The confusing thing being all those terms that may or may not be the same thing: theme, premise, point, moral, and even "subtext"?

I submit that you can start with a premise (or whatever), but you run the risk of preaching (famous quote attributed to Sam Goldwyn of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie studios: "If you want to send a message, use Western Union.") when you start that way.

I also think that determining the premise once you've finished a story could be an interesting exercise. Perhaps the group that is examining a story each week might be willing to discuss premises for the stories (I don't recall that they have done that particularly, though it could be incidental to their discussion).

Maass explores one sense of premise in one insightful way. What it is, what makes a good one, how to conceive a good one, and how to test it. A simple paraphrase of his four components of a premise, plausibility, inherent conflict, orginality, and visceral appeal. Appealing to a reader's perspective, mostly.

In another sense of premise, how a writer gets at a premise, Maass doesn't delve too deeply, the aesthetic characteristics of dramatic premise, imaginative premise, emotional premise. Dramatic premise, a character in an emotionally trying context with a complication to address. A generic example, A familiar stranger striving to belong in an alienating and hostile secretive society by proving his worth. I've seen similar concepts variously labeled and with similar purposes; plot-theme, logline, elevator speech, pitch synopsis.

Imaginative premise is another term for speculative element. My preference for the term imaginative comes from how a relevant fantastical premise, in the case of hard or soft science fiction or fantasy or horror, relates to a dramatic premise. Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" wouldn't stand as a story but for its fantastical premise. A future where all are equal from a draconian practice of handicapping down to a most common determinant.

http://www.tnellen.com/westside/harrison.pdf

Emotional premise is the core emotional sense of a story. In the tension attribute of plot, specfically the sympathy/empathy context for reader resonance, an emotional cluster that drives a story's movement. Fear and pity, wonder and awe, sadness and sorrow, surprise and joy, desire and thrill, etc.

The theme of a story, on the other hand, is the deeper level of symbolism and message. When someone asks what your story is about, you can say:

Its about a boy who grows up and then sprouts four extra arms (premise version)
Its about a boy who grows four extra arms and must still win the heart of the woman he loves (plot version)
Its about friendship (theme version.)

Does this link describe what you mean?

I think the form of premise that's bothering me is the most basic one. Is it also called the "log line" -- ? It's not the theme. I have that fairly well fixed in my mind.

Similar to logline, also a screenwriters' term, from premise (film);

"The premise of a film or screenplay is the fundamental concept that drives the plot.

Most premises can be expressed very simply, and many films can be identified simply from a short sentence describing the premise. For example: A lonely boy is befriended by an alien; A small town is terrorized by a shark; A small boy sees dead people.

A story which has an easily understood, compelling premise is said to be high-concept, whereas one whose premise is not easy to describe, or relatively small-scale or mundane, is said to be low-concept. A low-concept story is highly execution-dependent because the commercial viability of the project will depend largely on the quality of the creative endeavors of those involved, whereas a high-concept story may pull in audiences purely based on a simple premise."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premise_(filmmaking) Wikipedia: Premise (film)

Low-concept premises for their sometimes overtly "literary" high-brow qualities is a term sometimes used in a derogatory sense. Low-concept premise is often a figurative meaning not readily subject to interpretation in the moment of a story.

There are dozens of terms that I've seen paralleling premise. And I've encountered discussions where the concepts are presented in fuzzy ways without naming that nonetheless get the point across. The peculiar thing for me is having explored the various terms and uses, I can now understand what's being discussed wherever and determine meaning and comparative benefits of any one or another term. Maass' discussion deals mostly with how to use premise to appeal to readers. A very little on how writers can grasp the concept through examples from published works. Premise is another of those more difficult concepts that a writer struggles to grasp and master. Once it's fully understood it seems so simple in retrospect. Like learning to tie one's shoes.

Then there's the experimental scientific model of hypothesis as a what-if premise, and thesis, process, observations, conclusions, etc.

Or premise as pertains to logical debate, with opposing viewpoints stated in a thesis, title or opening statements. Humankind is inherently inhumane to humankind versus all humans are at heart virtuous and good natured. Or any means to an end versus the ends don't justify the means, again, theme-oriented as far as a premise reflects a thesis statement.

Or all of the above intricately juxtaposed in a glorious synthesis of the whole.

I am thinking of the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. (Yes, I realize not everybody likes them... or has read them...) But each book in those series is built around a major premise he calls the "wizard's rules." For instance,

"Given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe its true, or because they're afraid it might be true. Peoples' heads are full of knowledge, facts and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool."

or "Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie."

He uses each of these as a major thrust of the book's plot and theme. Most writers aren't so blatant as to directly quote their premises within the text, but if this is what you mean, then I think it a good example.

A cherished pet, say, a dog, is unintentionally left behind when the family moves far away to a new town. A high-concept premise. There's inherent complications and conflicts built in to that premise. Maass also discusses complications. Designing and building and adding on to complications.

Oh, no, there goes the people! A stray cat joins the dog on his venture to catch up with the people. An added complication with inherent conflict. No change in the main premise, but a new premise in the way of necessity breeds friendship, a friendship message. The cat's reason for joining the dog might be anything related or unrelated. Say, the cat's already roaming, going that way to catch up with a friend. Out of an impish desire to see the domesticated dog fumble in unfamiliar territory, she joins him.

