From premise to plot

Krisela · Apr 19, 2009

I was talking with a group of fellow writers the other day, and we agreed on a problem we all seem to run into. We may suddenly have a 'eureka!' moment, and come across a good idea/concept/premise/whatever-you-want-to-call-it for a novel... but then we struggle at building that premise into a plot. For my own part, I've got a notebook filled with a dozen or more sentences detailing ideas for novels, but I've never managed to draw a full plot out of any of them. Obviously once you have a plot you can throw in 'ninjas', etc, to expand it, but where to start?

To give a (terrible) example: "a novel about a world where the Moon is actually made of cheese." A premise, but how to build a plot from that?

Personally, what I find helpful is to create two or three characters, and think of ways to relate them to the premise. That's actually how I came up with the plot for the novel I'm writing at the moment. (So, using the example above, Character A is training to be an astronaut, and Character B wants to use the Moon to end world hunger.) Then I think of ways for the characters to interact, and throw in 'ninjas' until I have a plot.

But, seeing as how this seems to be a fairly common problem, I wondered if anyone had any different methods, tips or tricks for building a novel from a premise?

The Lonely One · Apr 19, 2009

Jeez, is ninja the word of the week around here?

Here's the difference.

Premise: "a novel about a world where the Moon is actually made of cheese."

Plot: "a novel about Sally Clemins, a young, ambitious mother and Cheese Industry Worker who is the first of human kind to discover the Moon is actually made of cheese. Clemins struggles to be the first to cash in on the discovery to build a better future for her daughter, but discovers along the way that their relationship's struggle has little to do with money. Clemins must decide to go on attempting to obtain the life she's never had or embrace the one she's given birth to."

KosseMix · Apr 19, 2009

I always look at my premise, then try to figure out how I could really screw up the life of a character in that world.

PREMISE: People can turn into animals
CHARACTER: Poor, sad individual can't do it, even though everyone else can

The Lonely One · Apr 19, 2009

To elaborate more fully, I think character is the key to plot whereas premise is a key idea by which the story operates.

Developing characters is in my opinion the quickest way to building plot.

Krisela · Apr 19, 2009

KosseMix said:
I always look at my premise, then try to figure out how I could really screw up the life of a character in that world.

PREMISE: People can turn into animals
CHARACTER: Poor, sad individual can't do it, even though everyone else can

I'm much the same! I guess that makes us very sadistic writers.

DamaNegra · Apr 19, 2009

Ugh, I have this very same problem. I've got a great premise and I've got some interesting characters, but I can't figure out how to get a plot out of both elements. I'll be very interested in what the rest of the responses may be.

DeleyanLee · Apr 19, 2009

Krisela said:
To give a (terrible) example: "a novel about a world where the Moon is actually made of cheese." A premise, but how to build a plot from that?

To me, that's not a premise. It's just an idea. A premise is a several to a whole lot of ideas mushed together that will spark enough necessary stuff for an entire story.

The process you describe, to me, is consciously coming up with other ideas to mush together to make a premise. As you noted, once you have a premise, it's easier to figure out if you've got a real story in there or not.

wandergirl · Apr 19, 2009

I definitely have this same problem with my new WIP. The premise is fab! My characters feel real! The setting is rich and textured! ...Now what?

I find it best to tackle the plot as a trail of mini-climaxes & confrontations; a vacillation gradually building up to the main climax towards the end. Each bump is a result of my throwing "ninjas" and other obstacles, internal and external, in the path of my MC's forward motion.

In brainstorming these obstacles, I think well in terms of setting. What's an intriguing setting that fits well within my storyworld, and what events might happen there?

Cyia · Apr 19, 2009

Gah. I started a thread in the sandbox because I'm having this problem with a premise I want to flesh out a plot for. I guess it's a common writer affliction.

Dale Emery · Apr 19, 2009

For me, the challenge is to translate that original spark of an idea into a resolvable conflict. If the moon really is made of cheese, what conflict might that create for some person in that universe? What kind of character would be most strongly affected by that knowledge, by that conflict?

