On writing: Developing the premise #4
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Are you happy with your concept? Then grow a premise out of it. Premises involve a task to be accomplished and a character that must accomplish it in the midst of conflict.
The following few notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on determining the designing principle of your story, and how it fits into the enduring myths of humanity.
-The designing principle of a story is abstract, the deeper process going on in the tale, told in an original way. It’s the synthesizing idea, the “stopping cause” of the story, what internally makes the story a single unit and different from all other stories.
-Find the designing principle, the one controlling idea, by teasing it out of the one line premise you have before you. Induce the form of the story from the premise: boil down all the events to one sentence, describing how and why a change has ocurred from the state at the beginning of the story to the state at the end. Ex., for The Firm: justice prevails when an everyman victim is more clever than the criminals.
-The designing principle is often about taking a value that we rely on a day to day, challenging its solidity and then paying it off with its conformation or its vulnerability.
-Regarding your tale’s mythical influence: Do the protagonists have to leave their home, metaphorically or not, to confront the source of a problem, then bring a solution back home? How is there a journey there and journey back?
-Does your story involve a journey “into the woods” to find the dark, but life-giving secret within?
-The overarching structure of most myths: “Home” is threatened, the protagonist suffers from some kind of flaw or problem, the protagonist goes on a journey to find a cure or the key to the problem, exactly halfway through they find a cure or key, on the journey back they’re forced to face up to the consequences of taking it, they face some kind of literal or metaphorical death. They’re reborn as a new person, in full possession of the cure; in the process “home” is saved.
-Monomyth: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
-The story is the journey the main characters go on to sort out the problem presented. On the way they may learn something new about themselves; they’ll certainly be faced with a series of obstacles they have to overcome; there will likely be a moment near the end where all hope seems lost, and this will almost certainly be followed by a last-minute resurrection of hope, a final battle against the odds, and victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.
-A great story is about a problem, not an ideology. The ideology is subtext. It’s about a person, your hero, who has something to win or lose in squaring off with his problem and his issues. An external antagonist (bad guy) who stands in his way. A journey to take as the battle builds, ebbs and flows, and allows the hero to grow into his heroic role and begin to act in a manner that solves the problem.
For far more on what was gleaned from worldwide myths in an effort to determine what stories endure, I highly recommend Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, as well as the work done by Christopher Vogler to adapt it into practice for modern audiences, mostly in his book The Writer’s Journey.
Are you happy with your concept? Then grow a premise out of it. Premises involve a task to be accomplished and a character that must accomplish it in the midst of conflict.
The following few notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on determining the designing principle of your story, and how it fits into the enduring myths of humanity.
-The designing principle of a story is abstract, the deeper process going on in the tale, told in an original way. It’s the synthesizing idea, the “stopping cause” of the story, what internally makes the story a single unit and different from all other stories.
-Find the designing principle, the one controlling idea, by teasing it out of the one line premise you have before you. Induce the form of the story from the premise: boil down all the events to one sentence, describing how and why a change has ocurred from the state at the beginning of the story to the state at the end. Ex., for The Firm: justice prevails when an everyman victim is more clever than the criminals.
-The designing principle is often about taking a value that we rely on a day to day, challenging its solidity and then paying it off with its conformation or its vulnerability.
-Regarding your tale’s mythical influence: Do the protagonists have to leave their home, metaphorically or not, to confront the source of a problem, then bring a solution back home? How is there a journey there and journey back?
-Does your story involve a journey “into the woods” to find the dark, but life-giving secret within?
-The overarching structure of most myths: “Home” is threatened, the protagonist suffers from some kind of flaw or problem, the protagonist goes on a journey to find a cure or the key to the problem, exactly halfway through they find a cure or key, on the journey back they’re forced to face up to the consequences of taking it, they face some kind of literal or metaphorical death. They’re reborn as a new person, in full possession of the cure; in the process “home” is saved.
-Monomyth: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
-The story is the journey the main characters go on to sort out the problem presented. On the way they may learn something new about themselves; they’ll certainly be faced with a series of obstacles they have to overcome; there will likely be a moment near the end where all hope seems lost, and this will almost certainly be followed by a last-minute resurrection of hope, a final battle against the odds, and victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.
-A great story is about a problem, not an ideology. The ideology is subtext. It’s about a person, your hero, who has something to win or lose in squaring off with his problem and his issues. An external antagonist (bad guy) who stands in his way. A journey to take as the battle builds, ebbs and flows, and allows the hero to grow into his heroic role and begin to act in a manner that solves the problem.
For far more on what was gleaned from worldwide myths in an effort to determine what stories endure, I highly recommend Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, as well as the work done by Christopher Vogler to adapt it into practice for modern audiences, mostly in his book The Writer’s Journey.
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