They encounter new complications and the same complications further complicated.

Environmental premise and message, the cat helps a bird trapped in a plastic six-pack ring at the prompting of the compassionate dog. Sympathy for the dog due to his compassion.

Wild animals cause further complications. The dog and cat and now the bird must cooperate to solve those complications.

Distance, intervening obstacles, natural and human-made, more complications and building complications.

Escaping from an evil taxidermist prospecting for specimens to mount. Vile animal catcher trapping stray pets, specimen collector for medical research. Inherent conflicts, complications, premises, and messages.

Singling out a story's overarching low-concept premise can be easy or require more thought that pleasantly stays in an audience's thoughts after a story's complete. The overarching low-concept premise of any given story is a riddle, sometimes a puzzle I like to solve.

Benji to me has an overarching low-concept premise related to determination and perseverance, with minor premises related to friendship, family bonding, environmentalism, animal rights, and so on.

Premise's connection to themes, motifs, conflicts, messages, and morals and all the other attributes of a story are distinguishable but not so clearly divisible as to make them easy to discover. Too visible and they come off as preaching. Too subtle and they're impenetrable. Maass also discusses subtlety, or in another sense, subtext.

In vocabulary in my world, where I am King of All He Surveys, Including Ye Olde Desktop Computere and Ye Really Olde Fone Whych Reckwires A New Batterie:

Premise: often, the first thing that sparks a story to be written. It is the seed the story springs from. This can be an answer to a "what if?" question (What if the Sun began to die?), something based on a world building (A world where magic use causes people to go insane. And everyone is born with magic gifts), to a conflict (I want to write a story where a man is betrayed by his best friend...)

Moral: The lesson of the story. In old Aesop's fables, it was often labeled: "And thus we see that ______," or, "The moral of the story is don't count your eggs before they hatch" or whatever. In modern literature, it is taught by the prose. We see a prideful man having a great fall, and we learn that pride causes great falls. We see a unlikely hero triumph over great odds using only his wit, and we learn about persistence, or ingenuity, or whatever.

Theme: The theme is closely related to the moral, but... different. It is the philosophical basis of the story. It can often be expressed in one word. This work is about: Friendship. Love. Revenge. Etc. This is what I would call extrinsic's label of "high concept."

Does anyone else think of these terms in this way? Is there some type of standard meaning to these words? When someone says Plot, or Voice, or Characterization, we usually understand what they mean. Why are these points more abstract and less defined?

I should like to point out that in my opinion, all of these are always present in a story, regardless of whether or not the author intends them to be. Being aware of them helps a writer craft the work more individually.

Ultimately, the only certain point I can make is that it's a writer's right and responsibility to choose how to go about it, consciously, critically thinking or organically self-created lexicon or adapt to someone else's definitions or little to none at all.

The path that succeeds in discussions often follows someone's who's made an effort to clarify and set it down in print for all to share in (Maass, Swain, Card, Rand, Aristotle, Freytag, Lubbock, Friedman, et al)--and sometimes fails to clarify sufficiently--a particular sense of a term with multiple senses that might diametrically oppose another's. For example, deconstructionists and historicists are as different as night and day on the topic of reading understanding from a self-contained meaning or in a historical metacontext of a story's relevance and meaning against the backdrop of history and literature's opus.

Then someone said something like, "Well, yeah, it's an interesting story, but it has no subtext."

Huh?

So maybe that's part of the confusion as well.

Edit:

Subtext as I know it is the meaning read between the lines. It's subtlety in expression, deliberate avoidance of a topic on a superficial, literal level but conveyed in figurative meaning, or for open conversation or narrative with subtended meaning for rhetorical purposes. Courtly conversation intrigues are an example of subtextual conversation. Damning and insulting with faint praise. Flirting with innuendoes, multiple entendres, terms with multiple often opposing senses, mundane is a classic word with multiple and far different meanings.

In a rhetorical sense, subtext is the meaning derived from form and method of delivery as it relates to but is indistinguishable from content, method and message. Even metaphor is a kind of substitution scheme from the four catagories of change--addition, subtraction, transposition, substitution--that has subtext.

"No man is an island."--John Donne. Absurd on the face of it, but the substitution of "an island" with a man completely independent from fellowship and supportive and helpful human relationships dries a maxim right out of all its subtextual vitality and leaves it deflated.

Subtext doesn't have to be complex to be subtle. One of the examples I've encountered in my studies is of a husband and wife arguing over what to do for dinner. They're really arguing about their failing relationship and don't know it, but observers do, a form of subtext known as dramatic irony.

quote:

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In other words, "what is the point of the story?"
The confusing thing being all those terms that may or may not be the same thing: theme, premise, point, moral, and even "subtext"?

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Seeing that I read the piece, maybe I can answer arriki's question with KDW's terms the best I can.

Theme
Alien rescuers are sent to a crashed ship with vague instructions on who is aboard the vessel. A deadly illness called 'disease' inflicting more and more of their kind everyday as a backdrop.