I say challenge because I don't know how to do this reliably. Yet.

Dale

Cyia · Apr 19, 2009

Dale Emery said:
For me, the challenge is to translate that original spark of an idea into a resolvable conflict. If the moon really is made of cheese, what conflict might that create for some person in that universe? What kind of character would be most strongly affected by that knowledge, by that conflict?

I say challenge because I don't know how to do this reliably. Yet.

Dale

Simple. A pair of genetically enhanced mice stowed away on the lunar landing and they're eating the moon from the inside out.

Team 2012 · Apr 19, 2009

Don't think you're going to find the "premise to plot engine".

A good premise drags it's plot with it, in many ways. The moon is cheese. Okay, how is this discovered? What is the effect? Is it an ending punchline, where you dream up how to get there? Or a given that creates certain realities? Most of us have had ideas that played into plots and others than don't. The latter are probably worth dumping. Let them go and if they come back, buy them dinner, invite them to your house, then shoot them in the face with a small revolver.

A good premise doesn't need to be bitch-slapped into growing up. On the contrary, it will follow you around tugging at your skirt and demanding attention. It will make you jump out of your bathtub and scribble on wet paper so as not to waste time booting up your computer. It will make you pull over and piss off your date by blurting details into a recorder.

If not... hey, do we really need a story about moon cheese, after all?

Stunted · Apr 19, 2009

The way it usually happens for me is that I'm wandering around in my life, and I get a crazy idea. I'm not sure you'd call my crazy idea a premise exactly. To give you an idea, my most recent major one was "girl devoted to a prince." Another was "supernatural creature having lived an entire life isolated in the human world".

In case you haven't noticed, these are incredibly lame on their own, but when they come, they bring with them some interesting (I think) emotion around which an interesting (I think) character springs. And then a scene happens and then plot starts happening and then BANG! NOVEL!

Rushie · Apr 19, 2009

I might be wrong but I thought a premise included the resolution, and involves the main character's role. In this case, with character B using the moon to end world hunger, the premise would be more like: "Industrious pursuit of a lunar discovery leads to solving world hunger". This premise includes how the story ends, AND includes the struggle of the main character (his "industrious pursuit"). This is a complete premise and hence already contains the barest bones of the plot. You can now connect between the beginning and the end and figure out the steps of the "industrious pursuit" in between.

If your character fails to end world hunger because, say, two superpowers fight over who owns the cheese moon ending in nuclear holocaust, then your premise would be: "Industrious pursuit of a lunar discovery leads to global disaster." Then you connect all the dots between the beginning and that end. But just "the moon is made of cheese" isn't a premise. If you decide your complete premise, it will set you on your path to a plot.

Dale Emery · Apr 19, 2009

Rushie said:
I might be wrong but I thought a premise included the resolution, and involves the main character's role.

I like the pattern you use, and also an expansion of it that I learned from Stanley D. Williams's excellent book The Moral Premise:

[Vice] leads to [defeat], but
[Virtue] leads to [success].

You can fill in any number of virtues and vices, successes and defeats. Usually the two halves are opposites: the vice is the opposite of the virtue, and the defeat is the opposite of the success.

Williams gives a further pattern, in which the MC refuses to learn the lesson:

[Virtue] leads to [success], and
[Vice] leads to [defeat], but
[Unrelenting vice] leads to [destruction].

That said, I know that people use premise to mean lots of things. So when a conversation about premise pops up, I can't count on people using the word the way I do.

Dale

deserata · Apr 19, 2009

Rushie said:
I might be wrong but I thought a premise included the resolution, and involves the main character's role. In this case, with character B using the moon to end world hunger, the premise would be more like: "Industrious pursuit of a lunar discovery leads to solving world hunger". This premise includes how the story ends, AND includes the struggle of the main character (his "industrious pursuit"). This is a complete premise and hence already contains the barest bones of the plot. You can now connect between the beginning and the end and figure out the steps of the "industrious pursuit" in between.

