• #1

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Do you have a killer concept, a promising premise, and a protagonist worth a damn? Then you should determine the goal that your characters will pursue, and that will result in the plot of your story.

• How is the story about this one problem that complicates everything else?
• Though your heroes might initially perceive this challenge as an unwelcome crisis, it will often prove to be a crisis that ironically provides just the opportunity your heroes need, directly or indirectly, to address their longstanding social problems and/or internal flaws.
• Does this challenge represent the hero’s greatest hope and/or greatest fear?
• Your protagonist’s goal should inspire some kind of emotion. Anything relating to food, violence, sex or chaos is inclined to stimulate emotions at the base level. The most compelling emotion to evoke in writing is anger, so if you can include a bit of outrage, give it a try.
• How specific can you make the desire? Is there a specific moment in the story when the audience knows whether your hero has accomplished his goal or not? You should be able to photograph the moment.
• Are you sure the choices for the objects of desire aren’t wishy-washy? It shouldn’t be too nebulous, too intangible. Can you embody the desire in an object?
• How is the desire a visible one, something substantial, not esoteric or emotional or spiritual? You should be able to describe your hero’s goal to someone in a way that they can see it played out in their mind as if on the silver screen.
• How can you center the goal in the concept of your story?
• See if it could be a story that plays more gradually as the hero realizes the unforeseen true nature of the conflict. This only works if the hero seizes what seems like a positive (albeit intimidating) opportunity in the beginning, without realizing how much conflict it will cause.
• How do you make sure you have a single desire line that builds steadily in importance and intensity?
• How is at the beginning the desire at a low level, so the importance of the desire increases as the story progresses?
• How is it a single, escalating problem that your characters can’t avoid?
• Are you sure the problem has a power to grow, intensify and complicate?
• What prevents your protagonist from achieving his goal easily? Try to explain how the goal is difficult to achieve.
• You want to convey to the audience just how big and important and impossible your hero’s goal is. The reason for this is that the more impossible the audience finds the task, the more doubtful they become that the hero will succeed.
• Are you sure your chosen goal can sustain the entire novel from the first page to the last?
• See if you can make the obstacle goal something hard to want to do. For example, defeating your sister instead of a random person.
• How will your chosen goal explore the themes you want to include in the story?
• The desire should be accomplished, if at all, near the end of the story. If the hero reaches the goal in the middle of the story, you must either end the story right there or create a new desire line, in which case you’ve stuck two stories together.
• Decide whether or not, in detail, your protagonist succeeds in his external goal, and how either the character overcomes the external flaw or not.

• #2

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

Do you have a killer concept, a promising premise, and a protagonist worth a damn? Then you should determine the goal that your characters will pursue, and that will result in the plot of your story.

