events around it to actually have happened. 🙂
This sounds like a great book, @clairec! My suggestions, if you will accept, are these.
When the Japanese bomb Darwin, she is finally allowed to become an army nurse.
I had to read this at least ten times, thinking that the Japanese bomb was named Darwin. You might want to put, ‘When the Japanese bomb Darwin, Australia, she is finally allowed to become and army nurse.
Secondly, why isn’t she allowed to be a nurse in the first place. When people join the army, can’t they fill out an application with preferences or something like that?☀ ☀ ☀ ENFP ☀ ☀ ☀
@ClaireC I’d read it. @emma-flournoy The Japanese did bomb Darwin.
It doesn’t sound like alternative history to me though. Alternative history is “a genre of fiction in which the author speculates on how the course of history might have been altered if a particular historical event had had a different outcome.”
So if your premise included a world where the Japanese had overrun Australia and you went on from there that would be alternative history.
@clairec *nods head hard* Yes I would read this. Sounds exciting. *goes away nodding heading.*
@clairec: Tbh, that premise probably isn’t enticing enough to make me really want to read a story. I’m a bit confused about what the main plot is and how her service as a nurse connects to destroying the contents of a secret safe. Is this a spy thriller, action adventure, gritty war story, [insert-other-genres-here]? A good premise should be fairly clear about what type of genre a story is, and I’m not quite sure from this what type of novel this is.
I’ll second what Emma Flournoy said about character. For me personally, nothing hooks me more like the promise of a really good character struggle/character arc. Including more personality to Emma and showing what her character struggle is going to be like would do a lot to hook me in. To be fair, though, not everyone values character arcs as highly as I do. =P
I think you probably have a good premise for a story here. The summary just needs to be a bit more clear on what’s going on/what type of novel this is, and some more characterization would also be nice. 🙂 Keep at it!
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mmm, yes. I second what Josiah said. The actual synopsis doesn’t catch my attention, but I don’t think you were trying to ask if it grabbed our emotional side so much as if the type of story you were writing sounded interesting. Is that right?
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@ClaireC I would read it because I like war fiction, especially WWII fiction, and I like Australia. If this is your actual book synopsis, you might want to focus more on Evelyn’s character arc, like Josiah said. But if this is just your basic story idea, I like it. 🙂
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@ClaireC I don’t usually read historical fiction, but if I did, I would be interested in reading your story (I would have to read a sample of it to really decide if I was going to read it. I’m sort of picky that way 🙂 but that’s beside the point 🙂 ) It sounds exciting and interesting, though I think there needs to be a transition between Eve entering the army as a nurse to running away from Japanese solders with a safe that needs to be destroyed.
Good luck with your book!I agree with @jada-mae that you need a little more information here. What is the goal of the story? Yes, she wants to, and gets to be, and army nurse, (probably don’t want to give away the part about her getting what she wants) but why must she destroy the contents of the mysterious safe? Why her? I think there needs to be more information connecting these different goals. Maybe something about the conflict? Why isn’t destroying the contents of the safe easy? I assume it’s not, but why not?
I think you do have the elements for an interesting story here.
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