Premise
A strange illness is befuddling an advanced alien race. Two powerful agencies, Military and Health, have separate ideas on how to handle the growing plague. A Coast Guard like group is sent by the head of Health to a downed vessel in the South Polar region to extract an important director and his unusual passenger -- a human. With the assistance of a disgraced pilot and a commander that has placed a lot of faith into him, the lead character must over come her prujudices, xenophobia, and a military that is out to stop them from reaching safety.

point
Is that cool heads can prevail despite enormous odds. The lead character is out to see that her job is done even if she doesn't believe in it or trust the people she is saddled with.

moral
Never judge a book by its cover

subtext
Now this is where the problems lie. By my definition, subtext is similiar to subplot. What is the theme, premise, point, and moral of all the small stories within the larger one?
I could answer that but it would take pages to do so. Your story has a lot of sidebar things going on. So much that I think writing the piece in chapter form would have helped, a lot.
I think you are having trouble defining your premise because of all the things that happen in between. In short, it is long. You did a nice job of writing an 80000 word premise into a 17000 word story. So much so it still feel like its 80,000 words. I'm not implying it is boring, just that it reads overwhelming.

Hope this helps and answers your question(s).

If I may offer an example (I hope) of a novel that I perceive as having subtext (and, as my abovementioned friend pointed out with respect to that book I loved so much, not all books have subtext).

The book WHEN CRICKETS CRY by Charles Martin is about a heart surgeon who gave up his work when he was unable to save the life of his beloved wife--he became a heart surgeon because he knew from when they were children that her heart was not strong, and he wanted to be ready to fix it when the time came. He meets a young girl who is in the same situation as his childhood sweetheart had been, and her need gives him a second chance.

Charles Martin has written other books that are clearly about people struggling with faith in God under challenging circumstances, and I have read some of them since I read WHEN CRICKETS CRY, but I had not read any of them before I read it.

There is, to my recollection, no overt mention of God in the book, nor does the heart surgeon even think about Him enough to consider blaming Him for his failure to save his wife.

And yet, I believe the subtext of that book could be "God is in the details."

Subtext could be said to be what is there "between the lines," but it could also be said to be what is there "under" them, hence "sub"-text.

To me -- theme is where some element of the story turns out over and over to be what happens.

A friend wrote a story years ago and it turned out to have a theme of water. everything that happened was connected to water in some way. When there was a disaster, it was a flooding rain. When someone died, he died in a well. The reason the pov came to wherever it was, was because of a conflict over water rights to some river. That's when I first saw how you can manipulate events to make a theme work.

So, it seems to me that (thank you snapper) the theme of my recent story is disease. Everything that happens goes back to that or involves that.

But I am not comfortable with snapper's idea of the premise.
To me, struggling with this, the premise is something basic. Something like -- honesty is the best policy

But it isn't that, not really. Something close?

What, in this sense, is the Premise of Star Wars: A New Hope? Or JAWS? Or WITNESS? Or RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK? Or UP? Or GONE WITH THE WIND? Or MINORITY REPORT?

I'd say a moral is what the viewers/readers/audience take away from the story. The premise is why you wanted to write it in the first place. (Sort of like what I've heard OSC call the first and final cause--first cause: what you intend to have happen--final cause--what actually does happen.)

The premises behind those movies may not equal what the audience got from them, but it would be interesting to see what others come up with for them.

(I'd be inclined to say that for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK it might be "it's not the years, it's the mileage" but I really love that quote.)

GONE WITH THE WIND: "tomorrow is another day"

WITNESS: "when you step out of your comfort zone, you risk a lot, but you may learn things about yourself that you would never know otherwise"

JAWS: "you only appreciate what's good in your life when you realize that you might lose it"?

STAR WARS, A NEW HOPE: see UP

Every good play must have a well-formulated [moral] premise...
No idea, and no situation, was ever strong enough to carry you through to its logical conclusion [i]without a clear-cut premise[i/].

If you have no such premise, you may modify, elaborate, vary your original idea or situation, or even lead yourself into another situation, but you will not know where you are going. You will flounder, rack your brain to invent further situations to round out your play. You may find these situations -- and you will still be without a play.

[i]You must have a premise[i/] - a premise which will lead you to the goal your play hopes to reach.

A story where all the bad things that happen relate to water seems to me like a motif, a recurring thematic element. In "Love Among the Talus" discussed the first week of the Short Story Club, black and white are recurring motifs connected thematically to vice and virtue.

Sarcasm and satire can be subtext as well as other forms of irony. Subtext in its simplest meaning is an implicit or metaphorical meaning. But like so many other attributes of story writing, its boundaries are not clear-cut.

Subtext can be conveyed in most if not all the attributes of writing. Even a seemingly deadpan bit of dialogue in litotes for example, "You're not all that, not in the flesh." "Oh no you didn't go there." In supporting context, those seemingly bland or non sequitur statements mean entirely different things than what little they mean literally, though their meanings are widely understood in today's world.

A voice's tone, mood, tenor, or register can convey subtext through irony, verbal or situational or dramatic irony. Even in the subtler species of trope like synecdoche and metonymy.

"Yes, sir, Mister Vagabond," said the Big Wig Potentate, "you just take your leisure in my cement pond all day if you like, never mind the insignificant guests coming to my inaugural ball."

Symbolism as subtext, like in the water and color examples above.