• Plot, in its simplest manifestation, is all about the protagonist’s thwarted goal. He wants something, and he can’t have it, so he keeps right on trying.
• You need to give your character a quest, a journey to take, a problem to solve, a goal to strive for. In other words, a plot. Something that presents risk, has options, has opposition and stakes hanging in the balance.
• What is the single, overarching question the story would answer? For example, “Will the good guys manage to reach Mordor and destroy the One Ring?”
• Can it be one of these five basic types of goals?
  • The need to win (competition, the love of another)
  • The need to stop (someone, something bad from happening)
  • The need to escape
  • The need to deliver (a message, one’s self, an item)
  • The need to retrieve (a magic ring, a hidden or lost treasure, a lost love)
• How strong could you make the goal, based on the following Maslow-like hierarchy of needs?
  • Survive (escape)
  • Take revenge
  • Win the battle
  • Achieve something
  • Explore a world
  • Catch a criminal
  • Find the truth
  • Gain love
  • Bring justice and freedom
  • Save the nation
  • Save the world
• What kind of goal can I give my main character that will seem impossible to reach?
• Every story is defined by what the protagonist wants. This external goal (the Thing He Wants Most) starts out as the story’s manifestation of ultimate pleasure (even if the story’s true source of “pleasure” is really the Thing He Needs Most). Naturally, the character is headed straight toward this font of bliss.
• The protagonist must have a worthy goal (what he needs to accomplish during the story). The goal must be concrete and measurable. He must have a believable motivation to want to carry out his goal (along with a personal need behind the external motivation).
• Do you know what your protagonist’s external goal is, the thing he’s trying to get? What specific goal does his desire catapult him toward? Beware of simply shoving him into a generic “bad situation” just to see what he will do. Remember, achieving his goal must fulfill a longstanding need or desire –and force him to face a deep-seated fear in the process.
• Does your protagonist’s goal force her to face a specific longstanding problem or fear? What secret terror must she face to get there? What deeply held belief will she have to question? What has she spent her whole life avoiding that she now must either look straight in the eye or wave the white flag of defeat?
• It always come back to: what do these events mean to the protagonist? What is her true goal? Knowing this will allow you to make her goal specific to her, rather than leaving it as a surface (read: generic) goal that we all have.
• Is her goal tired up with a core need, a passion, a dream? Is it something she must get, have, stop, reach? Is her emotional nature and spirituality tied to that goal?
• Goals aren’t necessarily straightforward. The ones that matter aren’t so much related to the events of the story, as they are related to the reasons why your protagonist participates in these events. The true objectives of your protagonists are based on their flaws and the things they need to overcome those flaws.
• Is the problem capable of forcing the protagonist to make the inner change that your novel is actually about?
• How will it make things happen that will force the protagonist to make his internal change, or fail at it?
• To intertwine with the character arc, this goal needs to be an extension or reflection of something that matters to the character on a deeper level. How is the lie/flaw at the root of that soul-deep reason?
• How does it bring the protagonist face to face with their worst fear, the force that is going to force them to face up their underlying flaw?
• How does the lie/flaw play out in the character’s life, and the story, through the conflict between the Thing He Needs (the Truth) and the Thing He Wants (the perceived cure for the symptoms of the Lie).
• How is he pursuing a goal or goals that are furthering their enslavement to their lies/flaws? They’re not pursuing happiness and fulfillment holistically by addressing the lie. Rather, they’re trying to get what they want in spite of their refusal to buck up and look deep into the darkness of their own souls.
• Does the protagonist go on this journey to solve the desire line to recognize that what he wants stands in direct opposition to what they need?
• What is the organic, escalating scenario that forces the protagonist to confront her inner issue? How does everything the protagonist faces, beginning on page one, spring specifically from the problem she needs to solve, both internally and externally?
• How does the protagonist think that if he can just have what he wants, all will be well?
• How does the protagonist want to fulfill the goal real bad?
• How could that goal mean everything to the protagonist?
• Does this challenge represent the hero’s greatest hope and/or greatest fear and/or an ironic answer to the hero’s question?
• How does this challenge tell who the protagonist really is?

• #2

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

If you’ve been following my posts up to this point and you’ve done the necessary work, you should have ended up with a killer concept and a promising premise. Congraturation! But this story is still far from its happy end. The following notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on creating a worthy protagonist that will endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and that in the end will either emerge victorious or fail spectacularly.

• Try to define specifically what the protagonist would be changing from.
• Who is this person on the inside? What do they believe? What do they want? Where are they in their life, specifically? Your goal, as always, is to infuse what your protagonist has done with the internal reason why they did it. Never lose sight of this simple fact: it’s not just about what your protagonist did, it’s about why.
• What does this character make sacred? How does that define the character?
• How did the character benefit from adhering to that flaw? And what costs?
• What is the fundamental character change of the hero? It’s what your hero experiences by going through his struggle. Weaknesses x Struggle = Change.
• How is this character with certain weaknesses, when being put through the wringer of a particular struggle, is forged and tempered into a changed being?
• You don’t need to know exactly how the story is going to end, but you do need to know what the protagonist will have to learn along the way, what her “aha!” moment will be.
• Possible character arcs:
  • Young person challenging and changing basic beliefs and taking new moral action.
  • Character goes from being concerned only with finding the right path for himself to realizing he must help others find the right path.
  • From caring only about himself to rejoining society as a leader.
  • From helping a few others find the right path to forcing others to follow his path.
  • From helping a few others to seeing how an entire society should change and live in the future.
• At the beginning of every story these elements are unconscious, then it’s possible to chart how those flaws are brought into the conscious mind, acted on, and finally fully overcome.
• Their unconscious flaw is brought to the surface, exposed to a new world, acted upon; the consequences of overcoming their flaw are explored, doubt and prevarication set in before, finally, they resolve to conquer it and embrace their new selves.
• The protagonist goes on a journey to overcome their flaw. They learn the quality they need to achieve their goal; or, in other words, they change. Change is thus inextricably linked to dramatic desire: if a character wants something, they are going to have to change to get it.
• Start building the arc by starting at the end of the change, with the self-revelation, then go back and determine the starting point of the change, which is the hero’s need and desire.
• What is the preworld / mirror moment / transformation? If you can’t build them from the idea, it’s likely not a good choice.
• How does the key way your protagonist will change by the end of the novel tie in specifically with the premise and kicker?
• If your protagonist would take pretty much the same action at both the beginning and end of the story, you know his Change Arc isn’t strong enough. This holds true for Flat Arcs as well. Although the character’s personal truth and integrity may hold fast throughout the story, he shouldn’t have the motive or understanding to act in the same way at the beginning as he will in the end.
• How does the story, as the hero goes after the goal, challenge his most deep-seated beliefs?
• The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream, discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed. One by one the resistances are broken. He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty, and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable.
• The protagonist’s superficial wants remain unsated; they’re rejected in favour of the more profound unconscious hunger inside. The characters get what they need. Expecting one thing on their quest, they find themselves confronted with another; traditional worldviews aren’t reinforced, prejudices aren’t reaffirmed; instead the protagonists’ worldviews – and thus ours too – are realigned. Both literally and figuratively we are moved.
• How do you keep in the back of the audiences’ mind for as much of the story as you can the question “will the hero do the right thing, and will he do it in time?”.
• If the hero doesn’t change for good, can you heighten the hero’s “might-have-been” factor and lost potential while showing that the hero’s actions are his responsibility?
• Will the world change along with the hero? If so, how?
• What do they dread will happen if they act against their flaw? What, in their minds, will they lose, materially and socially?
• What will happen if your character does get what they most want in the world (but not what they need)? What unexpected problems will that bring?

• #1
• #3

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

If you’ve been following my posts up to this point and you’ve done the necessary work, you should have ended up with a killer concept and a promising premise. Congraturation! But this story is still far from its happy end. The following notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on creating a worthy protagonist that will endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and that in the end will either emerge victorious or fail spectacularly.

• Who is your protagonist before the story changes him? Change him from what?
• What is your protagonist’s flaw or flaws?
• Is there a notable event in his past that has traumatized him?
• Does your protagonist have an inner problem that’s impacting his life or the lives of people he loves?
• In some cases, a protagonist’s flaw could be seen as a lie that hurts him, caused by a traumatic event that explains that character’s motivations.
• Examine the premise to see if the lie/problem/flaw might already be evident in the conflict.
• How “big” is your character’s flaw/misbelief? If you made it bigger, would you end up with a stronger arc?
• How does the flaw or problem of the protagonist relate to the story at large?
• How does the flaw prevent the protagonist from immediately solving his problem?
• Could the flaw be exactly the opposite of the final self-revelation and/or moral change?
• How have you transformed this person from a generic “anyone” plunked into a dicey situation, into a specific someone, who brought the situation on himself? Not “brought on” in the finger-wagging sense, but because it’s all the things we’ve already done in our lives that have, for better or worse, landed us where we are right now.
• How is the “new world” of the story designed to bring the protagonist’s flaws to the surface?
• How does he get worse regarding the flaw before he gets better?
• How does his desperation to beat the oponent bring out the worst in him?
• What makes your protagonist unique?
• Have you created a protagonist who is in some respect larger than life?
• Is there some quality or talent that will allow the character to do what others do not, to succeed where others would fail?
• Does the hero use pre-established special skills to solve problems?
• Ask what does the person, usually the protagonist, want, what he’ll do to get it, and what costs he’ll have to pay along the way.
• Is the hero’s primary motivation for tackling this challenge strong, simple, and revealed early on? In high-jeopardy stories, the size of the motivation must match the size of the problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the motivation required for the hero to tackle it, and the bigger the risk of not tackling it. Ideally, the reward for doing it and the risk of not doing it will both be high.
• How is what the character wants (conscious desire) versus what he needs (subconscious) at odds?
• What conflicting emotions tear your protagonist apart? How could it be considered an interior war?
• Could his inner conflict be way bigger than the outer conflict, acting as an amplifier to the outer conflict and making it much more significant?
• What is the central inner conflict your protagonist is dealing with as it pertains to your concept? Can you increase it?
• What would the protagonist have to overcome internally to achieve the goal?
• How would your protagonist go through painful dilemmas?

