Story Exercise 1: THE PREMISE

[Serelec]

This post is a follow up to my previous post that can be found here: PREVIOUS POST

Here it is everyone, the first writing "exercise"! I pulled this from John Truby's The Anatomy of a Story. Out of respect for the author, I won't post the entire chapter directly here, however if you would really like more examples or such, PM me and I'll do my best. My formatting is essentially this: I list out the exercises, explain them and provide examples. It's up to you what you want to try your hand at or skip altogether. Warning: it's a lot of material. Also, I'm not really here to discuss whether or not he's "right" or "wrong" in his approach or if people like him as a person or author. Take and leave whatever you wish and let's get back to work.

To summarize, the first exercise, the premise, consists of 10 separate steps. I'm slowly working towards detailing and providing examples for all of them. If you need help, want to share your results, want to make suggestions for future exercises, and/or need critiques, then please feel free to comment so on this post! Otherwise, take this resource with you and sleep on it (or trash it). There's no pressure to do everything to a T!

This list is directly quoted from Truby's book from Chapter 2: Premise.

• Premise Write down your premise in one sentence. Ask yourself if this premise line has the makings of a story that could change your life.
• Wish List and Premise List Write down your wish list and your premise list. Study them together to identify the core elements of what you care about and enjoy.
•  Possibilities Look for what is possible in the premise. Write down options.
•  Story Challenges and Problems Describe as many of the story challenges and problems that are unique to your idea as you can think of.
• Designing Principle Come up with the designing principle of your story idea. Remember that this principle describes some deeper process or form in which the story will play out in a unique way.
• Best Character Determine the best character in the idea. Make that character the hero of your premise.
• Conflict Ask yourself “Who is my hero fighting, and what is he fighting about?”
• Basic Action Find the single cause-and-effect pathway by identifying a basic action that your hero will take in the story.
• Character Change Figure out the possible character change for your hero, starting with the basic action (A) and then going to the opposites of the basic action to determine his weaknesses (W) at the beginning and his change (C) at the end.
• Moral Choice List a moral choice your hero may have to make near the end of the story. Make sure it’s a difficult but plausible choice.
• Audience Appeal Ask yourself if your premise is likely to appeal to a wider audience. If not, go back to the drawing board.

Truby, John. The Anatomy of Story (p. 37). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

[Here's my best summarization of Chapter 1, which goes into Truby's thoughts, which I felt really resonated with me. Feel free to skip this part and go right to the detailed exercises if you don't really care about his train of thought.

John Truby writes: "...A great story is organic--not a machine but a living body that develops."

A little bit more on Truby and a fair warning for those of you expecting something along the lines of How to Save the Cat: Truby's philosophy on storytelling runs counter intuitive to the status quo. Some of you may be familiar with the "three-act theory", which was so often taught to us in our high school English classes. To sum it up, stories are generally broken down into a beginning, middle, and end, with each point bearing specific purposes and goals. Well, Truby doesn't hesitate to rail against such a "mechanical" approach to storytelling. One of those reasons is because the three-act theory comes from "the conventions of traditional theater, where we close the curtain to signal the end of an act. We don't need to do that in movies, novels, and short stories or even, for that matter, in many contemporary plays." He feels that such an approach promotes formulaic, generic, episodic stories that don't always allow room for steady, complex stories. The three-act structure doesn't actually tell you where to, or where not to, take your story. He believes the writing process should be more organic, with characters and plot that stem naturally from your ideas.

In Truby's words, "Good storytelling lets the audience relive the events in the present so they can understand the forces, choices, and emotions that led the character to do what he did. Stories are really giving the audience a form of knowledge--emotional knowledge--or what used to be known as wisdom, but they do it in a playful, entertaining way." Our role as a writer/storyteller is to essentially construct a puzzle for the reader to enjoy. Every good story has both a feeling part (reliving the life of the characters) and a thinking part (figuring out the puzzle), even though some genres tend to play on one more than the other.

What is the dramatic code? "An artistic description of how a person can grow or evolve." It's the unseen story behind the story. In the dramatic code, "change is fueled by desire." All stories are a form of communication that expresses the dramatic code.

In the storyteller's world, people aren't boiled down to, "I think, therefore I am," but rather, "I want, therefore I am."