Imagery as symbolism as subtext through recurring motifs of nature or landscape or whatever, like the devasted settings in Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

The common tradition of fable depicting inanimate objects and everyday animals personified is a kind of subtext. Pinnochio the puppet wanting to be a living boy, his growing nose when lying have subtextual meanings that relate thematically to the story. Donkeys have symbolic meanings, and therefore subtext, relevant to that story that are largely forgotten today in light of the replacement vulgar jack term that's used so commonly anymore.

Edit; Taken in one ordering of the Star Wars movies, the overall conflict is between virtue and vice pertaining solely to Annakin Skywalker. His descent into the vice of self-indulgence and then redemption through the virtue of sacrifice. Annakin and Sidious are main characters throughout the six installments in any order. Only accessory characters R2-D2 and C-3PO are as constant. A message-moral might then be redemption from vice is possible no matter how late virtue triumphs. For me, Star Wars' premises relate to vice and virtue.

He's talking more about the sort of logline-ish kind of premise. I think Egri's talking about something more primal?

Maas would probably go for - a man, an empath (since I'm an sf writer) is hiding out as a miner out in the Oort Cloud because he can't bear being around other people for any long stretch of time. He answers a distress call (quite unwillingly) and takes on a quarreling family.

Since you have disease as a recurring symbol in your work, this may be what you mean? We can consider a disease in its actual sense(disease kills physically. It is a foreign body, like a bacteria, that takes resources from your body and changes the delicate balance of your body). Your story has a second level of disease, this time functioning as a metaphor. Two different species/societies have come into each others' sphere of influence, and each group treats the other like a disease -- something to shun and be rid of.

At yet another level, there is a disease in the souls of these aliens that we could liken to racism. It is an innate fear or mistrust of a culture (or in this case, species) that is different. This has often been compared to a disease in our society, and in a symbolic sense is a disease of the races in your story.

At what I find as the deepest level, there is mistrust within the ranks of the culture itself. Military and health compete against each other, each thinking their vision for society is the best. They are willing to sacrifice members of their species in order to prove it (though, reincarnation seems a reality in this culture, so maybe it isn't as morally bad as first assumed...) This competition and conflict between two groups which should have a common interest in mind and be willing to work together is yet a fourth symbol of disease: the disease of pride.

In each of these, disease is a symbol of something deeper, more like a symbol of subtext or theme in each case. By recognizing the role disease plays in the subtext and theme of your work, you can massage the symbol to its maximum effect, by judicious use of vocabulary (say something has a fever instead of being hot, eg) to incorporating the symbol into each scene.

I certainly never meant that. To me how disease was a theme was like when they asked the reconnaissance crew why they were short one crewmember and the answer was - disease. The same disease that was driving the rest of the story. The reason could have been anything - an accident, a promotion, a transfer -- but saying "disease" seems to me to hit harder and reinforce that theme in the story.

Also, I didn't make enough of the issue that the good guys were facing not death and reincarnation, but permanent death.

I think I failed to fully end the story. I didn't get the focus right there where Rocise and Savram were talking.

It's gone now. I need to begin work on another story and so I'm trying to figure out Egri's puzzle about premise.

I have several stories I could pick to work on. But I don't have a sense of...premise? Just of log lines? Not even that in a couple of the stories. I AM doing what Egri says -- You will flounder, rack your brain to invent further situations to round out your play. You may find these situations -- and you will still be without a play [story].

I suspect a number of writers among us on Hatrack are having the same problem, perhaps without a clue they're having it.

I went back and forth. Added in some Webster's and Wikipedia and Rand, different takes all. I sought the commonalities at first then the differences. Back and forth. It took understanding all of them for me to perceive each individually and how causation works into the test bench stories I study for methods. And for how to use causation to full advantage in my writing.

Premise took a broader range of discussions on parallel topics. Webster's simplest defintion for premise as a transitive verb gave me my first insight into how a premise as a noun relates to story, but the noun is the debate sense of premise. Like in literature response papers, taking a stand, making a point, and supporting the point, in other words, taking a side on a topical point having more than one point of view.

Premise in the debate sense gave me my fullest understanding of its disparate uses in terms of storytelling and writing. This story stinks isn't an argument. This story is about an emotionally damaged man, his emotionally damaged children of a deceased, emotionally damaged wife, and his emotionally damaged aunt who move into an old family home is a book report. This story examines the disintegration of identity caused by emotional trauma and physical abuse is an argument, a premise for discussion, a point of access for examination of the story for supporting proof.

Then the response is how the story presents disintegration of identity. That premise of existential crisis organizes and narrows and unifies the response paper's discussion into a tight, insightful examination of the story's major theme, conflicts, motifs, etc. E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News.

Premise as a syllogism argument pertaining to story, "consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion (as in 'every virtue is laudable; kindness is a virtue; therefore, kindness is laudable')" Webster's 11th: Syllogism.

Plague strikes a visceral chord in people through fear and pity. Disease epidemic. Death is bad; disease causes death; therefore, disease is bad. Plague of viruses, plague of aliens, plague of government infighting and incompetence. Connecting them all up and staying tight on the argument and being conclusive in a resolution and making a potent statement is nigh impossible for a short story, if not a novel.

Freytag says Unity is the law. I agree completely, though I rigidly avoid putting my foot down in discussions because of the unquestionable absolutism of "Law." It's a post hypermodernity neoexistential world: Question absolutes. Doesn't Dan Browns' The Da Vinci Code in some way explore that premise?

