The editor I hired on Reedsy choose the following 3 as the most promising of the 10 middle-grade novel premises I shared with him:
Premise #6: Four Square
Premise #9: Parental Abduction
Premise #10: The Sad But 100% Completely True Tale of Lester, Court Jester, as told by his Faithful Cousin Sir Aliyah, Knight Errant
In our follow-up Zoom session, he ranked them in that order. Here are his notes for each one:
Premise #6: Four Square
I like this one more. Written properly, it could have a Roald Dahl-esque quality, which I don’t think is done often enough. Give it a legit plot but with just enough absurdity, and it could work.
Premise #9: Parental Abduction
This idea is still pretty thin at the moment, but I’d say this has some promise if you could pull of a sort of Sean of the Dead thing, with serious plot backed by this ridiculously humorous side story going on.
Premise #10: The Sad But 100% Completely True Tale of Lester, Court Jester, as told by his Faithful Cousin Sir Aliyah, Knight Errant
I like the gist of this idea, a junior Don Quixote dragged into a portal fantasy. Has a lot of potential, although like the idea above, still pretty thin at the moment with a lot of major story elements to develop.
In the Zoom session, we brainstormed ideas to flesh out the story for Four Square and Parental Abduction.
Afterwards, as I mulled over his notes and our conversation, I found myself gravitating towards Four Square and Sir Aliyah. Since then, I’ve spent a few weeks outlining both.
Most recently, though. I’ve decided to draft Sir Aliyah first.
Since I made that decision a month or so ago, I’ve forgotten exactly why I made it. Maybe it was simply from the gut. Maybe Sir Aliyah just felt more fun to me at the time. Or funnier. But here I am, committed to Sir Aliyah for the time being.
Of course, as I’ve outlined, the story has changed significantly. Foremost, I’ve made Aliyah the protagonist and Lester, her sidekick — and the narrator.
More details to follow.