Stories have a rhythm. A melody. And once you figure that out, the whole picture becomes clear.

I’m working on a new story and I have all these ideas, what I want to do and where I want to go, working with characters I kind of know, but after a week and a half of fuzting with it, something was still missing.

This morning, at 3 a.m. I woke up and heard the song…

Da, da, da, da, but, da, da, da, da, da, da until da, da, da, da, da. Can he da, da, da, da, da?

It’s that hook, the one or two sentences that defines your story.

I thought I had my hero and heroine all worked out. He was a dutiful son following his dad into the family business.

She was a new college graduate helping her mom run the family restaurant after the sudden death of her father.

And oh, he’s a prince living 4000 miles away.

This will be my fourth royal story so I was trying to stay fresh, not go to the same well of troubles, so I didn’t want to over focus on my heroine being a foreigner.

My mind was twisting and turning with ideas.

I did the story equation.

Dark wound, lie, fear. What did they want. What could they do in the end they couldn’t do in the beginning.

What was the secret desire.

Since this is a shorter romance, I don’t have a lot of room to create layers, and I wanted to focus on the romance but still, I was somehow shorting myself on the story.

That’s when I heard the rhythm of the pitch/hook/summary.

He’s always wanted to do WHAT but his father convinced him otherwise until She came back into his life and love awakened his dreams. Can he be honest with his father and be his own man?

I was missing the “what.”

Until my heroine comes on the scene, what does my hero want?

I had to go back to work but suddenly the story opened up and I could see farther down the line.

It didn’t feel so awkward, like something was missing.

Remember the movie The Holiday?

Amanda makes movie trailers and she hears her life in movie sound bites.

“Amanda Woods is proud to present, her life. She had it all. The job. The house. The love. Until…”

When you’re working up your stories, find the rhythm. Find the magic.

For my upcoming The Wedding Chapel, it went like this…

“For sixty years a wedding chapel sat silent, waiting for love. BUT times have changed and he hour has come when it might just be too late.”

Until….

Photographer Taylor Branson comes along.

“Can she find the truth hidden in the stone walls?”

Am I making sense here?

If you’re stuck in your story. do the beats.

Da, da, da, da, da, but, da, da, da, da, da until…

What’s the irony. What’s the want? What’s tugging internally at your characters?

Now, go write something brilliant.