I'm close to the end of something that's been monopolising my time, and along with the light at the end of the tunnel, there've been increasingly persistent thoughts about my novel. Well, novels, but the others are still in the crib, chewing letter blocks. 

I'm not happy with the story as it's written, nor do I feel too sure about the second version I'm looking at writing. Things don't work, don't mesh quite the way I'd like. The end doesn't answer or solve the beginning, exactly, the hooks and turns are slightly sideways. It feels like the beginning and end of two separate realities have been stitched together.

And the reason occurred to me last night - I'm trying to keep too many of the components. Trying to make the story work with X, Y, Z, A, B, and K.  Which would be okay if those things were naturally intertwined or meshed somehow, but they're not. Well, not without a lot of pushing, and I think it's that pushing that's putting the strain in my story.

I think there's a rule for things like this. If your story isn't feeling right, if the emotional connections just aren't holding true.

One thing is sacred.

Just one. Pick one thing in your novel, the one thing that makes this a book you want to write. It might be a moment, an action, a plot hook. It might be a particular character progression, or lesson learned. A specific emotion or philosophy. The one thing that is most important to you in the book.

Everything else is subordinate to that. If it can't serve or support that thing, it goes. No exceptions. Nothing is sacred but that one thing.

It's ridiculously simple, now that I say it, but it solves the problems I've been having. I find it bizarre that, in all the mangling around with those story components I've been doing, it didn't occur to me to just chuck some of them. But - we only learn when it's the hard way. I have my one thing, now - a particular personality/emotion arc for a character. That's what this book is about.

What's your one thing?