• #4
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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 main character involved in your premise, which will usually be the protagonist.

• Can you find a character you love implied in the story idea? If not, your story may be toast, and you need to move on to another idea.
• What character would be the best in the idea? Can you make him the hero?
• Is there one character whom the audience will choose to be their hero?
• Identify what the focal character wants to attain or avoid.
• What character’s serious problem and how does he try to get out of the predicament rides the plot?
• Can you make your hero active and resourceful?
• How do you make sure your hero has compelling contradictions?
• How is he someone who wants to unravel the story? That’s all a hero is: the character who has to solve this problem. You audience wants the entire story to come out, but they can’t do it themselves. Instead, they have to trust your hero to get to the bottom of it for them. If the hero doesn’t care, what is the audience supposed to do?
• If you are writing about rookies, you need to ask yourself why the audience should trust them to be the heroes instead of their boss. Is there a value to their newness that makes them more interesting heroes?
• Could you make your hero unhappy with the status quo?
• Are you sure the character isn’t flat and lacks a fresh edge?
• Would the protagonist be so strong as to be conceptual in nature (such as Batman, Holden Caulfield, etc.).
• There is a glimpse at how and why we will find this character or arena interesting (that is, conceptual). If she isn’t all that interesting, then your premise is already suspect.
• How is the hero compelling? How could he be by nature someone we root for, and like (not necessity, but it can help). How would he be associated with a quest with a specific goal, something that has stakes?
• The hero’s motivations are critical to making a story work. Why does he want to do what he wants to do? And why will we care?
• Try to give your hero an ironic backstory, an ironic contrast between their exterior and interior, and a great flaw that’s the ironic flip side of a great strength.
• How would this story force the character to show his true self?
• How is this story about a character who changes in a significant way?
• Can you make the character face his demons, learn important truths, cause readers to ponder deeper issues and themes?
• In what ways is your kicker tied in with your protagonist’s core need? Greatest fear? Deepest desire? How does his/her goal embody the concept?
• What does your hero need or want in this story? What is his or her “story journey”?
• How is the story about overcoming the protagonist’s flaw/misbelief?
• How do you make sure that you won’t write about your hero’s life, but about your hero’s problem? Don’t open your story with your hero waking up. Your story is not about your hero’s day. It’s about his problem.
• How do you make sure that your hero affects the events and the events affect the hero?
• See how this would apply: when the story begins, heroes shouldn’t know what they need to win. That’s the point. they have to go on this journey to figure it out.
• How is he trying to improve his life, not just return to zero?
• Does this challenge represent the hero’s greatest hope and/or greatest fear and/or ironic answer to the hero’s question?
• In the end, is the hero the only one who can solve the problem?
• How is your character’s overall plot goal a dilemma that will require the entire story to solve?
• How does he either succeed or fail?
• How does the premise give something to do to the hero?
• How is the premise the personalized antidote to his lie/flaw?
• Is the arc you’ve identified your strongest possible option?
• Does your story present a unique central relationship? For example, could you take two familiar characters and give them a believable but never-seen-before relationship? Could you take two very different types of characters and force them to rely on each other in an unique way?

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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 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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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 stakes associated with your premise. The dictionary defines “stakes” as “a sum of money or something else of value gambled on the outcome of a risky game or venture.” It also defines “stakes” as “a territorial division of a Latter-day Saints (Mormon) Church under the jurisdiction of a president.” In summary: someone in your story should stand to win and/or lose big during the course of the tale.

• What is at stake for the hero relative to attaining or not attaining the goal, which can be stated as survival, the attainment of something, the avoidance of something, the discovery of something, and so on?
• The reader should know, early on, what the consequences of success or failure will be. If you’re still only vaguely defining the stakes of your story as “happiness” or “peace,” congratulations, you’ve just found the probable weakness in your story.
• Could your story be about the hero trying to change something?
• Could it be about him or her trying to improve anything at all?
• Could it be about him or her seeking to save someone?
• How do the weight of the stakes motivate the reader to root for your hero with empathy?
• How do they manipulate the reader into emotional engagement, one that would cause us to take action too?
• How would the stakes touch us emotionally and intellectually?
• How could the stakes be vividly and viscerally established?
• How much can change if the protagonist succeeds or fails? Try to make it bigger, playing for something bigger than the main character. The bigger the win, and the deeper the cut of a loss, the better, because dramatic tension is fueled by stakes.
• What would the stakes be for the opposition should they fail?

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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 building the premise out of prompts, as well as imagining the general structure from the premise.

