🥑 find your premise

In the interest of not ripping off John Truby, I’m skipping around.

I highly recommend The Anatomy of Story for all you scribes out there. I’ve read it several times and found it incredibly helpful for working out the essential elements of crafting stories.

Exhibit A: the premise.

Premise sells. It grabs readers by the fingertips and says, “Don’t you want to read me RIGHT NOW?” More importantly, it breathes life and direction into your story. You may have heard buzzwords like high concept or elevator pitch thrown around—this is where Mr. Rubber meets Dr. Road.

Last time, we figured out the stuff you want to tell stories about. Maybe it’s dinosaurs, or the stress of working at a restaurant, or a fantasy world with orcs. You may have some desires and motivations on that list as well.

Now let’s ask, “What if?”

• What if dinosaurs were alive today?

• What if a chef had to save a failing restaurant?

• What if an orc mercenary wanted to stop mercenarizing (not a word)?

Add some more questions to that list:

• What if humans bring dinosaurs back to life? What if those dinosaurs start causing trouble for those humans? What if humans are no longer atop the food chain?

• What if the failing restaurant used to belong to the chef’s deceased brother? What if the chef has painful memories attached to the restaurant? What if the staff actively hates him?

• What if the orc wants to settle down in a city? What if the orc discovered something that gave her a new passion in life? What if the orc has to achieve her goals through community, not violence?

These stories are Jurassic Park (book/movie), The Bear (TV show), and Legends & Lattes (book), respectively. All hits.

A practical exercise: set a timer for 15 minutes and write down every premise you can think of. Go longer if you want to. Draw from your list of stuff and ask “what if?” until those words start to feel like they don’t mean anything.

Once you’re done, choose your favorite premise and expand on it. Ask more questions. Write down characters, names, plot points, anything that comes to mind. Allow yourself to create without a structure or an endpoint.

Then take a step back and ask this: do you have a premise that other people will care about? More importantly, will they be hooked?

If you do, you’re in business.

Next time: let’s get challenging.

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