If your character fails to end world hunger because, say, two superpowers fight over who owns the cheese moon ending in nuclear holocaust, then your premise would be: "Industrious pursuit of a lunar discovery leads to global disaster." Then you connect all the dots between the beginning and that end. But just "the moon is made of cheese" isn't a premise. If you decide your complete premise, it will set you on your path to a plot.

QFT.

A useful premise is not just an idea (e.g., "ambition"), it contains movement which directs the character and therefore the plot ("ruthless ambition leads to its own destruction").

archerjoe · Apr 19, 2009

A pat answer we use at work, only half in jest, is "if it was easy, everyone would do it and we'd be out of a job." It's not easy and may require a little luck. About half of the premise for my WIP is a bolt from the blue and the rest is me carefully injecting conflict.

motormind · Apr 19, 2009

Krisela said:
To give a (terrible) example: "a novel about a world where the Moon is actually made of cheese." A premise, but how to build a plot from that?

Personally, what I find helpful is to create two or three characters, and think of ways to relate them to the premise.

And that's just the way to do it. Stories are about persons, first and foremost.

Mad Queen · Apr 19, 2009

That's why I think it's best to start out with a plot. I might have amazing characters, a wonderful concept, a rich setting, fascinating themes I want to explore, but if I don't have a plot, I can't go anywhere. And when I finally create one, it's likely to be poor, because the number of possible plotlines gets smaller and smaller as the other aspects of the novel become established. Personally, I have decided I'll sacrifice anything for a good story, except consistency and verisimilitude.

I don't always follow my own principles. For a few months now, I have been thinking about a certain character and premise, which in my opinion rock, but I don't know what to do with them, so I tell myself to focus on another story instead, a story with a plot that I love.

Stijn Hommes · Apr 20, 2009

I start with an idea. Let's use the OP's "a novel about a world where the Moon is actually made of cheese."

I develop a plot or a premise by going through my notes to see if any other existing idea links to it. Then I brainstorm possible characters, scenes, settings, etc.

When I have those, I simply dream up an engaging opening scene. Character X discovering the moon is actually made of cheese would do in this case. Then I simply follow the character around to see what they do, backtrack if they paint me in a corner and try to work in other brainstormed scenes about mice and world hunger

In short: I let ideas boil for a very long time.

JJ Cooper · Apr 20, 2009

The book must have a beginning, middle and end. So does each chapter. Simple as that IMHO.

JJ

Ctairo · Apr 20, 2009

I look for themes. Beyond telling the story, what is the point of the story?

The moon is made of cheese. It's free food, but it won't last forever. What will we do? How will we handle the loss?

Thinking about the questions might yield a theme - or several.

motormind · Apr 20, 2009

Ctairo said:
I look for themes. Beyond telling the story, what is the point of the story?

The moon is made of cheese. It's free food, but it won't last forever. What will we do? How will we handle the loss?

I would think more like this: Jim wants to harvest the cheese from the moon and sell it. Jerry knows that most of the moon's cheese is poisenous and wants to dam in Jim's greed. Most of the story will be about Jim and Jerry's tug o' war around the moon's resources.

So in the end it's all about characters. Always.

Ctairo · Apr 20, 2009

motormind said:
I would think more like this: Jim wants to harvest the cheese from the moon and sell it. Jerry knows that most of the moon's cheese is poisenous and wants to dam in Jim's greed. Most of the story will be about Jim and Jerry's tug o' war around the moon's resources.

So in the end it's all about characters. Always.

I get around to characters - eventually.

Dale Emery · Apr 20, 2009

By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, the density of the moon is about 50% higher than the density of Vermont white cheddar. We know both the mass and the volume of the moon. That volume of cheese would have about 2/3 the mass of the moon.

Therefore: either there is something denser than cheese under the surface, or this is an extraordinarily dense cheese.

In either case, who would have the technology to create such a thing? Who has the technology to build a secret, high density military base deep in a giant ball of space cheese without anyone knowing? Russians? I don't think so. Who has the technology to such a rich, creamy, heavy cheese? The Swiss? Pshaw.

There's only one reasonable conclusion: Ninjas.

From premise to plot

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