Any character who seeks out his or her desire, but is stopped from achieving their goals, will come to struggle. What that struggle results in--change or no change/development or no development--for your character is the ultimate goal of the dramatic code.

Truby goes on to detail all the different types of story movement, ranging from linear (most Hollywood stories) to meandering (i.e. the Odyssey  or Don Quixote) to explosive (Pulp Fiction, Ulysses). The main point he is trying to make here is that stories are akin to nature, with many moving parts, systems and subsystems, and processes that are all inter-related to one another. It's our job as a writer to decide what approach is best for our stories. Not necessarily the easiest approach, but the best one.]

EXERCISE 1: DEFINE YOUR PREMISE

THE PREMISE LINE (the shortest expression of your story as a whole)

"What you choose to write about is far more important than any decision you make on how to write it."

• State your story in one sentence. The sentence is generally a combination of character and plot. It typically consists of "some event that start the action, some sense of the main character, and some sense of the outcome of the story."

Some examples Truby provides are:

The Godfather: The youngest son of a Mafia family takes revenge on the men who shot his father and becomes the new Godfather.

Star Wars: When a princess falls into mortal danger, a young man uses his skills as a fighter to save her and defeat the evil forces of a galactic empire.

Casablanca: A tough American expatriate rediscovers an old flame only to give her up so that he can fight the Nazis.

Let this premise serve as not only your inspiration, but also your self-imposed imprisonment and your guiding light. Every decisions you make throughout your writing process should fall back to your premise. Failing the premise, you risk failing your story. You cannot hope to hold up a building without a solid foundation to support it.

The premise is deceptively simple. It is not. This is the stage where you will explore your grand story. You will come to see the big picture, but you should also be able to make out the details and the shapes. Essentially, you're copping a feel for what's possible. During this process, you're asking yourself the hard questions: is this story big enough to tell (can you stretch it to meet whatever standard you're going for)? What does it promise for the audience (thriller, romance, erotic pleasure, etc.)? Does this story actually work (is it too complicated, too easy)? How flexible or inflexible is it (what would your world's rules be)?

If you're struggling to come up with a premise to begin with, Truby advises taking these steps:

1. Write something that may change your life/Make a wishlist.

List themes you care about on a sheet of paper. Do some self-exploration; jot down cool characters, scenes, or dialogues; take notes from movies or books that gives you a spark. No matter who reads or doesn't read your story, at least you'll come away with having changed your life.

2. Write a premise list.

List every premise you have ever thought of on a sheet of paper. This will help you get into the mindset of clarity.

3. Compare the two lists.

Identify key patterns that emerge and note what you love. These are your vision. This is you, as a writer and a human being.

EXERCISE 2: LOOK FOR WHAT'S POSSIBLE

• Once you have your premise, then you can start exploring what is possible. This is where you ask ask yourself, "what if...?" over and over again.

Example: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, 1974

"A man killed in a train compartment right next door to where a brilliant detective is sleeping promises to be an ingenious detective story. But what if you want to take the idea of justice beyond the typical capture of the murderer? What if you want to show the ultimate poetic justice? What if the murdered man deserves to die, and a natural jury of twelve men and women serves as both his judge and his executioner?"

Example: BIG by Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg, 1988

"A boy who suddenly wakes up to find he is a full-grown man promises to be a fun comedic fantasy. But what if you write a fantasy not set in some far-off, bizarre world but in a world an average kid would recognize? What if you send him to a real boy's utopia, a toy company, and let him go out with a pretty, sexy woman? And what if the story isn't just about a boy getting big physically but one that shows the ideal blend of a man and boy for living a happy adult life?"

EXERCISE 3: IDENTIFY THE STORY CHALLENGES AND PROBLEMS

• Pretty self-explanatory step. Confront your problems here; don't be afraid of them. These are "signposts for finding your true story". Being able to spot these troubles at the premise will help you avoid them later on in the story. Some examples of story problems Truby theorizes writers might have had when coming up with their stories are:

Forrest Gump by Winston Groom, Screenplay by Eric Roth, 1994

"How do you turn forty years of historical moments into a cohesive, organic, personal story? Problems include creating a mentally challenged hero who is able to drive the plot, have believably deep insights, and experience character change while balancing whimsy with general sentiment."

