The Four Pillars of Premise
You can build a house that satisfies the local codes but
doesn’t really stand out in a neighborhood full of identical floor plans. Or
you can build something that snags a cover shot on Architectural Digest.
The secret is knowing how to make your creation stand out in
a crowd. And do it in a way that speaks to the target audience with power,
passion, intrigue and delicious execution.
And yet, it isn’t solely about execution.
And so it goes with writing novels.
Your ability to write great sentences and give birth to interesting characters is, in fact, your ticket to participate in the tryout. To get an audition. It’s your buy-in to the higher proposition of getting published, or successfully publishing yourself. But among those, only a small percentage go the next level. And when they do, it will be more because of the combined intrigue and weight of emotional resonance of their stories.
Because everyone
at the audition can sing and dance. Song selectioncan be the thing that makes or breaks you.
Let’s shift analogies for moment.
The human body is an
amazing thing.
Barring the exception of tragic luck, we are all born with
the same tools. The same basic skeletal structure and organs and biochemical
processes. And yet we come in all sizes and shapes, with varying shades of color
and wattage, with a vast breadth of interests, beliefs and talents.
Since we’re taking (briefly) about human performance, consider the world of athletics. Take baseball, for example. Out of the tens of thousands of high school baseball players, only about 1000 have the skill and natural ability to play the game at the college level. Of those, less than ten percent can take those skills and abilities to the next level and blend in, which in this analogy is the minor leagues of professional baseball. And of those—and here we must apply intangibles such as work ethic, persistence, consistency (because on a given day any player can perform at a major league level), timing, and a dash of luck (a break comes their way)—only about four percent play a single inning in the major leagues. And of those, less than one percent have a career at that level.
Ironically, that’s close to the percentage of novels that
are rejected by agents in our business: over 96 percent.
Those kids are all strong and quick. They all understand the game. But the ones that make it have something special. In our case—given that solid writing is a given—that special thing is very often found at the premise level. Some writers have a keener nose—or if you prefer, ear—for stories that resonate.
A closer look at
premise.
Premise is the expansion of a story idea toward something that plays out dramatically. Not all ideas are inherently dramatic, which means if one simply writes an idea, it will likely come up short. A story that works requires a protagonist, with something she/he must respond to or do or achieve or defeat or survive. There must be something blocking the smooth pursuit of that goal, in the form of an antagonist, usually a villain or a force of nature or culture. And most importantly, the reader must engage with, root for, and emotionally resonate with that character’s journey within the playing field of whatever dramatic proposition has been put into place.
Many submitted novels fail to meet these basic requisites. An agent or editor can sniff out a story that falls short on these issues quickly within a proposal or pitch.
Perhaps scarier still, a writer can check off all those boxes and still come up short. Their premise could be perfectly mediocre. The story might be too familiar, too thin, too lacking in something special… something I like to think of as a bright shiny object lurking within, and lending energy to, those requisite premise elements.
A solid premise is more than a pitch, which can soar based on a singular facet of all those building blocks. But a fully functional premise is built upon eight specific criteria, introduced briefly (very) below:
Premise criteria #1: We meet the protagonist (hero), whom we will root for on a specific quest after being introduced to the reader within a forthcoming story framework.
Premise criteria #2: Something happens that changes everything. It could be argued that this is the most important moment in the novel—giving your hero a problem to solve along a path of response. I
Premise criteria #3: The hero is compelled to
react to and engage with
that problem or need—often running toward safety, or at least seeking more
information—thus fully launching the hero’s story journey, going deeper into
its darkness.
Premise criteria #4: There are stakes in play, put in place in the prior setup scenes, which pose an urgent win-or-lose pressure and threat.
Premise criteria #5: Something opposes the hero on this quest (a villain or force), creating conflict and dramatic tension.
Premise criteria #6: The story escalates and twists, as do the stakes and the level of intensity, frustration, need, threat, and urgency on both sides.
Premise criteria #7: The hero’s state of play elevates as contextually defined by structural flow.
Premise criteria #8: The story is resolved, primarily at the hero’s hands,moving the character back into her life, perhaps in an altered form.
There are four primary vehicles—opportunities—to inject your story with something that glows in the dark.
These are the qualitative ways to inject those eight
essential story facets with compelling energy.
These are opportunities to imbue your novel with something
special. A secret sauce. An eye-popping twist. Or a vicarious invitation into a
realm, culture or story world that is deliciously forbidden, impossible or
dripping with risk and reward for both the character and the reader.
A Dramatic PropositionA Character Imbued with Special QualitiesA Story World Thematic Richness
Let’s do a deeper
dive into each of these.
A dramatic
proposition is the stuff of bestsellers. The reason novels from new authors
get published, and the reason stories from previously unknown authors break out
to become widely known. These propositions often take the form of a “what if?”
scenario or framework in a way that makes the reader sit up and say, “Yes! This
is a novel I would want to read! Tell me more!”).
Genre often delivers the highest
level of opportunity in this context, and leads you toward something that is,
indeed, a bright shiny object within your premise. What if we can travel
through time? What if a detective must solve a murder committed by someone in
the police department, who are doing everything they can to protect their own
by obscuring the truth? What if two lovers face insurmountable odds against their
romance succeeding? What if Leonardo Davinci hid clues to the nature of a
secret society within his paintings, leading to a secret of unimaginable global
consequences? What if an undercover agent must stop a terrorist threat that
will probably require the sacrifice of his own life? What if the sister of a
murder victim realizes, when her sister’s body turns up after twenty years, that
she played a role in convicting the wrong man for her killing? What if a
cheating spouse is set up for a colossal fall by his bitter wife, only to find
that her own jilted lover was planning the same for her? What if a 14-year old
murder victim narrates and participates in solving her own murder, all from the
heaven she now occupies? What if a stolen painting taken from the site of a
terrorist bombing holds the key to redemption of its only survivor?
