Requesting private crit of women's fiction idea

Serena, I am not sure if people responded to your message meanwhile, but I just wanted to say that there is no way to judge a book's promise from 250 words of plot idea. There are very few completely original plots out there. Themes and ideas tend to repeat. And it's fine.

What matters is your writing. If you have believable, sympathetic characters, a great plot, solid description skills and brisk dialogue, your book will be successful. When I read a blurb on the back of a book in the store, I know that it has the above elements to a degree deemed satisfactory by the publisher.

For women's fiction, it is also very important to convey emotions, and there is no way of knowing whether your book does that from a 250 word blurb.

Hope that helps. I think you should sit down and begin writing, and if you still feel unsure, post your work in one of the SYW forums.

best of luck with your writing,
Rose

Kind of you to think so, Serena. I deleted it when I spotted you were a long time member and I didn't want to appear to be telling you to suck eggs. It was really pretty much the same as Rose's.

Ideas are ten a penny - it's how the idea is developed and how the story and characters are written which makes the difference. In other words it's the writing which is the dominant factor. It's pretty unlikely a core plot idea will be 100% original, but perfectly possible for the characters to be totally original and engaging in their actions and reactions etc..

I'm sure the same applies in design - a particular concept may be overworked but a masterly interpretation and execution of it can be brilliant and make it a success regardless.

Good luck.

Serena Casey said:

Hi Rose, thank you very much for your great advice. I was just afraid of putting months and months of time and brain power into something that might immediately be circular-filed because "we've had 63 googolzillion submissions on this topic this week alone."

....

So I figure I could be pretty naive as to what's out there in writing, too. Our library is pretty teeny.

Long story short (too late) I did get some responses to my original post, and I want to thank them so much for their input; it was very helpful. And thanks again, Rose. And Bufty. (I'm sure it was an excellent post before it went poof!)

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Serena, I think we are all on some level afraid of pouring our souls and endless hours onto pages only to find out, later, that the plot isn't worth anything. However, just as it is very possible to spoil a great idea by crappy writing, a mediocre or "tired" idea can be made great. In my genre, vampires have been done to death, and yet they keep coming back from the grave

As for people going, "we've had 63 googolzillion submissions on this topic", it helped me tremendously to look in SYW under Query Letter and Critique. A lot of rejections come because of badly written queries; on the other hand, a well-written query will teach you a lot about the kid of book that looks like a winner.

As writers, it's part of our job to overcome insecurities and get our BIC. Even if the book isn't published, you won't end up feeling you've wasted your time if you're passionate about your work. And if you're not, why bother writing (IMHO). There are many different ways to earn money that are much less painful to the ego.

As for a small library, again, this is just my opinion, but it is very important to read widely, and it's very important to read in your genre as much as possible. You should check if your library has interlibrary loan

Best of luck,
Rose

I understand what she's saying, though. There are plotlines that have been done to death, especially following books that were wildly popular. Some plots could be seen as yet another knockoff and would have to have the query to end all queries or some sort of unique hook to even be considered.