Agents and publishing houses judge manuscripts based on how unique and compelling the story is. Why? Because that is how readers decide whether or not to buy a book. Readers want certain familiar hallmarks (that is, genre conventions). But they also want the story to have enough unique elements to feel fresh, new, and exciting. How exactly, though, do get the balance between genre conventions and uniqueness in story just right?

There are two key things you need to know in order to craft a unique novel: the value of an idea relevant to its execution, and how to bend genre conventions without breaking them. I’ll talk more about how to experiment with genre contentions in next week’s post. For now, let’s focus on the most important part of writing a unique novel: the execution.

The Idea vs. Its Execution

A lot of authors tend to get caught up on whether the story idea itself is good enough. One of the first things you need to realize in your quest to craft a unique novel is that every story has been told before.

Your story idea, in its most basic terms, is not going to be unique. Girl meets boy? It’s been done hundreds of times. Boy goes to wizard school? Ditto. The chosen one must save the world? You can find that one from ancient Greece to the latest superhero blockbuster. When it comes to writing a compelling story, it’s not the idea itself that matters, but how you execute it. The what of your story isn’t as important as the how. For those who happen to appreciate math analogies, execution is exponentially more impactful than the idea itself. If you rate the execution and idea on a scale of 1-10, 1 being awful and 10 being excellent, you can put this concept into this formula:

Quality = Execution² + Idea

In this system, the lowest quality book is rated 2 and the highest quality book is rated 110. If your idea is a brilliant 10, but your execution is a pitiful 1, your overall quality rating is still a dismal 11. If your idea is a mediocre 1, but your execution is a brilliant 10, then the book is still a very enjoyable 101. (A brief note of credit: I learned this formula from Patrick Rothfuss and Max Temkin’s podcast Unattended Consequences.)

Regardless of whether math analogies work for you, the point is that the execution is far more important than the idea. Almost everyone thinks that they have a book in them because they have an excellent idea floating around. But most don’t hone their writing craft enough to pull off a brilliant book. The most important part, and the most challenging part, is not the idea but the execution.

The Factors that Influence Execution

Stories, especially full-length novels, are complex beasts. There are so many factors that contribute to the overall execution of a story and an idea. Here are some of the most important factors: the situation, the characterization, the narrative voice and structure, and the thematic exploration. Honing your skills in these areas can help you craft a stunning and unique book.

Let’s look at some concrete examples with the boy-goes-to-wizard school premise. The three most famous examples of this story are Ursula Le Guin’s classic The Wizard of Earthsea series, Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind series, and of course, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. All three of these series have the same underlying concept – boy goes to wizard school – but each story is a very different reading experience. Each is set in different worlds, employ distinct writing styles, and explore unique themes.

The Situation

Every protagonist will be thrown into adventure by a set of circumstances that are out of their control. The specific world, society, and set of circumstances should be unique in some way. The unique situation is often what will grab the reader’s attention as they peruse book blurbs. That’s why it’s important that the specifics of the situation feel fresh.

The Wizard of Earthsea

The Wizard of Earthsea was first published in 1968. It was one of the first young adult fantasy novels centred around a wizard who goes to magic school. It is also one of the first high fantasy series where the plot did not revolve around war and battles. This series wasn’t just unique – it helped to inspire an entire new sub-genre of fantasy.

The Name of the Wind

What makes this book’s situation unique is that it starts after the hero’s fall. The protagonist has become a mythic figure in his society, but he has resigned himself to giving up the adventuring life and hiding as a common barkeeper at an inn. It’s an unconventional opening, to say the least.

Harry Potter

What makes Harry Potter’s situation unique is first that it’s set in the modern real world. The magical world is modern too, yet hidden away from non-magical folk. This isn’t high fantasy anymore – it’s starting to lean toward urban fantasy. The second unique element of Harry’s situation is how he starts the story as a lonely outsider that’s rejected from society. I’ll touch more on this idea in the next section.

The Characterization

The key to creating a compelling protagonist is ensuring that the protagonist is both relatable and interesting. The reader should be able to empathize with the protagonist while at the same time seeing something unique and interesting in the protagonist’s personality, motivations, and abilities.

The Wizard of Earthsea

This story’s protagonist Ged is the son of a bronze-smith in small outlying village. Ged has the unique ability to work magic, but he also has a deep sense of pride. In a nutshell, he attends wizards’ school on Roke island and makes it to the top of his class. He then arrogantly accepts a challenge from a classmate to summon a spirit, and the spirit tries to kill him. The evil shadow spirit is cast away, but now that it is released, it will continue to seek out Ged to try and destroy him. Ged needs to face his own personal shadows in order to confront and defeat the evil spirit.

Ged’s aspiration to leave his small village and do something meaningful and important with is life makes him very relatable. His intelligence and pride, and the nature of his shadow enemy, make Ged an interesting character as well. All these factors set him up for a compelling character arc.

The Name of the Wind

This story’s protagonist, Kvothe, is a fascinating enigma. He is a hero of legend in his world, yet he has resigned himself to hiding away with his regrets. He has become a forgettable face that blends into the walls of his inn. His sense of humility and remorse makes him both sympathetic and relatable. The mystery of how he became a grand myth and then a shell of a man makes Kvothe incredibly interesting.

