Your Work-in-Progress in Five Words
Never get stuck again knowing "premise" is the heart and roadmap of your story
Pure instinct may lead you to create a masterpiece, but only precision can ensure repeated success. Thus claims playwright Lajos Egri in The Art of Dramatic Writing before furnishing the reader with the three foundations of great writing: premise, character, and conflict. The first is the subject of this article.
Premise
Expressing your premise
The premise is your novel, play or film in miniature. It’s a statement that hints at the nature of your characters, the tribulations they will face, and the ends they shall meet.
Consider the following examples:
Great love defies even death
Ruthless ambition leads to destruction
Jealousy destroys the object of its obsession
Each of these pithy statements eloquently summarises, respectively but not exclusively, Romeo and Juliet*, Macbeth, and Othello. A pair of young lovers defy their families and are united in death; a power-hungry general sets in motion his own demise; and lastly, a man’s possessiveness leads him to lose his lovely bride.
Defining your premise
Setting out to write about grand sentiments like ‘love’ or ‘loathing’ will only end in tears of frustration. An emotion, be it as powerful as love or hatred, is not a premise in and of itself as it suggests neither the end destination (ruin or salvation?), nor the specifics and strength of character (what sort of love or animosity) necessary to carry the plot.
A premise needs to be active, possessing an implicit goal and motivating power. Your premise must describe all of character, conflict, and climax. Here are a few annotated examples:
Bragging (character) leads to (conflict) humiliation (climax)
Dishonesty (character) leads to (conflict) the loss of friends (climax)
Selfless love (character) conquers (conflict) fear of failure (climax)
By defining your premise, you determine the nature of your characters. Then it’s time to flesh them out by figuring out what furnace shaped them into one so capable of treachery without mercy or tenaciousness without confidence—whatever the case may be. Further, having the end in mind, you’ll know exactly what transformation (or mere stagnation) is required of your protagonist. All that remains are the details.
Arriving at your premise
It’s not necessary to start with a premise—perhaps it’s a thought experiment, situation or character quirk that has inspired you. However, bear in mind that although it’s fine to set off on a journey without a map, your meandering is not guaranteed to lead to the Land of Milk and Honey.
At some stage, before you begin writing, you need to clearly and succinctly define your premise and use it to jump-start a rough synopsis (subject to change, of course). Moreover, if your premise changes midway, say you decide ‘great love’ is more likely to lead to ruin than salvation, you must go back to square one and re-write said synopsis rather than plough ahead, hoping for the best after a total 180.
If it’s that easy, should you choose your premise by plucking an adjective and two nouns out of a hat? (I hear that’s how it’s done in Hollywood.) Most definitely not. There should be no need to root around for a premise; rather, it should be the natural extension of whatever inner demons and moments of rapture keep you up at night and drive you to put pen to paper in the first place.
Defend your premise
Your premise is a summary of your thesis, and your novel is an expression of your deeply held convictions. Although you wholeheartedly believe in the truth of your premise, your job is to prove it to the audience.
Your premise should be one you can successfully argue. It must reflect your sincerely held beliefs and align with the realities of our society and the nature of the human condition. Simply put, a premise such as ‘poverty leads to crime’ demonstrably holds water, whereas ‘lack of capital punishment causes crime’ doesn’t quite ring true.
Avoid multiple premises
Having more than one premise is not a good idea. You’ll have your work cut out for you arguing one premise, let alone two. Egri recommends not muddying the waters with multiple premises. If your novel or play tries to say everything, it will say nothing at all. Or, worse, it will end up a muddled, contradictory mess.
An aside on immortality
The goal of writing is two-fold: the search for truth and the lure of a literary legacy. (Because we sure aren’t doing it for the remote possibility of making beaucoup bucks.)
If you wish to court immortality, you must be like the paleontologist who unearths the bones, carefully cleans and treats them before assembling them onto a steel armature. If you bear the importance of the scaffolding, i.e. the premise in mind, your work will stand a chance of joining the canon of great literature. After all:
A clear and active premise leads to great writing
Footnotes
*This is the premise according to Ergi. However, I’ve always felt it was more of a case of ‘The sins of the fathers are visited on the children’. But perhaps I’ll leave that one to the scholars, being but a humble Writing Foetus.
If you’re interested in the animation, it was inspired by this tutorial and created with this pen. Don’t forget to share & subscribe, and run (don’t walk) to your local bookstore to purchase The Art of Dramatic Writing: