I’ve decided that my novel will be about meditation and all the crazy things I’ve witnessed in over fifteen years of going to various classes. I read (somewhere) that a classic newbie mistake is to write a bunch of disconnected scenes and think it’s a novel – which is exactly what I was going to do. I further read (somewhere) that it is better to write in genre, especially for a new writer. So I’ll need an overarching story that fits into a genre.
My favourite genre of books is science fiction, but a science fiction novel set in a meditation class seems a stretch. I don’t particularly like detectives or horror so they’re out, and historical fiction seems too much work, and I want to write not research, so that is out too. I don’t want to write YA, as I’m in my fifties now and would make me feel like a fraud, so that leaves romance and thrillers.
To try them out, I’ve outlined these plots:
- Romance. Couple meets in a meditation class. He is affable and a bit useless. She is an uptight workaholic. They fall in love, then they have a crisis and it all falls apart, but then they get together in the end and it’s happily ever after.
- Thriller. Woman goes to a meditation class. Everyone is a bit weird but one man in particular seems to be very strange. She realises that he is stealing small items, lying to others, and is a generally destabilising and troubling presence. When there is a break in (or other significant event) she confides in a sympathetic male classmate and they start to investigate.
I showed both the outlines to my wife, and she said the romance works and the thriller doesn’t. Decision made. Romance it is.
Photo by David Pupăză on Unsplash
