Has anyone ever asked for your story’s premise? Essentially, they’re asking what your book’s about. Many people use premise as a synonym for logline, but I see them as separate tools. While they are similar, a premise and a logline have two very different purposes. Today, we’re going to explore what a premise really is and how it helps writers create their stories.
Definition
A premise is the basis of an argument, or, in literary terms, the basis of a story. It’s the underlying foundation of a tale. That means, when you break a story down to its barest bones, the premise is what remains. So, when authors talk about premise, they’re referring to a very brief summary of the main plot.
The Purpose Of A Premise
Those of you with good memories are sitting there going, “Liz, that’s exactly how you defined a logline.” You’re right! A logline is also a sentence or two that summarizes the story. So what’s the difference?
Their purposes!
A premise doesn’t have to be catchy or poetic. It’s just a collection of data about your story that you refer back to so you keep your story focused in the right direction. When you’re crafting your premise, don’t spend hours on the wording. You can just make it bullet points, if that makes it easier! The premise is just for you. I like to keep a written copy of it where I write so I can glance at it and make sure my scenes are on point for the book. It’s easy to get sidetracked by a cool side character or a new subplot that just popped into your mind. If you stay focused on your premise, the story will stay on track, have cohesion, and hopefully need less content editing.
A logline, on the other hand, is taking the premise and making it into a hook for readers, agents, and publishers. The wording does matter. While you spend hours on your premise trying to identify the main concepts, you spend hours on the logline to make your premise as catchy as possible.
Creating Your Premise
Keeping in mind that a premise is just for your own use, you need to identify seven main parts of your story. Like I already said, you can just make a bullet-point list and call it good. Don’t spend hours on the wording unless you’re trying to shape your premise into a logline. At the beginning, just get your thoughts in order and worry about presentation when you’re ready to tell others about it.
Most people say that a premise focuses on the external plot. While I agree, I tend to add the internal plot as well to help me keep the character arc in focus. So, I tend to write one sentence about the external plot and one sentence for the internal plot. If there are multiple POV characters, I write one internal plot sentence for each character. The external plot should remain the same for all POV characters as it’s the central storyline of the book.
External Plot
The first four points of a premise deal with the external plot. They are protagonist, goal, conflict, and stakes. Sound familiar? That’s right. These are also the four points you need for a good logline, but we don’t care how we word it in a premise as long as it’s clear to you.
1. Protagonist
You probably won’t have to think too hard to figure out who your protagonist is for the story. However, you will need to brainstorm how you plan to portray that character. For the premise, you need to narrow it down to two descriptors that sum up your protagonist. A reluctant bodyguard. A cheery orphan. An entitled heiress. In these examples, you have an adjective that explains their main demeanor and a noun that explains who they are in society. Whichever two words you pick need to describe the character for most of the book. If you have a cheery orphan, but he spends most of his time whining, then you didn’t pick the right adjective.
2. Goal
What is the protagonist’s concrete, physical goal for the book? The goal needs to be measurable, achievable, and provable. The reader needs a way to measure how close the protagonist is to getting the goal at all times, needs to understand what “achieving” the goal looks like, and needs to see evidence when it is achieved. The protagonist wanting to “be successful” doesn’t work. However, getting a specific promotion would be a concrete goal and portray the idea of being successful. Examples of goals are: stopping an art thief, getting married, and solving a murder.
3. Conflict
In every story there is an antagonistic force that stands in the way of the protagonist getting his goal. It can a person, obstacles, society, etc. In your premise, you need to identify what the main opposition is to your protagonist getting his goal. If his goal is to get married, maybe his fiancé’s father is the one making it impossible. If his goal is to solve the murder, perhaps a tornado ruins the crime scene and he can only investigate by interviewing people. Whatever conflict you choose, it needs to be present the whole book and be the main external element the protagonist overcomes at the end of the book.