Interesting discussion of Hypermodernity at Wikipedia as pertains to life, technology, literature, self-enlightenment, and pointing to a direction for escaping the postmodern pall of literature into a new and fresh school of literary thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermodernity

Either way this is what I meant when I said that some of these aspects are always present in a story, whether the author intends it or not. I certainly didn't mean to sound like I was dissecting an English paper.

For instance, since disease seemed (at least to this reader) to be a symbol of multiple themes within the story, it is a simple matter of deciding what you want to do with it:

1 - nothing. You like it how it is.
2 - start editing or rewriting to increase the power/presence/impact of the symbol.
3 - start editing or rewriting to decrease the power/presence/impact of the symbol.

On of the problems with writing, is that even when we don't intend there to be something like this, quite often it arises unintentionally. Whether it is our subconscious making connections as a writer, or our minds trying to grasp patterns as readers, or both, once they are recognized the author is still responsible for them. In my current WIP short story for the WOTF next quarter, I noticed a recurring theme around religion that I 100% never intended. As soon as I recognized it though, it gave an immediate direction to how I could change a conversation that was otherwise quite boring. Now its one of my favorite parts of the story.

By the way, if you already submitted it, do you still want my comments for any future edits? I am finishing finals this weekend and should be able to get it to you...

kdw's premises for GONE WITH THE WIND ("tomorrow is another day") and JAWS ("you only appreciate what's good in your life when you realize that you might lose it") look to me like morals rather than premises, because there's no indication of the conflict. The WITNESS statement is also a moral but closer to a premise than the others.

quote:

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WITNESS: "when you step out of your comfort zone, you risk a lot, but you may learn things about yourself that you would never know otherwise"

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Right now with regards to that story -- I am exhausted. I'll let it sit a while before I do any serious work on it beyond reading a late critique or two and comparing what's said there with the fixes already in and off. I know what the repeating errors are. Too many characters, too many new words and concepts without fully explaining them = stuff like that.

I think the bedrock Egri level premise is closer to doing what's right is best in the end. Rocise chose that with regards to the alien AND Savram, and Savram himself chose the right, too.

Now I have a guy whose family is being held hostage for him to work at finding this powerful man's errant son. Is that the logline level premise? Or the one set on Phobos with a prison guard being lied to along with everyone else there about what's happening on Earth and this new prisoner arrives who breaks all of the lies open. Another logline?

Where would we start?
Choosing characters or situations? Or with the premise?

If it is NOT a log line type of premise, what IS it we're looking for?

Let me add this to the mix. It's from THE MORAL PREMISE by Stanley D Williams page 16-17

There are however some modern critics (and paid story consultants) who claim that for films to be popular they do not need a moral center or a Moral Premise. Research suggests, however, that when other production values, attachments and distribution are in place, the film with a strong moral center will succeed; but when a moral center is missing or inconsistently applied regardless of the other production values, attachments, or distribution, the ticket sales will always disappoint. Even putting research aside, a cursory examination will affirm that psychological moral dilemmas are at the heart of every successful story. Cynical storytellers and consultants may want to deny that fact, but they will never abandon it in their own stories....

What Williams writes in his book in 2006 seems to fit with what Egri wrote back in 1946 about premises.

Could this come down to picking one of the 21 or 36 universal plots? You have the underlying philosophical premise attached to whichever one you pick?

Say I had chosen Georges Polti's #5 - pursuit - as my plot. How would that have changed my disease story? If I go with #34 - remorse - for the prison guard on Phobos, will that give me the solid foundation so that I do not have to go through all the false starts and stuff?

Both of these, to me, are premises. Neither one is its own story. Imagine if you gave the first one as a writing prompt to a dozen writers. You'd get at least 13 different stories back, all very different from one another. The second one is a more developed premise, starting to delve into the plot. I would say the "pure" premise of that one would be: everyone on an off-world prison site is being lied to about what is going on back home. Any more information begins to open up plot/characterization/etc.

"Say we make up a story here. A story no one plans to write but to look at from a working-up-a-premise perspective.

Where would we start?
Choosing characters or situations? Or with the premise?

If it is NOT a log line type of premise, what IS it we're looking for?"

How about we try all three? We start with a premise. We also start with a character. We also start with a situation. Then we see if they are the same story (integrating) or if each one is a different story.

I usually start my stories in one of two ways. First, I think of an interesting premise and work a story around it. Second, I have some interesting, dramatic scene in mind and have to build a story that ends up incorporating it. Neither of these ways are fixed in stone, and often end up changing over the course of writing, for me.

Corruption suggests character, which means a round focal character in depth of personality and conscience and self-identification traits; physical, extrinsic traits are secondary, even gender is not all that pertinent. Will the focal character experience a revelation, a change, a recognition, or will he resist change. Will the outcome be favorable or unfavorable. Those last two questions inform me whether he will be static or dynamic. In static, succeeding in resisting corruption, or failing to turn to away from his corrupt ways. In dynamic, a change for the better success, or a change for the worst failure.