#2

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

If you’ve been following my posts up to this point and you’ve done the necessary work, you should have ended up with a killer concept and a promising premise. Congraturation! But this story is still far from its happy end. The following notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on creating a worthy protagonist that will endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and that in the end will either emerge victorious or fail spectacularly.

• Write down possible options for the hero’s weaknesses and change.
• Can you center your story on a character blinded by a single-minded obsession, whose weakness is the flip side of her strength?
• Can you have the protagonist desperately pursuing something?
• Does he desperately want something and is willing to risk almost anything to get it?
• Consider how sharp the point of the story will cut for each possible protagonist, in order to choose the better one.
• The event you’re writing about should be the most important moment of your hero’s life, the most critical. If your story isn’t about the most important moment in your hero’s life, don’t write the story. Write about whatever was the most important moment in his life, because that’s likely to be more interesting.
• How does the plot arise of the main character?
• How does everything rest on your main character?
• How does he have enough grit to possibly resolve the problem?
• Could you make the protagonist someone very unlikely to achieve the goal?
• How can the protagonist be the vehicle to showcasing the concept?
• How many people can you involve and affect by her choices?
• How does the protagonist’s past make what happens to him the moment he steps onto the first page of the story inevitable?
• How would the protagonist’s past be a big part of the story’s force of opposition? How does it tell you what, specifically, your protagonist is against, both internally and externally?
• How does this protagonist’s specific past determine not only what will happen in the plot, but how she sees her world, what she does, and most importantly, why?
• Explain in broad terms how the gauntlet of the plot will test this protagonist.
• Are you sure this character is the most compellingly conflicted in the story?
• How would this protagonist’s transformation, his inner change, embody the point of the story?
• How is this story the quest this protagonist has spent most of his life suiting up for?
• How does the story force this protagonist to call into question deeply held beliefs?
• What will the problems in the story mean to the protagonist? What specific plan will they topple? What internal fear will they force him to confront? What long-held desire will they give him no choice but to go after? Because your story isn’t about the external change your “what if” is going to put the protagonist through; it’s about why that change matters to him.
• How is the protagonist about to walk into the next day of her life, which she believes will go according to plan, her plan, the one based on all the past experience, but it won’t, because the story doesn’t meet his expectations?
• What are the protagonist’s plans that the story will upend, and why do they matter to him?
• How would the story test his flaw/misbelief to the max, opening his eyes along the way, or, depending on the point you are making, not?
• Does the protagonist require any noticeable personal growth to gain the inner strength to defeat the external antagonists? Use this to spark ideas and also figure out what type of arc he will have.
• In the first half of a book, protags are generally trying to achieve an objective which allows them to continue on as they are. A proud character will try to preserve their dignity; a fearful character will give in to their fear and want to run away. In the second half, they generally begin trying to achieve objectives that will allow them to master their flaws.
• Does the protagonist make significant decisions? Does he enact those decisions? If not, why not?
• How would this story exist to serve this hero?
• How is, in the end, this hero the only one who can solve the problem?
• There needs to be a deeper reason why your heroes are the only ones who can solve this problem. Calling the cops should not be an option, whether or not a cell phone is available.
• Could he, and other characters possibly, start on the edge of a crisis?
• You can’t tell the audience who the hero is; you need to show them. The audience chooses the hero, not the other way around. The audience will choose the character who is trying the hardest to get what he wants.
• Does the hero have (or claim) decision-making authority?
• Do you have a compelling or unique take on character that can only enhance your premise?
• Try to think outside the envelope. Take the idea you have for your protagonist and see how that looks when you make her astronaut, a nuclear physicist working to create an invisible force field, or a paranormal healer that can see people’s illnesses in their eyes.
• Your heroes shouldn’t react to their situations in typical ways. Instead, heroes must respond to their challenge in their own unique way. That unique reaction is what makes the heroes. This is what the Everyman wouldn’t do. This is why this story happens.
• Is the protagonist interesting and someone we could root for?
• Will my reader experience empathy for my hero?
• Why do you love your protagonist? And if you don’t, why do you intend to write about a protagonist that you don’t love?
• How would he be both a winner and a loser? The audience wants to cheer and fear for every hero throughout every story.
• How does he have a lot of badassery and a lot of vulnerability?
• How would he be in over his head often?
• Caring is only the first half of empathy, because as much as we feel for their flaws, we also need to trust the heroes’ strengths. This is the area where many beginners fall down on the job. Audiences are naturally inclined to reject heroes until they earn their investment. Your heroes need not be do-gooders or Earth savers, but they must be active, resourceful, and differentiated from those around them, even if it means they’re extraordinarily rotten.
• How is the character uniquely vulnerable to the situation in which he found himself?
• Can the character be relatively selfless and low in status? Are there more powerful Goliaths ranged against them?

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

If you’ve been following my posts up to this point and you’ve done the necessary work, you should have ended up with a killer concept and a promising premise. Congraturation! But this story is still far from its happy end. The following notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on an isolated aspect of developing a story before you delve into the nitty-gritty of structuring the damn thing.

• No matter what aspect of writing we’re talking about, you need to find a unique take, a unique slant, a different way in that audiences haven’t seen before.
• What is original within the story idea, what makes it unique?
• How is the story different from all the others on the same shelf?
• How can you make this idea more interesting than any other handling of the same concept by another author?
• How does the originality speak for itself in your premise?
• How is this material truly your own, of central importance to you?
• How does it present novelty, challenge and/or aesthetic value?
• What are other stories with a similar concept, and how can you make yours more interesting?
• How do you tweak the norm or expected? How do you bring to that tired old plot idea something unexpected, something intriguing?
• If other stories have touched on your themes before, how will your story offer a clever variation?
• Evaluate how surprising and interesting your character’s quest to achieve his wants and needs is.
• Is this single story line unique enough to appeal a lot of people besides you?
• Describe as many of the story challenges and problems that are unique to your idea as you think of.
• Will your story show us at least one image we haven’t seen before (that can be used to promote the final product)?
• Look for where the idea might go, how it might blossom. Brainstorm the many different paths the idea can take, and choose the best one.
• Ask “what if” about the story idea. It helps you explore your mind as it plays in this make-believe landscape.
• Always go beyond the obvious choice. One of the keys to becoming a professional writer is not settling for the obvious choice, whether that choice be a concept, a character, a scene, or a line of dialogue. Good writers push past the obvious until they find something unique.
• Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
• Don’t resort to repeating stories you’ve already seen. Look for opportunities to twist things around and approach the idea from a new angle.
• One of the things a writer must do is surprise the person who can’t be surprised.
• Is anything promised by this idea? Does this idea generate certain expectations, things that must happen to satisfy the audience if this idea were to play out in a full story? Think of the obligatory scenes this premise demands, and concentrate on making them original. Brainstorm plenty of alternatives.
• Ask what is an unexpected thing that could happen. What would be the expectations, and how can you throw them off?
• Does the story contain a surprise that is not obvious from the beginning?
• How would you let your characters surprise you, and therefore surprise the audience too?

• #8

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

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 notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on revising the work you’ve done so far, particularly related to your premise, to solve all the glaring issues before you delve into the meaty parts of turning a premise into a full story.

