I recently attended a writing group session during which we critiqued a member’s pages. From the comments during the session, it became clear that the submission wasn’t working. People were confused by the protagonist’s emotions and actions. For me, the novel’s pacing felt off. But as I listened to my fellow writers give their two cents, what became even more evident to me was this: it wasn’t just the chapter that didn’t work, it was the novel premise itself. So, what do you do if you’re twelve chapters in, and someone tells you that your premise is flawed?

First off, I’m guessing that novels with flawed premises happen more than we think. Years ago, I attended the New York Pitch Conference, which is based on the theory that if you can’t create an effective pitch for your novel, then your premise needs to be tweaked. The conference was packed. If someone tells you that your premise has issues, you are not alone. Don’t fret.

 But what do you do? How do you proceed? After your scream and fight the urge to throw your laptop at the bearer of the bad news, attempt to explain your novel in a single sentence. A character (describe) must (goal) when (inciting incident) occurs, but (conflict) stands in their way, or else (stakes). Doing this will tell you if one of the five elements of your premise is missing.

Creating a pitch can also reveal story elements that need strengthening. When I pitched my magic realism novel at the conference, I discovered that my story structure was off. My inciting incident came halfway through the book. But I digress. But my second point is that writing a novel pitch can also tell you whether an element of your novel’s premise needs strengthening. This is invaluable. Knowing this enables you to raise your novel’s stakes, add more conflict, or give your protagonist a clearer, more compelling goal in your next draft. Heck, you can even fix the flawed logic that your premise is based on if that applies.

But as I’m writing this post, I’m thinking about the writer from my critique group. How they pushed back, how they didn’t seem to want to accept that their novel needed more than just minor fixes in that specific chapter. And I get it.  I’ve been there. Writing is tough, complicated, and there’s this push-pull between following your gut and listening to beta readers. It’s your story, your call, and lots of films and novels with flawed premises do just fine. Think Inception, with its flawed dream world, and Lucy, which is based on the inaccurate belief that humans use only 10% of their brains. But if everyone’s telling you that someone is off, it might just be time to listen. It might be time to write that novel pitch, dig deep, plop your butt in your desk chair, and rework your story. Even though it’s hard, even though you don’t want to.

Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever gotten halfway through a novel draft and realized that you needed to do major premise work? How did you handle it? Did someone or something motivate you to put in the time and effort? Let me know what you think about this topic. Have you ever had to gently tell a fellow writer that their premise wasn’t working?