The Power of Premise in Storytelling

If you want people to read your novel, you need to master the art of formulating a powerful premise. Premise is the foundation of story. It’s your sales tool, your calling card. It’s the first thing that agents, editors, and most importantly, readers, ask about your work. What’s it about?

(On Moving Past Plotlessness.)

I have given many workshops on this topic and I am constantly amazed by the premises people come up with, when given a little guidance. In a workshop, when a writer pitches her premise and the rest of the writers in the room gasp, that writer knows she has come up with a brilliant premise that can now be turned into a fabulous, unputdownable novel.

A premise is more than an idea and more succinct than a story outline. Put simply, it is “a statement of character and conflict”—Jennifer Enderlin, Publisher, Macmillan.

Inspiration for stories can come from anywhere. Most writers have too many ideas, not too few. If you’re stuck for ideas, it might be as simple as leafing through the newspaper, or thinking about the toughest dilemma that you have ever faced, or even a strange urban legend you would love to be true. Maybe there is a certain character or unusual type of relationship you want to explore. Many novels begin with a plot or situation, or even a plot twist that the reader will never see coming. These are solid places to begin, but you don’t necessarily have a premise yet.

To write a winning premise, you need to develop these elements from that springboard of an idea:

Distilled into a sentence, this becomes: [Character] wants [goal] but [conflicting circumstance].

These elements are explained in more detail in Debra Dixon’s GMC: Goal, Motivation, and Conflict: The Building Blocks of Good Fiction but this type of framework has been used in storytelling for thousands of years, at least from the time of Aristotle.

An alternative way to express a similar sentiment is: [Character] wants [goal] but she must [do something completely out of her comfort zone] to achieve that goal.

Arriving at a full premise is a case of extrapolating from what you already know.

Let’s take character as an example. If I want to write about a timid homebody like Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, I still need a goal and a conflict. What does a timid homebody want most? It could be many things, but in The Hobbit, it’s a quiet life at home with his community around him and several meals a day. So, what will stop him remaining in that comfortable existence forever? A wizard who brings him a dangerous quest. Instantly, we see the inherent gap between the kind of hobbit Bilbo is and the task that lies before him.

Conversely, if I had a quest in mind where a character was charged with defeating a great evil, I might ask myself, who is the least likely character to want to take on this quest? Who is the least likely character to succeed?

A tip for coming up with a character description for your premise is to think about archetypes. Even stereotypes can help convey the essence of a character, although of course, we avoid stereotypes when writing the actual novel. Often, I use a character adjective and a profession as a thumbnail sketch in a premise. For example, in my novel, The Lost Perfumes of Paris, it might be “career-focused chemist, Élodie Limeaux.”

The conflict for Élodie is that she has been so single-minded about becoming a perfumer, she has forgotten to really live, and it is experience that provides the best inspiration for creating great perfume. So the premise became:

“In order to win her dream of becoming a perfumer at the House of Limeaux (goal), a career-focused young chemist (character) is forced to explore Paris with a disturbingly attractive man and collaborate with him to create a perfume that captures the essence of the city (conflict).”

Writers often limit ourselves by choosing a story premise that feels small because we don’t think we have the skills to write the story that goes with it. When building a premise in commercial fiction, we need to forget our insecurities and go for it. Think about big contrasts, big challenges, high stakes. What is your character’s worst nightmare? Bring it on!

Had J.R.R. Tolkien chosen Aragorn as his hero in Lord of the Rings, would the novel resonate in the same way? Aragorn is already a hero. He doesn’t have as much room to change and grow as Frodo. One reason the story is so powerful is that the least likely hero is the one person who can succeed.

Now, when I say high stakes, that doesn’t necessarily mean saving the world. In fact, many writers make the mistake of thinking a quest to save the world automatically makes the readers care. But we don’t care about abstract ideas; we care about people. If the goal is important to the character, it will be important to the reader. That’s why we can be as enthralled by a quiet story about a cup of tea as we can by a gripping murder mystery.

The key is to find a goal that is so vital to the character, they are willing to face almost insurmountable obstacles to obtain it. The major obstacle must challenge the character to overcome some inner flaw that is already making their life less than ideal when the story opens.

In commercial fiction, or in any fiction, really, there needs to be some element that piques a reader’s interest and draws them in. We are competing with a multitude of alternative media these days. While not essential to a wonderful story, a good hook certainly helps to ensure people actually pick up the book and read it.

In psychological terms, we are appealing to people’s id: that unconscious part of us that is viscerally attracted to stories of danger and survival, of finding a mate or seeking a sense of belonging to a community. People tend to love reading about love, power, wealth, corruption, betrayal, and glamour, to name a few.

A killer premise is a great sales and marketing tool. But the exercise of encapsulating your story in a short, simple statement of character and conflict can help you to write your novel with a sharper focus. Referring back to your premise can get you moving again when you’re stuck or point you towards what you need to cut and what you need to hone and highlight when editing your completed manuscript.

No matter what stage of the writing process you’re in, I recommend that you attempt to devise a powerful premise, even if it evolves or changes during the writing process. The exercise might even lead you to discover aspects of your story that you didn’t know before.

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)