• Put your premise in the form of a sentence: My story is about a (character and vocation) who is (death stakes situation).
• Try to compose your premise such as this: “the story is about a [most appropriate adjective] Main Character whose [fatal flaw] causes him to [what terrible troubles his adherence to the fatal flaw causes him], as he [how he uses his fatal flaw to navigate an increasingly difficult setting/plot] in order to survive by [whatever he feels his needs to feel he’s survived what life has thrown at him]”
• What if a (flawed protagonist) (encountered some problem) and had to (overcome the flaw) to (solve the problem)?
• State your premise in a sentence: Some event that starts the action + some sense of the main character + some sense of the outcome of the story. Ex. “A tough America expatriate rediscovers an old flame only to give her up so he can fight the nazis”.
• A [adjective indicating longstanding social problem] [profession or social role] must [goal, sometimes including the ticking clock and stakes].
• Write a one-sentence summary that touches on several key story elements: the conceptual basis of the story, the hero, what the hero needs and wants based on a problem or opportunity, what opposes the hero’s quest, and the stakes.
• Once upon a time there was [ ]. Every day, [ ]. One day [ ]. Because of that, [ ]. Because of that, [ ]. Until finally [ ].
• A hero faces a problem, a challenge, or a need that launches him down a path of reaction to a new quest. The hero, under pressure from the antagonist and a ticking clock, then proactively manages the new quest toward a desired end.
• Choices and events should propel the main character into a world far more exciting, different and challenging than the ordinary day-to-day experience.
• A character is flawed, an inciting incident throws them into a world that represents everything they are not, and in the darkness of that forest, old and new integrate to achieve a balance.
• Take a flawed character, and at the end of the first act plunge them into an alien world, let them assimilate the rules of that world, and finally, in the third act, test them to see what they have learned.
• Successful stories plunge their characters into a strange new world; involve a quest to find a way out of it; and in whatever form they choose to take, in every story ‘monsters’ are vanquished. All, at some level, have as their goal safety, security, completion and the importance of home.
• How is it about rich characters driven by extreme need and passion and going after a specific goal, while facing tough inner and outer conflict along the way?
• Premise is, in essence, the plot itself, driven by the character’s or hero’s decisions and action, summarized in one or two sentences. It describes a hero’s quest or mission that stems from a newly presented or evolved problem or opportunity and is motivated by stakes and consequences. Finally, there is a villain (or other antagonist, which doesn’t have to be human or even a living thing; it could be a weather or disease, for example) blocking the hero’s path, creating confrontation and conflict that requires the hero to take action to achieve resolution.
• Conflict is in play, forcing the hero into confrontation. Obstacles create and define that confrontation and conflict. The quest or journey challenges the hero and draws out her courage and claverness, which become instrumental in reaching the goal of the story, and thus the resolution. The pursuit of the goal takes the hero into uncharted territory, both internally and relative to what opposes her, by forcing her to confront inner demons in order to square off with the threatening exterior opposition.
• Dramatic tension arises from a compelling dramatic question, connecting to a hero who must do something in pursuit of a worthy goal, with something blocking the straight line toward the goal, and with something at stake.
• How is the plot focused on how it might affect a specific person?
• Think of your premise as back cover copy, offering up the plot problem your protagonist will face, how it will escalate, why it is a problem, and what it might cost her, emotionally, to solve it.
• Stories are often built in three acts, which can be regarded as representing 1) the hero’s decision to act, 2) the action itself, and 3) the consequences of the action.
• Something bad happens and the heroes don’t understand the nature of the problem right away, and it’s the purpose of the middle to figure it out.
• When we start to solve a large problem, we don’t perceive the size of the problem–and that’s good, because if we did, we would never begin. In most stories, heroes shouldn’t have any idea how long or how much work it will take to solve this problem. They should fully intend to wrap everything up in almost every scene and be overconfident about imminent success until the big crash wrecks those delusions.

• #2

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 are the notes on the subject I gathered years ago from many books on writing. Warning: I can’t be arsed to order these notes into specific subsections.