Star Wars by George Lucas, 1977

"In any epic, but especially a space epic like Star Wars, you must introduce a wide range of characters quickly and then keep them interacting over vast space and time. You must make the futuristic story believable and recognizable in the present. And you must find a way to create character change in a hero who is morally good from the beginning."

EXERCISE 4: DESIGNING PRINCIPLE

The designing principle is what organizes the story as a whole. It is the internal logic of the story, what makes the parts hang together organically so that the story becomes greater than the sum of its parts. It is what makes the story original." It is the "synthesizing idea" that ties everything together and separates one story from other stories. In short, designing principle=story process+original execution.

• State your overall strategy for how you will tell your story in a single line. Induce the designing principle from out of your premise line. Also, bear in mind that most standard stories do not actually have them. The designing principle in stories that do have them are often difficult to see because they are so abstract, yet are also often effective. Truby explains, "One way of coming up with a designing principle is to use a journey or similar traveling metaphor. Huck Finn’s raft trip down the Mississippi River with Jim, Marlow’s boat trip up the river into the “heart of darkness,” Leopold Bloom’s travels through Dublin in Ulysses, Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole into the upside-down world of Wonderland—each of these uses a traveling metaphor to organize the deeper process of the story."

Here are some examples:

Moses, In the Book of Exodus

Premise When an Egyptian prince discovers that he is a Hebrew, he leads his people out of slavery.

Designing Principle A man who does not know who he is struggles to lead his people to freedom and receives the new moral laws that will define him and his people.

A Christmas Carol

Premise When three ghosts visit a stingy old man, he regains the spirit of Christmas.

Designing Principle Trace the rebirth of a man by forcing him to view his past, his present, and his future over the course of one Christmas Eve.

The Sting

Premise Two con artists swindle a rich man who killed one of their friends.

Designing Principle Tell the story of a sting in the form of a sting, and con both the opponent and the audience.

Citizen Kane

Premise Tell the life story of a rich newspaper baron.

Designing Principle Use a number of storytellers to show that a man’s life can never be known.

EXERCISE 5: DETERMINE YOUR BEST CHARACTER

"Best doesn't always means nicest."

• Ask yourself this crucial question: who do I love? Do you love the way they think and act? Do you care about their challenges? If you have multiple main characters in a single story, determine the best one for each arc. You'll want the most fascinating, challenging, and complex person or thing to tell your story because that's where your interest, and your audience's interest, will naturally follow.

EXERCISE 6: GET A SENSE OF THE CENTRAL CONFLICT

• In one line, answer this question: who fights whom over what? Whatever your answer to this question is, is what all of your story's conflicts essentially boils down to.

EXERCISE 7: GET A SENSE OF THE SINGLE CAUSE-AND-EFFECT PATHWAY

• Now to develop your story's spine. A->B->C->Z. From your premise, you can develop a cause-and-effect trajectory. Ask yourself, "what is my hero's basic action"? The one most important action that unifies every other action the hero will take.

Take this split premise with two possible cause-and-effect trajectories:

A man falls in love and fights his brother for control of a winery.

Notice it has two pathways. Change it a little to turn it into a single cause-and-effect-pathway...

Through the love of a good woman, a man defeats his brother for control of a winery.

Here's another example (The Godfather). Notice the unifying action is "revenge."

The youngest son of a Mafia family takes revenge on the men who shot his father and becomes the new Godfather.

 

Okay, that's all I'm going to put for now lol. May add more later when time allows. If you wish for more detailed steps, again, feel free to PM me. Good luck and happy writing everyone ❤️

Edited April 14, 2021 by Serelec

[Serelec]

As the original poster, I'll go first. Here's my premise for a story that I recently completed:

 

When a hard-boiled secret agent turned bodyguard falls for his principle, he is forced to confront his own lack of humanity in order to pursue his love interest and win his affection.

Edited April 8, 2021 by Serelec

[Myr]

@Serelec I'm still processing, as time is one thing I'm always short of.  I'd recommend much smaller chunks and 1 exercise at a time.  I'm pretty sure more than a few people saw the wall of text and ran for the hills. 

[CassieQ]

This is interesting.   Still thinking it over.

[Serelec]

11 hours ago, Myr said:

@Serelec I'm still processing, as time is one thing I'm always short of.  I'd recommend much smaller chunks and 1 exercise at a time.  I'm pretty sure more than a few people saw the wall of text and ran for the hills. 

