The 3 types of story premise
There’s a question most writers dread: “What is your story about?” This, we feel, is ridiculous. How are we supposed to reduce hundreds of pages to a few sentences? It seems unfair, or impossible.
And yet we do it all the time when describing our favorite books and movies. We know they could never be explained in a few minutes; but we also know there’s something special in each story that hooked us, a single shining element that cinched the deal.
What we need, in these moments, is a premise. A synopsis of the most interesting part. And the trick for finding the premise is knowing where to look.
Because stories can take their driving force from vastly different places. A character sketch is not moved and motivated in the same way as an action flick, and a prolonged bit of exposition that keeps one reader on the edge of their seat might bore another to tears. Not every book can be properly described by its plot or even its setting. And not every reader wants a book concerned with those things.
I think the problem comes about, in part, because people don’t always realize there’s more than one type of premise, more than one angle that can be used to summarize a tale.
I believe there are three.
Plot premise
“Plot” can be a confusing word, but it is no more than a roadmap of conflict. “Villain attacks hero, so hero fights back.” It’s a play-by-play of two forces coming against each other through an escalating series of opposing victories.
Plots are ultimately about the one victory that will end the struggle. Because of this, a plot premise is simple: it’s a summation of what the protagonist does or attempts to do.
It usually takes this form: “A character must do [some hard thing]." For example:
A group of criminals must break into the most impregnable fortress in the world (Six of Crows)
A man must smuggle aristocrats out of France during the French revolution (The Scarlet Pimpernel)
A band of friends must unite the nations of the world to fight against the Dark One (The Wheel of Time)
The more immediately recognizable your difficult action is, the more audiences will be intrigued by the proposition of someone giving it a try.
If your plot premise feels weak, you probably haven’t picked a task with enough latent challenge. “A teenager must survive high school” has been the subject of many good novels, but by itself, this premise is not very exciting. It might be improved by focusing on a different story dimension entirely, like a conflict within the character: “A werewolf teenager must resist his family’s curse long enough to survive high school.” For a plot premise, you need a goal that entails significant struggle.
Action/adventure stories easily fall into this category. They aren’t afraid to set nearly impossible tasks before their protagonists. The thrill comes from watching someone meet challenges that would turn a lesser hero away.
Setting premise
A setting premise describes a version of the world with some elements modified to escalate the conflict. For example:
The Napoleonic wars fought with dragons (His Majesty’s Dragon)
People are forced to take a drug that prevents them from feeling emotion (The Giver, Equilibrium)
Only women can cast magic; men born with the ability go insane and wreak havoc on the world (The Wheel of Time)
This type of premise is very common for genre fiction, especially fantasy and sci-fi. It often starts with a big what-if question that tweaks one assumption we have about the world, and the story’s responsibility is to fully explore the ramifications of that change.
A good setting premise is one with inherent dichotomies, which puts people at odds with one another, their environment, or their society. It will often call to mind hierarchies and power struggles, or it will increase the extent to which nature threatens our existence. It amps up one part of the equation and throws everything out of balance. It demands renegotiation. And thus a story is born.
Character premise
Perhaps the least discussed is the character premise. This is the origin of many subtler forms of storytelling, whether it be romance novels or literary fiction. A character premise describes someone who, by virtue of being themselves, will not have an easy life. For example:
A speech-impaired king must rouse a nation to war (The King’s Speech)
An impoverished prostitute with big ambitions (The Crimson Petal and the White)
A man born with magic must save the world before he goes insane (The Wheel of Time)
In every case, it’s clear that the character is central to the story, and the story exists to document their struggle.
Many failed literary novels stumble because they don’t have a sufficiently interesting conundrum at their core. Just because you aren’t writing about explosions or a violent uprising doesn’t mean you get a pass on using conflict. The conflict just needs to be relocated to a spot within the character. There’s nothing more human than adversity, and a premise that suggests we will witness someone struggling against their worst demons is the surest way to get readers wondering how it all turns out in the end.
Bringing them together
Notice that The Wheel of Time showed up on all three lists. This is a big story, and it requires multiple layers of conflict in order to keep readers engaged for all 12,000 pages. In truth, most novels will have all three premises in some combination, and any story that doesn’t would probably be stronger if it did. Learning to include all the layers is one of the hardest skills a beginning writer has to master if they are to progress to the next stage.
But don’t forget that most stories will start from a single premise, and that’s okay. It can even be empowering. As a character-centric writer, I used to assume that I didn’t get to have a catchy one-liner to grab people’s attention. A character’s internal transformation sounds pretty boring on its own, devoid of context.
It was the three types of premise—and discovering there was a premise for my personal style of writing—which helped me realize that the purpose of the premise is to make the conflict clear. That’s how you’ll hook readers. That’s how you’ll hook agents.
It may even be how the story first hooked you.