• In the context of the concept, create a central issue: a problem to solve, an opportunity to seek, or some other milestone the hero needs to pursue and achieve to avoid dark consequences or achieve something wonderful.
• How does the story pose a dramatic question, generically stated as this: “will the hero achieve X?” with X standing in for what the hero needs or wants. If X doesn’t happen, it will yield dark consequences.
• A story inherently chronicles something that is changing. Usually that “something” revolves around a problem the protagonist must solve in order to actually get from the shores of “before” to the banks of “after”.
• How does the premise give a character some specific problem to solve and/or an opportunity to go for?
• Almost all successful plays, films and novels are about primal human desires: success (Legally Blonde), revenge (Falling Down), love (Notting Hill), survival (Alien) or the protection of one’s family or home (Straw Dogs). Why else would we consume a story so ravenously? Love, home, belonging, friendship, survival and self-esteem recur continually because they’re the subjects that matter to us most.
• Test a premise casting it as a experiment that the story would “validate”. Ex. “What’s the worst that could happen if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position and married my mother?”
• What prompts the need for the task to be accomplished, turning the concept into a premise? Ex. “an evil power searches for a ring that’s been lost for ages, and in order to prevent him from taking over the world, that ring must be destroyed.”
• You need to give your character a challenge, a need, something to do, something with a purpose, something with stakes, and then layer in an antagonist force, a villain, who seeks to block the quest or path of your hero.
• How is the core story about what the character needs to do and accomplish to obtain peace and happiness?
• How is it about what the protagonist has to learn, to overcome, to deal with internally in order to solve the problem that the external plot poses?
• How would the plot force a protagonist to struggle with a problem, and in the process, change?
• The journey is one they’ve needed to take for a long time, and their goal is to change their lives for the better, not just return to zero.
• Is your hero proactively choosing to seize an opportunity that’s materialized rather than merely reacting to a problem (which is something anyone would do)?
• You need an antagonistic force (usually a villain) seeking to block your hero’s path, then another major twist that sets the hero toward an inevitable confrontation, perhaps with a final shocking twist that allows the hero to confront the villain and resolve the goal, one way or another.
• Does the core of the story ask a juicy dramatic question with vivid and urgent stakes?
• What is the story about dramatically? Who wants what, and why? What opposes that? What is at stake, and why? And what does your hero do about it?
• How is it a compelling situation that requires some specific action?
• How does the concept imbue this premise with compelling energy?
• How would the premise leverage the underlying power of concept to become bigger and better than before?
• Try to match your premise to this definition: “a story is how what happens affects someone who is trying to achieve what turns out to be a difficult goal, and how he or she changes as a result.”
• Does your premise involve a hero meeting their opposite, assimilating it and changing?
• Could the premise revolve around something unexpected happening that throws a monkey wrench into someone’s well-laid plans?
• Does it plunk someone with a clear goal into an increasingly difficult situation they have to navigate?
• Does your premise involve a character who wants something badly and is having trouble getting it?
• Does it involve someone with some passion needing to deal with a situation in the midst of huge conflict?
• Does your hero have a problem or an opportunity that calls for a response in the face of opposition to the goal? Is something at stake?
• Would this premise translate into an in-the-moment story, one that showcases all the character facets you hold near and dear and positions them as catalysts, obstacles and complications with an external hero’s quest?
• How does this premise relate to the dichotomy between the external world (how we live among our fellow man pursuing what we want) and the internal world (how we find peace within ourselves by getting what we need)?
• How does the story involve at least one character being thrown into an alien world, a place that represents everything outside their previous existence?
• Is there a single yes/no question to be answered by the end of the story? Ex., “Will Dorothy get back home?”

• #1

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Once you have ensured that the story seed you came up with connects with you enough, you should probably test its concept potential. The following are the notes on the subject I gathered years ago from many books on writing.

• Think of the preliminary answers to the dramatic questions that your “What if?” implies. What is inherently compelling and wonderful about those answers the story could provide?
• See if this could be the case: many different stories could arise from your concept, because it is fresh and different, it is rich with dramatic and thematic potential, it creates a wonderful story landscape and arena for the stories that arise from it, it has massive potential for conflict and confrontation with an antagonist (the villain), and most important, it is simply and almost overwhelmingly compelling.
• Could it be so high concept that it will draw an audience without any other components? Could it, all by its lonesome, get people saying ‘wow’?
• Are you sure the concept strikes you as unique and worthy and exciting, so it could be for someone else?
• Is the conceptual centerpiece going to be compelling to anybody besides me? Can I get outside myself and explain why?
• Is it so appealing that readers would want to believe in it?
• Will this concept cause the reader to feel something?
• How would it make the reader experience wonder?
• Are you creating a world that will intrigue readers (like The Hunger Games)? Are you creating a world readers will want to visit (like Jurassic Park)?
• Does it unfold within a setting, time, or culture that would allow the reader to take an appealing, vicarious trip into such a place?
• Is it so strong that it will make nine out of ten people say that they want to spend some time in that world?
• Could your concept push buttons?
• How could you tweak the concept to infuse it with something outrageous, tense, full of conflict?
• Could the concept contain some intriguing ironic contradiction?
• Can you make it dangerous, fun and attractive, like the idea of a dinosaur park? Desirable and original?
• If the concept has been used before, how is yours taking an unique approach, or is framed in unusual or intriguing circumstances (setting/locale or world/local events), or features characters whose careers or passions frame the concept in a fresh, compelling way?
• Could this concept produce high-concept set pieces that would push the envelope, that won’t look like any other story?
• How could you twist the whole idea so that it poses an intriguing dilemma or conflict?
• Are you sure the concept is inherently interesting, fascinating, provocative, challenging, intriguing, disturbing, engaging, even terrifying, before adding character or plot?
• How would this concept give a premise something to work with, something that fuels that story world, the characters, and the situational dynamics with conceptual givens, suppositions, truths, and constraints that drive and color everything that happens?
• Explain how the premise is set up to be compelling because of its concept, which contributes rich dramatic fodder to the story that arises from it.
• How can the concept go deeper?
• You are holding the secret weapon of storytelling in your hands. Think bigger. Go further.

Once you identify a story seed, you better ensure that it excites you enough; you don’t want to end up writing dozens of thousands of words only to realize that you’d rather work on something else. The following are the notes on the subject I gathered years ago from many books on writing.

• Freewrite about what seems important about the idea.
• What is the point of the story?
• Is the story really worth it?
• What could be the staying power of this story idea?
• Why would any of it matter?
• Does your imagination fill with possibilities? Do the preliminary scribbles get you excited about writing more?
• How is this story personal and unique to you?
• If you hope to write a book of either fiction or nonfiction, you will have to live with the characters or topic for a long time. Do you think you can do that?
• What quality, characteristic or concern surrounding your idea grabbed you?
• Why do you want to write this? What is it about your life at this moment in time that attracts you to this idea?
• Do you bring a long-standing, or at least overwhelming, desire to have lived the story?
• Why must you tell THIS story? Why is it important to you to spend the energy? Why are you willing to take time away from another area of your life to develop this story? What is it you want to say and why? And how? Where is it coming from inside of you?
• What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of?
• Is this something that by writing it might change your life? Is the story idea that important to you?
• Will it fill you, does it check something off your bucket list, will it give you focus and joy and challenge? Is the idea worth a year of your life? Do you want to be remembered for this story?
• Imagine you are dying. If you had a terminal disease, would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys that self is what’s wrong with the book. So change it.

• #2

Here are my few remaining notes about generating story seeds, taken years ago from books on writing.

• What would arouse a sense of wonder?
• Freewrite about settings you find deeply intriguing, loaded with curiosities and mysteries.
• What situations, problems, conflicts and emotions you want to be more adept at understanding, coping and resolving?
• Think of two incompatible, compelling moral decisions. Dilemmas work best when the stakes are both high and personal. When one choice is morally right, it will win out unless it is offset by a different choice that is equally compelling in personal terms.
• What’s the worst thing that could happen?
• Make a list of ten times in your life when you felt the most scared or worried.
• What subject close to your heart would embarass you, were you to open up about it? In such limits is often where great stories are found.
• Start imagining great scenes. See them in your mind and justify them later. Who are these people? Why are they doing what they are doing? What’s happening beneath the surface?

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Here are some more notes about generating story seeds, taken years ago from books on writing.

• When an image really grabs you, stop and write about it for five minutes.
• What people do you find interesting?
• Think of a character with a flaw, a knot that is hurting him and will do him more harm in the future, and what new way he could pursue. Think of a story that would show off or amplify this.
• Create a character with an obsession, then follow.
• Who are your personal heroes? What makes these people a hero to you? What is his or her greatest heroic quality?
• What sort of protagonist could serve as a vessel for you to work through your own problems?
• Think of something you wouldn’t tell anyone: not your spouse, maybe not even your therapist. See if there is a way to make that a story.
• Brainstorm over the following points: things you hate. Things you love. Worst things you’ve ever done. Best things you’ve ever done. People you’ve loved. People you’ve hated. Bucket list. Hobbies. Things you know. What you’d like to know. Areas of expertise.
• Write about the emotions you fear the most.
• How would you live your life differently if you could start over? What would you do, who would you be, where would you go?
• Consider hatching an idea from your passion, and then develop a concept that allows you to stage it and explore it.
• Write about the burning core of your being, the things which are most painful to you.
• Has your own life ever reached a turning point? Have you ever had to face up to your mistakes, admit failure, and find a way to go on? Have you ever been wrecked by the knowledge that you are inadequate, that you cannot fix things, or that your limitations are plain for all to see? Was there a moment when you knew you might die in the next few seconds? Has there been a point of do or die, now or never, it’s up to me?
• What is the truth that you most wish the rest of us would see?
• How do you see our human condition? What have you experienced that your neighbors must understand? What makes you angry? What wisdom have you gleaned? Are there questions we’re not asking?
• Is there a particular theme about which you feel strongly?
• What is the most important question? What puzzle has no answer? What is dangerous in this world? What causes pain?
• Look in your own life: Is there a loss or fear you’d like to finally grapple with, or an ideal or extreme you’d like to imagine?
• Think of some value that you believe in. Through what kind of story would you be able to debate that truth, try to prove it wrong, test it to its limits?
• The whole point of a story is to translate the general into a specific, so we can see what it really means, just in case we ever come face to face with it in a dark alley.