The inherent clash of idealism and a pervasive political culture of corruption present parallel internal and external conflicts. He comes to power with an ideal, but flawed by invalid assumptions, he makes a mess of things, and starts down the darkside to clean up the mess. He's not caught; he's infected by the culture of corruption. He's tested again and again, digging a deeper hole. Until his moral convictions turn completely base. But redemption is in sight. He's confronted with such an outrageous situation that he stands up, makes a noble sacrifice, and takes the fall to prevent a far reaching disaster with epic proportions.

In that sense of premise, then the narrator's voice takes an attitude toward the subject of corruption, condemning the politician's failings, commending his strength of character in what few ways it survives. Then, again, in that sense, the message and moral are closely connected with premise as the heart and soul of the story's voice.

The narrator takes a stand, makes a point, and supports it by taking up one side of the conflict argument. Government is the best that money can buy versus government by its inherent nature breeds corruption. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The greater good's business cannot be done without money and corrupt influence to grease the wheels at the expense of the greater good.

Anyways, by that definition, my word for logline is the pitch. Pitches can be one sentence, a whole paragraph, or whatever. So maybe logline is a more descriptive word...

Either way, here is how I would write a story based off a premise. I came up with this while getting ready for work tonight:

Premise: All those people who say they have been abducted by aliens? They aren't crazy. Aliens really are taking people.

This is not a story. Its only a premise. So I have to expand it. My first step is to expand the premise, do some world building here as the premise is sort of vague to how a character driven or plot driven story could arise out of it at this point. So, why are aliens taking people? This has been covered many different ways, from preparing for invasion (Independence Day, V, etc) to more invasion (War of the Worlds, X-files, etc...). So I want to try something different.

One question skeptics raise about alien abductions is: why do they always target hicks in small towns? Why don't they just come to the White House and announce themselves? To which, the believer in abductions answers that they must be hostile and not wanting to give away their presence. And besides, the government already knows about them. They captured one in '47, remember? Hooray for conspiracy theories. But as I said, I want to try something different.

The first thing I think of is that aliens do something very similar to what biologists do: they observe a population, take samples, tag and biopsy, and return to native population, recover specimens later, etc. Scientists think they are being pretty shrewd "observing" penguins or fish or whatever in their natural habitat, or sticking big radio collars on bears. It could be that the reason aliens are visiting. They are simply intergalactic scientists doing research on us. They choose obscure individuals in remote areas to reduce risk of detection, take them aboard where they do scientific studies and take samples, tag the individual with a tracking chip for recovery later, and then wipe the memory and leave them alone. If we discovered an alien civilization, and had we the technology, that is pretty much what we'd do, I think. Why would they do this? Either they are researching us because they plan on taking us over (hostile intent), or because they are curious. If curious, they could be very similar to us. Maybe they are working on understanding our culture in order to make first contact? Maybe they are so far advanced, they will be forever alien to us and will never think of us in terms of higher intelligence, as anything other than an intergalactic curiousity of lab mice.

So now I've expanded my premise into a world-building type feature. I've started to create the milieu. Now I need to add some story.

I'll choose an MC who learns about this reality as the story unfolds. I'm inclined to choose a scientific thinker as scientists are naturally skeptical, and a reader could probably identify more with a skeptical MC. I can pair a skeptic and a believer and now I have the roots for conflict. Expanding further, I could make my MC a biologist. Now, he is in a position to more deeply understand what the aliens are doing.
I could make the believer someone who thinks they were abducted by aliens. Already, I've got the outline of an introduction by this setup:

A biologist is studying his organism of interest, and his work takes him to Nevada, where there is a strong UFO oriented tourist culture. Maybe he's studying hantavirus or something. At a bar one evening, he meets a really beautiful lady, and they hit it off. Only, they couldn't be more opposite. He's a respected academic, she's an uneducated hick who believes in crazy stuff like UFOs. As their relationship grows, she may begin to challenge his beliefs and make him question his assumptions.

I could now advance into plot by deciding how he will learn about the reality of these aliens. Some of this will resolve around the milieu I have created. Maybe he witnesses her being re-abducted. Maybe she just disappears without a trace one night. Maybe he gets arrested for her murder now that she is gone, but he knows he didn't do it. But he can't explain what happened either...Maybe the government contacts him and arrests the girl because they are working in cahoots with the aliens. Any of these choices would develop by working on milieu a little more.

Without finishing here, I am now on my way to writing a story. But it could have easily been different. That single premise could go a million different directions.

Now lets say the aliens are refugees. Their sun exploded and they fled their dying solar system to the nearest habitable planet. Only, it turns out it is inhabited after all. They are benevolent enough not to try to invade us and kill us all, as they react as (hopefully) we would react if we found life at another place in the universe. The only problem is, when they tried to make contact, one of their ships was shot down. Plus, they see all our TV broadcasts and have decided we are innately hostile. Furthermore, their biology is so different from us, that they can't just claim refugees (like District 9), because they'd all die when exposed to our atmosphere/bacteria/whatever. So they take people and cows into the ships because they are trying to learn about our biology and make themselves able to live on our planet. But their time is running out. Their ships are running out of fuel...

Now, I can make my MC an army character who happens to know about area 51. Or whatever. Changing this idea sends my story off in a whole bunch more directions, if I want to.

That's how I build stories off of premises.

(Edit for clarity. Wow. For a writer, I sure need to get better at describing things...)

As Williams says -- Even putting research aside, a cursory examination will affirm that psychological moral dilemmas are at the heart of every successful story.

