#8: Plot: Premise

First I would like to apologize for the lateness of this tutorial. The New Orleans Saints football team (American football) won their first Superbowl, and I got caught up in the revelry.

Now a short review: a plot is a series of causally related events that emerge from a series of ever-intensifying conflicts and proves a premise at the end. Unlike real life, fiction has a point and once you reach that point, you feel satisfied as a reader. That's the difference between a great ending and a groaner.

All stories must have a conclusion. Leaving it hanging is an easy way to justify a sequel, but it annoys your readers. And wouldn't you rather annoy them with your subject matter?

Majority of all fiction uses the same pattern: the beginning that sets up the situation, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. It is usually diagrammed like this:

You can tinker pattern by adding a frame around the story or by moving the resolution to the front, but it's harder than it looks.

How do you create a plot that follows that diagram out of the idea you have? What is your building block idea? Is it an opening scene? Is it the concluding scene? The climax? Or is it just a "what if" idea? Often examining that idea will direct your brainstorming to what you need.

Let's look at my idea. Jack goes crazy, erases Charley's memories of the bros and convinces her they are married. Gee, what don't I need? This is where asking those questions about what kind of story you want to write in your initial brainstorming comes in handy. Let's review. Stand-alone. Short story. Mystery with a "Twilight Zone" atmosphere. And an outline of the opening scene.

My building block is the solution to the mystery Charley must solve. And since I'm a nice author and love the team Charley and the Biker Mice make, I won't leave her in this mess. Besides, Charley's not the type of character to take this lying down, which is why I chose her as the protagonist.

What do I need? I need to show Charley's life as Jack's wife and Hannah's mother, plant clues to her that it isn't right, give her the choice of keeping things as they are or following the clues, the eventual discovery of what was done to her, a reunion with the Bros, and the showdown with Jack. Oh look, I have a plot.

Okay, so it's not a pretty plot. It is the vaguest excuse for a plot. But it goes from the beginning of the story to where I want to end it. And you should have an end destination in mind. Feel free to take detours along the way as you write, but knowing where the story ends helps you do something called "finishing the first draft". Once I have the vague idea of what course I want the story to take, I ask myself a second question: What is my premise?

A premise is "...the point of the story, the conclusion we reach at the end ... This point, this conclusion is the premise of the story. Every good novel, short story, or screenplay will have a clear premise that the events of that novel prove at the end." (Levin 57) And that probably makes even less sense.

The plot is all the action that takes place in the story. The action is created by conflicts. But the conflicts have to be structured and selected to give the plot meaning, a lesson to be learned from all this. And that is the premise.

"But that's what's wrong with the cartoons today. Too much emphasis on learning a lesson."

Yes, when you bludgeon people over the head with the moral of the story, irritation and annoyance is the result. But it doesn't have to be that way. Subtly is the key word, as well as giving credit to the audience/reader's intelligence. Your premise should never stand out like a flashing neon sign. And really adept writers enable each reader to find a different premise.

Example time. Lord of the Rings: the reason the movie is such a wonderful adaptation of the book is because they share the same premise "Even the smallest can change the course of history". (And Tolkien is a wonderful example of a really adept writer at work. There are many premises you could pull out to be proven in this work alone.)

Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary both share the same premise that "adultery leads to death" and can never be called the same book. A good premise can be used over and over again.

Shatter Your Illusions: "Cruel fate slams one door shut and the vibrations open a new one."

Reunions "The fight isn't over the fate of planets."

Premises grow out of the developments your protagonist has through the story. Your protagonist must change because of the actions taken in the plot. The premise is a link between plot and character. Besides being the conclusion of the plot, it should also restate the most important change the main character goes through.

Now a story can only have one premise and needs to universally true to the universe of the story. Sort of like, how it's true that Limburger never dies when the Tower crumbles. In real life he'd been crushed the first time it happened. But the cartoon set it up that he doesn't and it is a truth. This leaves the field wide open for almost anything becoming a premise as long as you are careful to set up the believability factor.

"None of this explains how to come up with one."

The premise is usually distilled into one sentence. You don't want to make it too vague. "Life is good" is a hard premise to prove. Levin suggests giving your premise two parts. "That is, one condition leads to another, or is compared to another, or is qualified in a definite way." (59)

So what premise did I finally come up with? "Love is about giving, not taking." (Thanks to Cat's B for the condensing.) Jack's excuse for what he does to Charley is that he loves her. But he takes her memories, her choices, and her life away. That is not love, even though he believes it is.

Having the premise before you start writing is useful. It can help you abandon scenes that don't fit your premise before you write them. It gives an undercurrent that all the characters should support in some way. I didn't find the premise for the novel I'm currently working on until the eighth chapter. But when I did, my beta reader noticed that my writing grew stronger. The trick to finding a premise before you start writing is to know your story plan so well that you'll know it works so you're not locked into writing a dead-end. And don't be afraid to take a side road, it's never a waste.

Don't have a premise? Can't even figure one out? Don't panic, just keep writing. I finished a lot of stories before finding out about the premise trick. Finish your first draft and then look back at it. What is the major change your main character has gone through? The hint of your premise is there.

The premise is an extremely useful tool in editing your story and making sure it is as tight as it can be. The question to ask of every scene is: Does this scene contribute to the premise I want to prove? If not, get rid of it or tweak it. And remember you can help prove a premise by giving the opposite as an example. Anna Karenina has a subplot concerning a different set of characters in which Levin through the course of his new marriage experiences a religious conversion. Anna's premise is adultery leads to death; Levin's fidelity leads to salvation.

Homework: What is the roadmap of your story? Do you know what the end destination is? And if you can go ahead and come up with a premise or two. It can be for the story you're currently working on, an old story of yours, another author's work.