• Are you able to summarize your story in a few sentences, or a single paragraph?
• Can you spot any inherent problems right at the premise line?
• Having in mind that the premise is your prison, are you happy with the special world you’ve chosen?
• Is the premise all that it could be? Does it seem too familiar? Is it too reminiscent of stories you’ve read before?
• Are you sure the reader hasn’t encountered this story before, or if he has, this offers a new and intriguing twist?
• Are you sure you have found your best story yet? What could be better?
• Are you sure that the dramatic focus of this story connects with the concept that “spawned” the premise? How does it connect to it exactly?
• Are you sure it doesn’t focus too much on character, without giving him or her something compelling to do?
• Does your story rely on “real life” to present obstacles to the hero’s quest? In that case, it could lead to episodic narrative without a central spine.
• Are you sure your story isn’t too small?
• Have you made your story sound big and important?
• Are you sure your story has enough potential for dramatic tension?
• Can you ensure that there’s something more at stake in your story other than the hero’s happiness, redemption, or restoration of self-confidence, which may only be part of their character arc?
• How do you have a concept with a kicker, conflict with high stakes, protagonist with a goal and theme with a heart?
• Is your story at risk of lacking a compelling plot because it lacks a natural antagonist or villain?
• Will it have unique imagery, buzz worthy scenes, and a few narrative surprises?
• Are you sure you don’t have a split premise? Make sure there’s a single cause-and-effect pathway, or else it will feel like it’s all over the place.
• If you are developing a premise with many main characters, each story line must have a single cause-and-effect path.
• Premise is something you need to nail. It is the beating heart of a story. When you do nail it, it can be stated in a few short, glowing sentences. If it needs explaining, chances are it’s not yet focused enough. The drama needs to leap from it; the stakes need to be clear.

• #7
• #9

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

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 notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on going deeper. Throughout the process of developing your premise, you must have settled for elements that seem good enough. However, you’re still at the stage where you can vastly improve your future story if you strengthen it from multiple angles.

• Are you sure the big-picture proposition of the premise is strong enough?
• How strong is the drama the premise promises, as opposed to just the intrigue of a static situation?
• Consider how big a challenge the premise presents, to make it the most compelling.
• Expand on the ordinary. Is it possible you could transform your premise into something more original, more exciting, more likely to grab the attention of a literary agent or reader?
• How could you make the premise fundamentally ironic?
• How can you instill tension at the premise line, the continuing feeling of unease, of things not being right in the world?
• Make the ticking clock louder and the obstacles more ominous. Assign a deadline for what the hero needs to accomplish.
• Try to have a plot that only fills half your pages, and then let your complex scenes expand to fill the rest with unexpectedly volatile emotional complications.
• If your characters are simply people you know, in settings you know, having experiences you’ve had, will that be enough?
• How great is the gulf between expectation and outcome, to maximize the meaning the story will have?
• Is there at least one “Holy crap!” scene?
• What’s the one moment that will make readers perk up and go, “Whoa! I’ve never seen that before. This story actually went there. I’m out of my comfort zone now.”
• How could this story of yours be the one to do that thing that none other would do?
• What themes, issues, or volatile topics does your premise involve? Think of at least three and write ways you could add them to the story line.
• How many mysteries can you introduce in the story, for the audience to have more reasons to keep reading?
• Are you sure there’s something interesting or unique about the protagonist, the setting or the situation?
• How could you add a deeper empathy for the characters?
• How do you make sure that your characters cannot escape from the troublesome situation they need to face?
• Why can’t the protagonist just get what he wants? Why can’t she simply talk it out? Why can’t he just walk away or quit? Why can’t she simply change?
• As much as you love your protagonist, your goal is to craft a plot that forces her to confront head-on just about everything she’s spent her entire life avoiding. You have to make sure the harder she tries, the harder it gets. Her good deeds will rarely go unpunished. Sure, every now and then it’ll seem like everything’s okay, but that’s only because you’re setting her up for an even bigger fall. You want her to relax and let her guard down a little, the better to wallop her when she least expects it. You never want to give her the benefit of the doubt, regardless of how much you feel she’s earned it. Because if you do, the one thing she won’t earn is her status as a hero.
• Could you move the premise to a higher level of conflict?
• Try to make sure that the premise involves genuine conflict, scenes where characters don’t want to do something for reasons such as these:
  • it would require them to question their deep-seated assumptions.
  • it would require them to overcome an inner weakness.
  • they promised someone they wouldn’t do it.
  • it would reveal their painful secrets.
  • it would get their love interest or a family member in trouble.

