Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method, step one:
Take an hour and write a one-sentence summary of your novel. … The sentence will serve you forever as a ten-second selling tool. This is the big picture …
[This sentence is] the hook that will sell your book … to readers. So make the best one you can!
Recommendations are to keep it within 15 words, and to not include character names. It should involve the character with the most to lose and what he wants to win. So, what have I come up with?
An orphan and his cat cross the country in search of their missing parents.
Over an hour, and many variations went into that. And I’m very much not satisfied with it. Considering everything Samuel and his cat, Ty, go through, it’s hard to fit it into 15 words or less. To be honest, I don’t even know what to do with his parents. Originally he was going to find them, but that leaves the question of why they’ve been gone for this long. I have a few ways to answer that question, but nothing satisfactory for me. They need to be “lost” in Africa for ten years here…
Ingermanson writes,
Tie together the big picture and the personal picture. Which character has the most to lose in this story? Now tell me what he or she wants to win.
Samuel is the main character, so the line has to be about him, but does he have the most to lose? He’s already “lost” his parents. He’s trying to find them, or at least to find out what happened to them.
There’s also Kyle. The “bad guys” are after Kyle for a rare stone he has, something that belonged to his grandmother. Samuel simply gets caught up in it.
Midway in the story, the stone is destroyed, and Vicky enters. She needs funding so her grandfather’s research can be finalized, but the “bad guys” are after that research. This research is something major, and something her grandfather wanted to be completed. Samuel gets caught in this, as well.
By the final stage of the story, the “bad guys” have Ty, Samuel’s tigon cub, as a target. Samuel and Ty have been together for a decade (with a reason for Ty to still be a cub; it’s the dragon blood). Ty was the last gift to Samuel from Samuel’s parents from the time when they vanished. Ty is practically Samuel’s only true friend. But Samuel doesn’t risk losing him until near the end of the story.
I just don’t know how I can improve that sentence, but I don’t care for it.