I realize he's speaking of movies and Egri of plays, but are they wrong? Or is it that we're dealing here a lot of times with short stories and that makes a difference?

I was just remembering that REDLIGHT, my story that (sigh) almost made it to the finals, I did write with a kind of moral premise. You have to lose your life in order to save it. For my aliens that was a very literal idea. But it was a "moral" (?) premise that informed the entire story AND it was my most successful story at WOTF.

What are you asking here?

I had those erroneous beliefs browbeaten out of me by dissenters and opponent experts. My next and current viewpoint is that there are divided consensuses on some terms, wide disparity on others and no one consensus or writer agrees on everything all the time, somethings some of the time, most things none of the time.

Premise has a very few denotative meanings, and dozens of connotative meanings. It's difficult to make sense of any one of them when whoever's using it in any specific sense assumes everyone shares the same sense. At root, I believe arriki's difficulty lies with Egri's varying use of the term and roundabout way of explaining his sense of it.

He cites a Webster's definition that's still current in the latest editions. He notes that "others, especially men of the theater, have had different words for the same thing: theme, thesis, root idea, central idea, goal, aim, driving force, subject, purpose, plan, plot, basic emotion. / For our own use we chose the word "premise" because it contains all the elements the other words try to express and because it is less subject to interpretation." Page 2, The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives. Lajos Egri, 1946, 1960, Simon & Schuster.

Add in log line from Hollywood's early hectic thirst for scripts and the flood of writers who responded. A log line, a strip of paper containing a one-line summary attached to a script's binding edge when it's logged into the vault and stacked so the log line is visible at a glance, summarizing a screenplay's "premise" in one sentence.

If I'd come upon Egri before Freytag or Aristotle or Pinter or Brecht, all playwrights in their own right and eras, I'd be equally confused. As it is, any one of those august notaries didn't damp my confusion. I took some from column A and some from column B, C, D, E, F, G... mixed in a little sense from other disciplines, debate, logic, syllogy, a dash of fallacies, cognitive biases, and seasoned with critical thinking. Blended in some subjective intrepretation and baked until golden. I came out with a meaning I could own and master.

But no matter how hard I try, I still have difficulty discussing any term as pertains to writing. C'est la vie. My toolbox is sufficient to my needs for now. I'm on voice to add more skill sets. Voice is even harder to grasp in all its aesthetics and still ever more difficult to discuss. Thankfully, rhetoric holds for me a treasure trove of terms and techniques for studying voice on my own, in graecismus terms that hold solitary meanings due to their archaic yet erudite precision and organization.

"Graecismus: Using Greek words, examples, or grammatical structures. Sometimes considered an affectation of erudition." Silva Rhetoricae: Graecismus. A stylistic vice. Yet rhetoric holds valuable keys for my study and understanding of voice.

That quote from William's book SEEMS to be getting at the same thing that the other books are all speaking of, too. And, I do have some sense that he's right. REDLIGHT did come out better and so did - to a lesser degree - the story about Cory although Cory is flawed.

Do I then think I need to find the moral guideline for each story? Maybe. Maybe not. But it is an idea worth considering.

Percy Lubbock's The Craft of Fiction, about the most impenetrably dense writing tome I've encountered, singles out one topic to discuss, narrative point of view in its more discernible senses of grammatical person, tense, psychic access and motility, and to a lesser extent tone, nothing on tenor, mood, or register. It wasn't until I'd read it all the way through that I developed an inkling of what the main thrust was, because it's never defined or even named. A second pass and I understood better. More in-depth scrutiny, and I got ahold of it.

quote:

---

Things that happened ... are just events—what you know is emotional truth. Truth = emotional truth. Yes!

Let's say you were raised in a boxcar by your schizophrenic uncle, and grew up believing a 1977 Schwinn road bike could read your thoughts.

That doesn't mean you have to write a novel about a kid with a cleverly different name than you who grows up in a boxcar with etc. etc. But you could write a damn good novel with characters who deal with feelings of isolation, shifting realities, and adversity. Growing up in a boxcar gave you special insight into these matters. And it's way more useful and productive to be an expert on emotions than on boxcars, no?

---

I'm sorry, arriki, but I'm having trouble following some of your questions because I haven't read any of these books you are quoting. I am not sure if we are on the same page or not. Does your main difficulty seem to be that your stories lack the depth you want them to have? Is it that they are too difficult for you to get started?

Yeah, I have found the confusion of “expert” advice on writing annoying. It keeps me from being able to explain problems in critiques easily. It makes examining my own writing difficult.

I think “premise” must need to be qualified when we’re discussing it. I think what I’m struggling with is the moral premise. That must be what both Egri and Williams are all about. Figuring that much out must mean I’ve made progress in my own little search for truth and understanding, right?

Williams’ statement (pronouncement?) must be about that form of premise -- a cursory examination will affirm that psychological moral dilemmas are at the heart of every successful story.

I think his qualification “the heart of every successful story” means to him that stories CAN be written without a clear cut moral dilemma but that the readers/audiences will sense the lack and the story do less well than it could have.

My own stories have beginnings, middles, and endings. Interesting characters and plots for the most part, but lack that clear cut sense of (moral) premise that would make them better. The times I have come close to having one -- REDLIGHT—are my more successful stories.

