The Power of the Premise

Early in my writing career, I went out to lunch with a friend. She knew I was working on a novel, so she said, “What’s your book about?” And then, because she’d obviously had some experience with aspiring novelists, she quickly added, “I don’t want you to spend the next half hour telling me the story; just give me an idea what it’s about in two or three sentences.” All I could do was stare at her in stunned silence. Reduce four hundred pages of tangled events and characters to two or three sentences? Impossible!

What she was looking for, of course, was my story’s premise: setting, characters, goals, conflict, all wrapped up in a neat coherent package. Any writer out there who doesn’t know their story’s premise had better sit down and figure it out, because they’re going to need it when pitching their story to agents and editors—and when answering the questions of inquisitive friends. But the best time to nail your premise is before you start. Why? Because changing two sentences around until you come up with the most powerful story is easy. Changing four hundred pages is HARD.

So, let’s take a look at some premises:

Convinced his life has been a failure, a banker and family man decides to commit suicide; but can he succeed when he has his own personal guardian angel determined to talk him out of it? (It’s a Wonderful Life)

A crusty Green Beret and his by-the-book replacement must cooperate to win back the allegiance of a village by transporting an elephant through miles of enemy-infested jungle. (Operation Dumbo Drop)

A misogynistic out-of-work actor pretends to be a woman to get a job; but can he succeed when he falls in love with his leading lady? (Tootsie)

And here, for the record, is the premise of THE DEADLIGHT CONNECTION: Remote viewer Tobie Guinness and cynical CIA agent Jax Alexander must work together to track a missing Nazi U-boat before its deadly cargo can be used to launch a catastrophic terrorist attack on America.

As you can see, the conflict is so inherent in some stories that it often doesn’t need to be spelled out. The conflict in Operation Dumbo Drop comes, obviously, from the North Vietnamese soldiers in the jungles trying to stop our Green Berets (as well as from the inevitable conflict between the crusty and the by-the-book heroes). In The Deadlight Connection, the conflict comes from the organization determined to keep their terrorist plot from being foiled. But the conflict needs to be there, so that anyone reading or hearing your premise can to “get it” right away. Because it is the conflict—internal, external—that makes your story interesting.

Once we’ve nailed our premise, every writer then needs to then sit back and ask himself or herself one important question: is this story strong enough to interest a lot of people? Does it have commercial appeal? Yes, you need to write first and foremost for yourself, but if you write ONLY for yourself, you won’t sell many books. I have zillions of ideas spinning around in my head; I will never, ever have the time to write them all. So it makes sense to devote the months or years a book requires to those ideas with the best chance of selling well.

But terrorist attacks are so ho-hum, you might say; what makes you think DEADLIGHT will sell? Because it has two X-factors: the remote viewing angle, and the Nazi sub. People love Nazis. What’s the X-factor in It’s a Wonderful Life? Religion, and the belief that we all have someone watching out for us. In Operation Dumbo Drop, it’s the elephant. In Tootsie, it’s the comic appeal of a man who despises women having to dress and act like a woman.

But that’s a subject for some future blog. Enough about premises. Next time I’d like to look at adapting Hollywood structure techniques to the novel.

Tricks from the Screenwriting Trade: Understanding and Using the Concept of the Premise, Part One

Like all successful screenplays, successful commercial fiction is based around a powerful premise. So, what’s a premise?

A premise is, essentially, the kind sound bite you read in a TV guide or Pub Lunch’s weekly list of hot deals (all you prospective writers out there are signed up for this free email from Publishers Weekly, aren’t you?). A premise immediately and provocatively answers several important questions: Who is the hero or heroine of this story? What does he want? What is standing in his way? The catchier your premise—the sharper its hook—the more successful your book will be at snagging both editors and readers.

Of course, a book can have a wonderful premise without the writer ever having heard of a premise. It’s one of those things many writers do instinctively. But if your book is floundering, it’s a good idea to take a look at your premise and make sure it’s solid. In fact, Alex Sokoloff thinks a writer should BEGIN with her premise, and work from there. Listening to her, I thought, What a concept!

There is a formula I’ve seen so many different places I can’t say who originally came up with it. It works because it forces the writer to reduce his story to its most basic components: protagonist, goal, motivation, conflict (and no, the originator wasn’t Deb Dixon, because I was using this handy little formula long before her book came out). Any and every piece of successful commercial fiction can be plugged into it. So what’s the formula?

This is a story about a __________________ who wants __________________ because ____________. But can he succeed when ____________________?

The first blank, obviously, is for your protagonist—your hero or heroine. The best way to describe your protagonist is with an adjective-noun combination. Why? Because you want to make sure you’ve developed a profoundly intriguing character. If you say, “This is a story about a girl….” you’ve already got people yawing. But if you say, “This is a story about a psychic orphan…” or “a wounded Iraq vet…” you’ve already intrigued a lot of people who will go, “Oooh, I’d like to read about that kind of person.” (You’ll also turn off a lot of people who’ll go, “Eeew, I don’t want to read about that.” Accept it.)

Since this is supposed to be a post about Premise, I’m not going to go into the whole goal, need/want, conflict thing. We all know our hero needs to want something, right? We know he needs to want it for a powerful reason, and we know there needs to be something or someone (i.e., the villain) standing in his way. When you formulate your premise, you lay it all out there in black and white. If your setting is intriguing, work that in. If the stakes are high, that’s part of your “because” and belongs in there, too. When you’re all done, look at your premise—really look at it—and think, is this as strong as it can be? What would make it bigger? What is the hook, the X-factor that makes this story different?

When my agent ran the premise for THE ARCHANGEL PROJECT in the Pub Lunch, she had over a dozen production companies call her in one week—that’s the power of a good premise. That’s what you want: a high concept so intriguing it has both editors and readers instantly wanting to know how it turns out.

Next time I’ll take a look at some examples of premises, and what we can learn from them.