When I started my first novel, I went around telling everyone the initial premise. It was a good one: spicy, unique, and almost always got a “Wow, I’d read that.”

But then one day, someone* responded with this:

“Okay. But what is it about?”

Me, breathless: “Paintings of dreams and clues to a murder and—”

“Yeah, I got that part. But beneath all that. What is it about?”

Silence.

And in the silence, a dawning: 

My book wasn’t really about anything.

It had sparkle and pizzazz…and no deeper substance.

*

Something we don’t often talk about in writing circles: the concept of “about-ness.”

A book can have a spectacular plot, but without about-ness, it’ll just be that — a spectacle. Glittery facade, nobody home inside.

It took me years to figure out what my first book was really about. In fact, it only really fell into place recently when I hired a fabulous dev editor who pointed out the same thing — that the book was missing a core piece of its foundation. 

If you’re writing a memoir or novel, a big-deal event generally isn’t the whole story. It’s the first layer. 

It’s what happened. But it’s not what your book is about.

Say you backpacked around Thailand after losing someone special. Okay, great start.

What is your story *about*?

Maybe it’s resilience. Discovering your own strength or a new passion. Learning to forgive.

Only you will know. Other people can help you figure it out, but they can’t tell you what it is.

Once you know it, that will likely be your theme. Your through-line that draws all the events together.

It’ll help you decide what belongs, what doesn’t, and what all those events are adding up to.

That’s what your book is about.

*Ironically, I was getting my MFA in Brooklyn at that time, and this question did not come from anyone related to that. It came from a Marine pilot I dated briefly in North Carolina.

Sometimes what brings a book to its next level of greatness is not spending tens of thousands of dollars, it’s not taking a course or getting an “in” with an insider. Sometimes it’s a single question from an astute listener.