• #6
• #8

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

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 notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on trying to ensure that anyone other than yourself would give a damn about the story you want or need to tell. I don’t focus much on what a random person will think about my stories; for me, the “target reader” is a fantasy. You can only truly satisfy your own subconscious, and you satisfy random readers’ subconscious to the extent that their neural pathways mimic yours. That said, considering your story from an outside perspective can improve your work.

• Create an elevator pitch for your story. Three paragraphs: 1) a character and situation; 2) the push into the plot; 3) the main story question.
• Write the pitch in three sentences: MC’s name, vocation, initial situation. “When” + main plot problem. “Now” + the death stakes.
• See if you can formulate the idea into a compelling, 30-second pitch. At least three sentences. First describes the character, his vocation, and initial circumstances. The second is the doorway of no return. The third is the death stakes.
• Your story’s logline should include the main character, the objective, and the major source of conflict.
• Why would anybody want to see or experience this story?
• How does the premise make people excited to learn more about the story just by hearing the one-line story summation you’ve come up with?
• Does your premise have an inherent appeal, or are you relying solely on your execution to make the story compelling?
• Is the one-sentence description of your story uniquely appealing?
• How does your premise seduce, make people want to read the story?
• How does it promise drama, conflict, stakes and emotional resonance?
• How is your premise cool and provocative, even if it’s actually impossible?
• How is the problem introduced in your premise larger than it looks? Why does it matter to us all?
• Could the premise be so strong that it could draw readers by itself, not depending on other components such as execution?
• Does this premise have a kicker that would make readers ask questions they would want answered?
• What controversial or sensitive issues or themes can be at the core of this idea so that it will tug on readers’ hearts?
• Would the premise appeal to a wide and inherently commercial readership? Or does it focus too narrowly on a specific corner of life, even if that issue is important to you?
• How would your story make the readers experience wonder?
• Imagine you have a gatekeeper’s attention. How will you describe your story? When you launch into your ten minute summary, will they like what they hear?
• Is this a story anyone can identify with, projected onto a bigger canvas, with higher stakes? Could you write into it the emotions you know, putting those emotions into a more extreme situation with a lot more at stake?
• Go through each of the following audience attractors your story could contain, and try to explain how your story would include them:
  • Laughter
  • Lust
  • Adrenaline rush
  • Bloodlust
  • Power fantasy
  • Romantic fantasy
  • Pathos (something devastating)
  • Beauty
  • Cognitive dissonance (blew your mind)
• Is what happens to your characters exciting and dramatic, out of the ordinary, and most importantly, meaningful?

• #5
• #7

You can check out all my posts on writing through this link.

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 notes, gathered years ago from many books on writing, focus on developing the conflict of your story at the premise stage. If your hero wants something, some other force must stand in the way. Your characters’ true selves get revealed when tested.

• How is conflict built into the premise?
• How readily recognizable is that conflict? The more immediately apparent, the sharper your premise will be. If people could hear the premise line and think, “I can see where that’s going,” or “I can see why that’s a big problem,” then you know you have a winning premise.
• How does the hero have an external foe to banish?
• Who (not what) is actively holding back my protagonist?
• How does the conceptual context force the hero to take action against an external antagonistic force rather than simply existing as a situation within the story world?
• How does the central conflict inherent in your premise create the greatest opposition possible, with the highest consequences?
• What big thing has to happen before underlying conflict can be talked out?
• My character can change, but before that she must go through what?
• Can you make the conflict both compelling and ironic?
• What are, specifically, the villains doing? Why? Because we need to care about it, be frightened or disgusted by it. We need to know specifically what are they doing, and why the protagonist cares about it.
• How does the opposition continually do something specific to become the protagonist’s foe, his nemesis?