Am I right? Only way to tell is to try to correct that lack in a few stories, my next WOTF, for instance. So, fellow WOTFers, be sharp in critiquing my next story. Look for that clearcut moral premise.

Golden Age sf is full of flaws, too. Probably whatever one you read, if it didn’t have a clear cut moral premise and still succeeded as a story, that was because of the marketplace of the times. It MIGHT have done better with a clear moral premise upon a few more revisions, but the Golden Age writers in our field were not as concerned with optimum quality in their writing as I understand from reading their comments of the times.

Sorry, BenM, I don’t quite see your point in relation to moral premises in stories.

Teraen - - lots of books. I find most of them useless with regard to helping me improve my writing and my understanding of writing. There are a few that actually DO help.

That’s another problem we face here in trying to discuss problems – all the various and conflicting sources!

Right now (possible to change - without notice - at any time) what I’m searching for is guidance for starting this next story on firm ground and shortcutting all the casting about I usually go through as I blindly search for the true story among all the possible ones as I write THE STORY.

Teraen, I fear you and I are not going to have a meeting of minds on theme since (to me) theme is the deliberate choice of details and events to reflect or reinforce the chosen idea(?), concept(?) of the story.

However, what does it mean to you to amplify the theme?

Premise for all its differing meanings is certainly an advanced writing concept. In one synthesis of the whole, Premise engages on emotional levels, engagement through resonance with topical content, MICE, engagement in curiosity through suspense and empathy, and so on. Like the Internet has no end point, there is no end point to understanding reader engagement. If there were, there'd be a few prolific writers who write perfect stories that would have a timeless resonance with all of humankind, at least for a moment, until society and culture moved on. Real-world events and ideas, milieus and characters change how humans perceive their now in time. Language changes, priorities change, but change is good, it means we are alive and vital individually and as a whole. Our growth as writers and human beings depends in part on change.

A new arena for reader engagement I recently came across in my studies involves engagement in Secondary Belief, Secondary World, or secondary meaning spaces of engagement. Every writer has some grounding in Willing Suspension of Disbelief, there's that plausibility engagement that so many writers on writing talk about.

Secondary Belief and Secondary World engagements, vicariously experiencing a real or invented world outside our immediate sphere of existence, outside of but experienceable in our ordinary everyday mundane [earthly] primary meaning space existence. Secondary Belief and Secondary World seem to me reflections of each other. A secondary belief in a secondary world makes folklore's many supernatural and paranormal premises and secondary belief in fantasy and science fiction plausible because we can suspend our disbelief in the fantastical and willingly engage in the ritual of inventing alternative reality that explains or defines our subject position in our daily grind against the backdrop of the cosmos.

A third space of meaning space engagement that also parallels Secondary Belief and Secondary World, which to me seem like the same concept from opposite approaches, engagement with readers through plausiblity and engagement through the wildly improbable or impossible that are both ripe for fantasy and science fiction.

Named Participation Mystique by Kim Falconer, an Australian graduate writing student circa 2007, from Swineburne University, she explores participation mystique, which has religious connotations and applications, as an engagement of readers in the child-like ritual of make believe, and discusses Secondary World.

I'm still getting my mind around these approaches, but already recognize their inherent value sufficiently to see it's not another dead-end street.

Secondary Belief from "Stages of Imagination: Exploring Theme and Vision in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth" By Rico Marcel Abrahamsen, 2003.

valarguild.org/varda/Tolkien/encyc/papers/dreamlord/stages/secondary_belief.htm

Abrahamsen's thesis home page

http://valarguild.org/varda/Tolkien/encyc/papers/dreamlord/stages/contentsStages.htm

Kim Falconer's thesis on participation mystique "Fiction in Another World"

http://www.falconastrology.com/pdfs/Fiction_in_Another_World.pdf

However, what does it mean to you to amplify the theme?"

I think we'll have a meeting of minds. We don't have to call it the same name to agree on the concept. I've been trying to get at what you are trying to define because I don't want to sound like I know everything... I'm just kind of confused as to what you are aiming at and want to make sure we are talking about the same thing. Of course, that was part of the whole reason you started the thread, wasn't it?

To me, amplifying the theme is to increase its influence throughout the story. As I said, it can involve judicious use of vocabulary. In your story, if you choose to amplify the concept of disease, you would begin using words that evoke a reader's sense of disease in your descriptions. You can also use symbols to add layers of meaning to your prose.

For instance, in my story that I am prepping for the WOTF next quarter, I have stumbled upon a definite religious theme. Now that I've found it, I am amplifying it by changing some of the description. I evoke the old Roman gods when I discuss the planet Jupiter, for instance. I have my characters discuss the idea that some people think religious experiences were aliens coming down to earth. Neither of these things was originally in there, but when I discovered a religious aspect to the previous parts, I was able to amplify it by directly drawing the reader's attention to it in those scenes. I was able to subtly amplify it by changing some words to a more religiously based vocabulary, so even if someone isn't thinking about that, their subconscious may begin to make connections. Finally, I amplified it by adding my MC's views on religion and belief as a part of his POV, which I hadn't ever planned on being part of his growth in this story.

To me, amplifying a theme first requires that you recognize it, then finding all the ways you can make the theme more prominent and more omnipresent throughout the work.