Harry Potter

What makes Harry so darn relatable is his loneliness. He starts the story as a true outsider. The Dursleys have no love or warmth for him, and he has no friends in his muggle school. Loneliness and social ostracization are so common nowadays and so personally impactful. Many readers don’t just sympathize with Harry, they see themselves in Harry. His strange scar, the mysterious death of his parents, and his magical abilities make him not just an empathetic character, but an interesting character as well.

The Narrative Voice and Structure

A story’s narrative voice is the writing style and perspective that the story is told through. There are many factors that influence the unique flavour of a book’s narrative voice. There’s present and past tense, first person, second person, and omniscient or limited third person. But beyond the mechanics of tense and person, there is also a narrative tone, mood, and style. You could write in an academic style with a formal tone and a neutral mood. You could also write in a causal teenage style that’s flavoured with a sarcastic tone and an apathetic and critical mood. The voice that you create needs to feel nuanced and unique in order to be compelling.

Narrative structure is influenced by narrative voice, which is why I have grouped the two together. Your story’s narrative structure is built by the perspective the story is told through (which is closely related to the narrative voice) and the chronological arrangement of plot events.

The Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula Le Guin has a stunning narrative voice. It carries the posture of mythical storytelling while also conveying a closeness to her protagonist’s perspective and profound insight into his psyche. Her structure is somewhat typical and linear, but the focus on a largely non-violent, or at least, non-war-like fantasy adventure, is what makes her plot structure really stand out, particularly in the context of the genre at that time.

The Name of the Wind

Patrick Rothfuss also has a stunning writing style. He knows how to craft beautiful sentences. Yes, part of having a unique writing style is simply having strong writing skills. Patrick Rothfuss talks about writing as, not just his vocation, but his craft. If you ever talk to his fans about how long it takes him to finish writing a book, you’ll realize how much energy he puts into perfecting that craft. So, don’t turn up your nose when it comes to practising and honing your sentence-level craft. It can be time consuming, but it’s worth it.

Regarding the story’s structure, The Name of the Wind has a unique take on the story-within-a-story pattern. The story starts at the end, with a third-person omniscient narrator. The protagonist Kvothe begins telling his story to Bast and the Chronicler. In the retelling, Kvothe becomes the narrator and the prose shifts to first person. His narrative is occasionally interrupted by the present, which switches back to third person, but then Kvothe carries on again with his story. The unique chronological structure creates mystery, and its unusualness makes it even more compelling.

Harry Potter

Harry Potter is told in the past tense and third person. In all of the scenes with Harry (which is by far the majority, though there are a few exception), the narrative is told very close to Harry’s perspective in what we call close third person. The language is simple, taking care to highlight both the fascinating details of the magical world as well as the emotions and thoughts of the protagonist. All these choices together create a warm storytelling voice, perfect for inviting in both the child reader and the lonely reader as a welcome member of Hogwarts in spirit.

The narrative structure in Harry Potter is fairly straightforward. While there are some flashbacks, the plot events happen chronologically. The main part of the narrative structure that’s unique and compelling here is the narrative voice.

The Thematic Implications

Themes are questions about the nature of human life that stories explore. They give stories depth and are what allow stories to impact readers profoundly. Themes are most impactful when they are relevant to the target audience and when they are explored in a way that hasn’t been done before.

The Wizard of Earthsea

This story explores the thematic question, how do we reconcile the good and the evil that exist within us? Most epic stories that explore the nature of good and evil depict the hero as pure good and the antagonist as pure evil. In The Wizard of Earthsea, Le Guin examines the nature of evil as something that can originate within a sympathetic person, a supposedly good hero. Everyone is the protagonist in their own story, after all.

Le Guine’s exploration of her theme is a more nuanced and realistic perspective on the good vs. evil philosophical debate. Without spoiling the ending for you, I’ll just say that her exploration of these themes is unique, beautifully executed, and profound. It’s why the book won both the Boston Globe-Horn book award and the Lewis Caroll Shelf award. (This is the part of the show where I tell you how brilliant this story is and how it’s a must-read if you in any way enjoy fantasy, but you’ve probably caught on to how much I like this book already.)

The Name of the Wind

This story explores themes of poverty, grief, and resilience, as well as the power of music, storytelling, and knowledge. There is so much beautiful exploration of what makes the human experience precious and fragile in this book. The sheer scope of its themes and how they all combine together is what makes this book’s thematic exploration so unique and awe-inspiring.

Harry Potter

The Harry Potter series explores the thematic question, how can the bonds of friendship help us overcome evil in our societies? The evil that the story explores is specifically an evil borne of societal prejudice against outsiders. Just like any lonely reader can see themselves in Harry, any member of an ostracized group can see their situation in the analogy of the pure-blood wizards’ prejudice against muggles and humanoid magical creatures.

You’ll notice that all three of these stories touch on the concept of good and evil in some way (a very typical thematic element in fantasy and mythology), but the lens that each one examines the theme through is unique. Harry Potter emphasizes friendship and prejudice, The Wizard of Earthsea emphasizes internal instincts and personal enlightenment, and The Name of the Wind emphasizes the humanity and complexity of the “good” hero. Just like a story concept, every theme has been done before. It’s your job as the writer to examine your themes in a new light.

I hope examining these three books have given you insight on not just what makes a story unique, but how to execute a compelling and unique story yourself. Beyond what I’ve listed above, what elements do you find most influence the execution of a book? What factors make you want to pick up a book or put it down? Feel free to share your thoughts on the craft of writing unique novels in the comments below!