What makes your book unique?

You have to answer it as truthfully as possible. Everyone says that there are no new ideas under the sun; it is how we interpret any given idea that makes it unique.

Instead of thinking "Mine is just another book about a female human falling in love with a vampire," think about why yours is different from every other book out there. Then it becomes "my stock car driver heroine falls in love with a sixty-year old vampire who faints at the sight of blood."

Or something.

Use the details that make your story different from every other book in its genre.

WoodPunk! Dare you to ask.

The characters are not young, beautiful and flawless, and there are no murders, rapes or perverted acts. The "F" word never appears and the only cursing is mild. The men are gentlemen and the women are ladies.

You're right, it will never sell.

I wonder whether this question demands a direct answer more often in nonfiction than fiction, because there are specific competitors. If you're writing about FDR, you've got to be able to address why the world needs another one. But I wonder whether a good fiction query answers the question of uniqueness tacitly--the story and characters sound worth getting to know because of the way you describe them, and your background makes you the person to write the book.

That said, if you can't answer the question in your own head, that may spell trouble. If you find that you've written a novel in a particular genre that sounds like all the others you've ever read, an agent will think so, too.

If you can think of another non-erotic threeway medieval fantasy romance with dragons, please let me know.

They're trying to find out if your story/characters are not tired and cliched. They want to know if you have a unique take on similar plots. OK, so it's a story about dinosaurs, so what's so unique about yours? OK, so it's a romance, but why should I read it?

So you need to have a pitch, a unique take, a fresh way of doing the same thing. So it's a dinosaur story but set on planet Mars. So it's a romance, but it's about gay soldiers in Iraq.

Now, if you really can't think of anything unique about your story, then you have a problem. Maybe it's not as good as you think it is.

The foundation technology of the Veltes is Ringwood. This was a species of bio-engineered tree pioneered by the Ancients. It has an extended set of DNA that can be used as information storage or additional special instructions. This information is accessible through touch. It took the Veltes thousands of years to understand that the voices in the wood were theirs but they also learned to manipulate the wood creating a rural wood based way of life. Velt is a harsh world with low air pressure and the spread of civilization meant the spread of their great forest where each tree was linked with the next. The forest produced oxygen, provided food and all that was necessary for life. Velt existed in isolation until the great expansion of man through space. (Velt was originally settled through the portals or gates the Ancients built). Velt culture was primitive, lacked organization and seemed insignificant compared to the great leaps in the modern technology of the emerging space traveled based galactic civilization of man. I've a whole series of stories that follow the cultures that spring from the wood. There are a course a host of wood based inventions ranging from being able manipule organic chemical properties to produce drugs and various crops to arrows that recognize their intended target and adjust their aim, live wood whips that can be manipulated in various ways and a city where everything except the five ring of walls is live wood. The Veltes of course weren't much for building cities and their capital Dhwor only had a population of a hundred and fifty thousand.
The wood technology produces a non technological culture of forest dwelling folk. They get all they need from the wood, related horticulture and husbandry, they lack political structure, government, transportation infastructure, trade, commerce and all the usual trappings of civilization.
Kentuk

Prophecies change with belief.

If I told you I'd give away the ending.

Sadly, I don't think my story is unique at all. It's the same as all the other urban fantasy stories out there.

I just wrote it better.

Imagine Nancy Drew, Harry Potter, and the Magic Tree House all in the same book. That's my series, but later we add a little DaVinci code (only WAY better written) and Tomb Raider.

My first book - Dorothy goes to Middle Earth. The characters themselves are what make it unique.
The sequel - Characters from first book come into our world. My editor actually said it was cool because he hadn't really seen it before.

I really think it's the author's voice, their characters and how they view the plot that makes it unique. I mean, chick lit, to me is all the same story.

Kind of like Laurell K. Hamilton, but with bad-ass angels instead of vampires...

swvaughn said:

Kind of like Laurell K. Hamilton...

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Hey, come on! There's no need to put yourself down like that!

What a great question. I think I have a lot of different elements rolled in to one historical romance. There is suspense, romance, angst, regret and a lot of mystery. Who knows. I could be like 74823 other authors out there...!

*snicker* I would tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Seriously, though, I can't say for sure how unique my [completed] book is. In a lot of places, I've taken story and character elements I've seen before and turned them inside out. Or combined certain details in a "You can't DO that!" sort of way. How unique/worthwhile the end result is... I wish that saying so was really up to me.

~JM.

scarletpeaches said:

Hey, come on! There's no need to put yourself down like that!

Click to expand...

LOL!

Okay... kind of like Laurell K. Hamilton, only better, and with bad-ass angels instead of vampires.

Unique

If anything I write is unique, it's because I'm the one writing it, not because it has this or that plot element, character, etc.

The only truly unique thing any writer can bring to a work of fiction is himself. You can stir plot elements all day long, throw this flaw and that flaw at any character, and all you have is same old, same old in disguise.

If a writer wants to write unique fiction, he first must learn what it is that makes him unique as a person. All the plot have already been used, but each of us is unique, and it's tis that makes our fiction unique, if the writer manages to learn what it is, and finds a way to put it in the story.

Well said, James. I agree. The hard part is coming up with a way of describing what makes you unique (rather than your story) in a query letter.

I think we all go back and forth between being completely in love with our work and thinking that it's Grade G garbage. One impulse urges us to create it, the other to make it better. I usually imagine how I would explain a story I wrote to someone else and how excited I would be about it and what I would say. How would I encourage a friend to read my book, and why? If you can't even do that, well... Let's just say that you have to have confidence in your work. Otherwise, why did you write it?

Then again, I'm the sort of punk that gets excited about any book/movie/tv show and the next thing you know is babbling madly about it and spewing quotes.

As for my specific book, how many stories star a famous fairy-tale protagonist who's now a drunken, narcissistic, kleptomaniacal jackass? In Las Vegas, of all places?

I think it's my characters that make my fiction unique. Of my completed novels and my WIP, I think I have somewhat unique plots if you look past the top layer of 'character has problem that has to be solved' (duh), but it's the way my characters deal with their problems that make them unique.

Is that because I'm unique? Maybe so, dunno. I think it has more to do with letting the character develop organically over the first draft. Keeps 'em from being contrived, stock characters and more like real people.

I wrote mine on birchbark with the dorsal spine from a sunfish dipped in squid ink.

I'd read that.