Good idea, honestly for my sake too cause that was a lot of summarizing haha

[CassieQ]

First exercise and I'm already having trouble.  Especially this line:  Ask yourself if this premise line has the makings of a story that could change your life.

What if I'm writing it because I thought it sounded like fun?  I'm not looking to change the world.  

[Myr]

4 minutes ago, CassieQ said:

I'm not looking to change the world.  

I think your perspective here is too broad...

You can change someone's life by having an entertaining story right at that moment someone is down.

[Mawgrim]

I don’t think I could even start to follow all of those instructions. I did once write a story using the structure of 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' but it was hard going. I think that trying to do all of these exercises would be more likely to lead me into procrastination rather than actual writing!

Its a good idea, though and would probably suit the kind of writer who likes to spend loads of time planning out before actually diving in to the story.

[Mikiesboy]

10 hours ago, Mawgrim said:

I don’t think I could even start to follow all of those instructions. I did once write a story using the structure of 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' but it was hard going. I think that trying to do all of these exercises would be more likely to lead me into procrastination rather than actual writing!

Its a good idea, though and would probably suit the kind of writer who likes to spend loads of time planning out before actually diving in to the story.

i agree with you... i've done this and then so much of the story was done according to my brain, i couldnt write it.  This sort of thing is interesting to read but doesn't work for me either.

The effort is appreciated though.

[Myr]

Exercise 1: Secret government organization finds and trains people with extraordinary powers while keeping those powers hidden from society.

[CassieQ]

EXERCISE 1: DEFINE YOUR PREMISE

An abused, jaded teenager gets transported to another world, where he is adopted by a new family and discovers that some things…and some people…are worth fighting for.  

[Serelec]

19 hours ago, Mawgrim said:

I don’t think I could even start to follow all of those instructions. I did once write a story using the structure of 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' but it was hard going. I think that trying to do all of these exercises would be more likely to lead me into procrastination rather than actual writing!

Its a good idea, though and would probably suit the kind of writer who likes to spend loads of time planning out before actually diving in to the story.

I'm a huge pantser myself. However, I have found that when I reach a roadblock while in the middle of writing, it was helpful to go back and explore some of these questions. It usually helps me to understand why I've hit a bump in the road. But overall, the most important takeaway for me was to create the one sentence premise line

[CassieQ]

2 minutes ago, Serelec said:

I'm a huge pantser myself. However, I have found that when I reach a roadblock while in the middle of writing, it was helpful to go back and explore some of these questions. It usually helps me to understand why I've hit a bump in the road. But overall, the most important takeaway for me was to create the one sentence premise line

I'm also a fellow pantser that is trying to be a little bit more structured to keep me from wandering off into the weeds so often.  

[Serelec]

1 minute ago, CassieQ said:

I'm also a fellow pantser that is trying to be a little bit more structured to keep me from wandering off into the weeds so often.  

It's a marathon of balance 😂 Part of the fun with being a pantser is that your characters tend to surprise you in so many different ways. It's just like real life heh

[Mawgrim]

I’m trying to use this technique to work out a premise for a story I’m currently working on but I have two main point of view characters, both of whom have different objectives, even though their lives intertwine. The only way I can think of doing it is a sentence for both:

A newly-hired chief projectionist discovers his predecessor invented a device that has stirred up malevolent forces within the cinema. A young woman, whose mother died under mysterious circumstances, find herself drawn to the same place, convinced she will find the answers there.

[Arch Hunter]

I'm using this technique to help me figure out my upcoming story but I don't feel like "spoiling it" even in this very exclusive circle So I'll go public with one of my completed pieces. 

"Just when a teen drummer boy finally feels ready to pursue his love interest for the first time, a few seemingly unrelated events abruptly change his life into an unpredictable roller coaster."

Edited April 13, 2021 by Arch Hunter

[Serelec]

I went ahead and edited the post. Just went into more detail on exercises 4-7

[BigBen]

On 4/12/2021 at 9:59 PM, CassieQ said:

EXERCISE 1: DEFINE YOUR PREMISE

An abused, jaded teenager gets transported to another world, where he is adopted by a new family and discovers that some things…and some people…are worth fighting for.  

I read that story.  It was a good one.  Looking forward to seeing how you work things out in your story.

Edited April 15, 2021 by BigBen