4. Stakes
The overt stakes, or potential consequences, to a story are usually obvious. If the goal is to stop a murder, the stakes are that someone else may die if he fails. If the goal is to stop an art thief, then the stakes is that the art will be lost forever and more may go missing. It’s nice to identify these large-impact stakes, but you also need to figure out the personal stakes for the protagonist. If he doesn’t find the murderer, his career as a detective is over. If he doesn’t stop the art thief, then he’ll lose the family heirloom that the thief stole.
Example
To better see a premise in action, let’s look at Disney’s Aladdin. Below are the bullet points, and then I wrote it into one sentence for easy reference. However, if trying to make it one short sentence stresses you out, just leave yours in a list and use it instead.
- Protagonist: Kind-hearted thief
- Goal: Be a prince so he can be with the princess
- Conflict: He must have the magical lamp to succeed, but the grand vizier wants the lamp to make himself sultan.
- Stakes: If he loses the lamp, he can’t be with the princess, losing his chance at love.
A kind-hearted thief needs a magical lamp to be a prince so he can be with a princess, but the grand vizier wants the lamp to make himself sultan.
Internal Plot
Moving on to the character arc, there are three more points to cover in the premise for the internal plot. You need to identify the protagonist’s desire, false belief, and lesson-learned. These components will make up the second sentence of your premise, or you can just leave them in bullet points.
1. Desire
While in the external plot your protagonist is striving for a concrete goal, they are also chasing after a desire. This typical ties in with the book’s theme. They are looking for acceptance, love, redemption, etc. This desire is the root of why (personal motivation) they are reaching for their external goal. If the goal is to find the art thief, the desire may be forgiveness if the protagonist made a mistake that lead to it getting taken. Ask yourself, what motivates my protagonist to chase the goal? The answer is your protagonist’s desire.
2. Worldview
Based on the desire, you identify a worldview for the protagonist. Most protagonists will have incorrect assumptions about the theme at the beginning of the book called a false belief. Perhaps the protagonist thinks that forgiveness can only be earned. So, he must find the thief and return the art instead of just admitting his mistake and asking for forgiveness.
It’s important to note that not everyone starts with a false belief. Most stories do because they have a positive change arc for the protagonist. However, if you have any other character arc, the protagonist may not change or change for the worse by the end. You’ll need to write your premise accordingly.
3. Lesson
The last point to identify for your premise is the lesson. Again, this ties into the theme and what your protagonist learns (or doesn’t learn) by the end of the book. If the protagonist learns that forgiveness is freely given to those who ask, that is your lesson. If, on the other hand, he refuses to believe he’s forgiven unless he earns it, you can write that as your lesson (or warning) for the readers.
Example
Let’s return to Aladdin for an in-depth look at the internal arc for its premise. Again, I wrote the points in to a sentence at the end. I also wrote a sentence using Jafar, the grand vizier, as the protagonist to show an example of a character arc that doesn’t learn the lesson.
- Desire: Be accepted
- False Belief: The princess can’t love a poor thief so he must pretend to be a prince to gain her affection.
- Lesson: Social status doesn’t dictate someone’s worth or guarantee acceptance by others.
A kind-hearted thief thinks he has to be a prince to be loved and accepted by the princess, but he learns that social status doesn’t dictate someone’s worth or guarantee acceptance by others.
Jafar (with the theme of Greed, rejecting the theme of Selflessness):
A greedy grand vizier thinks being the sultan will make him happy. Yet when he reaches his goal and isn’t satisfied, instead of learning that greed doesn’t lead to happiness, he seeks more and more power until it shackles him.
Final Thoughts
I hope this clarifies the composition and purpose of a story premise. It was a hard post to write on this topic because I kept trying to perfect my premise examples while stating they didn’t need to be perfect. LOL. I told myself I was trying so hard because people were actually going to read them, but the truth is I am a perfectionist. I finally told myself to just write something and leave it. You may have to do the same. The premise isn’t the book. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It’s there solely to guide you as you write and edit. Use these seven points to make sure your book has a consistent direction. Use whatever format you need to keep the external and internal plots focused, and worry about wording later when you craft your logline.
Thanks for reading!
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