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Many publishing houses prefer “high concept” premises, or those stories that can be reduced to a simple description that audiences will both understand and want to see. In film, this is known as a “logline.” In publishing, it’s sometimes referred to as an “elevator pitch.”
According to Alexandra Sokoloff, the premise “should give you a sense of the entire story: the character of the protagonist, the character of the antagonist, the conflict, the setting, the tone, the genre. And – it should make whoever hears it want to read the book. Preferably immediately.”
Here are the three movie premises she provides as examples:
1. When a great white shark starts attacking beachgoers in a coastal town during high tourist season, a water-phobic Sheriff must assemble a team to hunt it down before it kills again.
2. A young female FBI trainee must barter personal information with an imprisoned psychopathic genius in order to catch a serial killer who is capturing and killing young women for their skins.
3. A treasure-hunting archeologist races over the globe to find the legendary Lost Ark of the Covenant before Hitler’s minions can acquire and use it to supernaturally power the Nazi army.
Chances are, you know exactly which movies she’s referencing just by these simple (one-sentence) descriptions.
Book/story premises work the same way. Here are a couple of Truby’s examples:
1. A boy discovers he has magical powers and attends a school for magicians.
2. When an Egyptian prince discovers that he is a Hebrew, he leads his people out of slavery.
Often, as writers, we fumble over the ideas when someone asks what our book is about. After all, a lot happens in two hundred pages. But the clearer we can be about our novel’s premise before we begin writing, the better.
The premise for Cross My Heart:
A young perfectionist falls in love with the proverbial “bad boy,” making her rethink everything she knows about life and love.
And for Collateral Damage:
A young cop falls in love with a classmate while he’s working undercover, inadvertently dragging her into the crossfire as he tries to take down a local drug dealer.
Nailing down the premise before you start drafting is prudent because
if the premise is weak, nothing else is going to help the story.
So how do we come up with a million-dollar premise (or, at the very least, a premise that people will want to read)?
Truby suggests:
1. Write a story that will change your life.
“If a story is that important to you,” he says, “it may be that important to a lot of people in the audience.”
2. Examine every possible story path.
“Don’t jump on a single possibility right away, even if it looks really good,” he says.
Explore your options, don’t censor yourself, and choose the best one.
3. Identify and analyze the story’s potential challenges.
You’ll have to confront and solve these problems early if you want to tell the most effective story. Otherwise, Truby says: “be prepared to confront any narrative challenges as the story unfolds.”
4. Find the Designing Principle
The designing principle is your story strategy, or how you will tell your story.
“The designing principle is what organizes the story as a whole. It is the internal logic of the story, what makes the parts hang together organically so that the story becomes greater than the sum of its parts. It is what makes the story original.”
This is a bit more abstract than the premise, but Truby has a great formula for determining the designing principle.
Designing principle = story process + original execution
Here are two of his examples:
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Premise: When three ghosts visit a stingy old man, he regains the spirit of Christmas
Designing Principle: Trace the rebirth of a man by forcing him to view his past, present, and future over the course of one Christmas Eve.
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
Premise: when a man prepares to commit suicide, an angel shows him what the world would be had he never been born.
Designing Principle: Express the power of the individual by showing what a town and nation would be like if one man had never lived.
To Be Continued. . . .
Resources:
Alexandra Sokoloff. “What’s Your Premise?” Screenwriting Tricks for Authors. 2010
http://www.screenwritingtricks.com/2010/02/whats-your-premise.html
John Truby. The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. Faber and Faber. New York. 2007