Some of these come from actual
bestsellers, others are mashups of several titles. But all of them have one
thing in common: the proposition itself, before we meet a single character,
before we read a word, leans into intriguing, compelling and/or fascinating,
while promising the reader something vicarious engaging and rewarding.
We should notice that when a novel
ends up front and center on the lists and in the bookstores, part of the reason
traces back to this facet of premise, proposing something that, if you will,
glows in the dark.
Characters
who are imbued with special qualities are irresistible, and the roster of
their names is long and enduring. Sherlock Holmes, Alex Cross, Superman/Clark
Kent, Richard Jewel, Jack Reacher, James Bond, John Corey, Stephanie Plum… all
of these are the precise reason these stories end up being successful series
novels. These are characters that fascinate, that deliver a heroic
vicariousness.
Which is not to say that you need
to lead with such a character. In fact, if you don’t give that hero something
compelling to do within the story, your odds go down. Life stories of fictional
characters are the long road to breaking into the business. Instead, consider the
story of Rachel Watson, better known as The Girl on a Train, the centerpiece of
a massive #1 bestseller and successful film. It’s the marriage of character and
plot that works here, either on its own would have turned this novel into
something we’d never have noticed. She’s a train wreck in her own right, but we
literally can’t look away. This attraction to a character is the mechanism to
achieve reader empathy and story engagement… versus, say, a story about an
Everyday Jack or Jill, with nothing for the reader to really root for, relate
to, or simply be fascinated by.
Story
world is the contextual framework for a story. When a story is set in the
here and now, in Anywhereville USA or elsewhere, with nothing about it that is
culturally, politically or historically notable, then you miss an opportunity to
hook the reader early, or even draw them to the book on this alone. This is the
key strength of fantasy and science fiction, because other worlds and
dimensions, perhaps worlds in which ghosts and aliens and clones and time
travels exist, are interesting in their own right, even before you offer up a
hero and a story, however juicy. Historical novels are imbued by the context of
their setting, which is nothing if not story world. The more dramatic the
history, the richer that time and place will be for the reader.
Part of the appeal of novels like The
Help, for example, which was set in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, was a
culture that is defined by its racial divide and pervasive belief system. The story
doesn’t work in any other time and place, at least to that degree. The same for
novels set in the depression, or in realms such as Westworld or Alien or The
Search for Private Ryan.
The appeal cuts both ways: give us a time and place where readers cannot
go, but would love to visit within the safety of the veil of fiction… or give
us a world that is forbidden (Fifty
Shades of Gray sold 95 million copies, just sayin’) or dangerous (war
stories, jungle adventures, spy novels, mysteries, thrillers) or leverages
disrupted cultures (inner city stories, gang stories, politically-charged environments,
which is the stuff of killer mysteries, and of course, high concept thrillers).
(click HERE
to read more about what “high concept” really means.)
The power
of Theme can draw readers simply by the arena within which the stories
unfold. The Help doesn’t work without
the exploration of racial tension, which combines with setting to deliver a
double-whammy concept. The Davinci Code
doesn’t work without poking at various aspects of the religious belief systems
that drive the characters, and the readers (some of whom read the novel simply
because they were outraged at what it put forward as its dramatic proposition)
into a frenzy of debate. Police corruption, political divide, alternative
history (which includes a huge helping of dramatic proposition when it works),
family dramas, love stories in general (what is romance without a thematic
layer of richness to it?)… when the theme resonates, the story comes alive.
As authors, we can
choose to bring any and even all of these into our story premises.
In my book I discuss the all-too-common phenomenon of author’s
getting married to their first ideas. This is especially true when their
fiction is inspired by something from their personal experience, they are
hesitant to depart from that experience to any degree that distances themselves
from reliving it. But a good novel is almost always written with the reader in mind, which is something professional
authors understand.
Take a look at your premise, in context to those eight criteria. What can you do to enrich the dramatic proposition? The answer is to look at the stakes of the story (the consequences of success or failure for your hero’s quest). What can you bring to your main character to make her immediately more fascinating, empathetic or root-able? Can you shift your setting, both in terms of time and place, to create a more compelling framework to tell the story sparked by your original idea for it? And ask yourself what the story might mean to a reader, what buttons it might push, how it might move them to greater emotional or intellectual engagement.
Look at the novels you’ve loved reading, and ask yourself
why. Often the reason will be the end-effect of the completed read, the way it
made you feel, the way it sticks in your memory, or even how it changed you.
But how did that happen? Can you, now that you know, recognize the power of any
of these four pillars of premise as part of the secret sauce of the story?
As I postulate in my latest writing craft book, new writers,
as well as frustrated writers, often don’t know what they don’t know. That’s a
loaded hypothesis, but when you unpack it you might just be confronted with
some explanation of not only where you are, but how to take your storytelling
to the next level. Within this narrow premise focus, these four story essences
await your exploitation, the results of which can alter the course of your
writing dream.
Check out my new
book, “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves: Criteria-Driven
Strategies for More Effective Fiction,” which includes a
Foreword by #1 New York Times bestseller author Robert Dugoni. (This link is
for the Kindle edition; a link to the paperback is shown to the right of the
cover image.)
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