I’d like to share with you some random thoughts about story concept/premise I originally shared with an erotica/romance writing group I manage on Facebook.
CONCEPT: high level thematic gist and genre of a story. For example:
A Western redemption story
A sci-fi rebellion story
A historical disaster story
A fantasy sacrifice story
A horror sex story
A contemporary true love story
PREMISE includes what kind of characters and conflict/situations are in the story.
What’s your story about?
Imagine someone comes up to you and asks: “Hey, what’s your story about?”
What would you say?
You may not have thought about this before, but your answer will contain the story’s concept/premise.
“It’s about a futanari after a global apocalypse who rides a T-rex and has filthy sexual adventures.”
“It’s about a woman who’s captured by the enemy army and subjected to brutal sexual domination at the hands of a man who has a tender side and comes to care for her deeply.”
“It’s about an orphaned farm boy who yearns to escape his dreary life and have adventures, but when that’s exactly what lands in his lap it’s far more than he bargained for.” (Guess what story this is!)
“It’s about the cast of the Batman stories before they became full-fledged heroes/villains.”
“It’s about two women living in a dystopian future who make the ultimate sacrifice to each other for love.”
“It’s about a super villainess in the future who has sexual appetites to match her sociopathic nature and metahuman super powers who struggles to uncover her true self even as she fights both the “good” guys and the bad.”
The above are all from books I’ve either written or read that I thought had interesting concepts/premises.
Mediocre premise = mediocre story
If your concept/premise lacks imagination/originality/a unique twist it will (in my opinion) be difficult to build a good story. Think of it as a framework into which you plug in all the other elements: characters, plot, and structure.
Ever have a story where no matter how you try to fix it, it just never seems as compelling as you wanted? The concept/premise could be weak.
There are literally millions of murder stories out there, but when one author decided the narrator should be the ghost of the murder victim herself, an intriguing concept was born (The Lovely Bones).
One of the most gut-wrenching stories I ever read was Flowers for Algernon. It was amazing precisely because of its concept: it was about a man with mental disabilities who is, through medical science, turned into a genius. He falls in love with one of the scientists working with (on?) him. But then the effects start to reverse… ah, God, I can’t even bear to think about it.
My point is, the better your premise/concept, the easier it is to create a better a story. It’s hard to resist the urge to begin writing but I encourage you to put some thought into your concept/premise. DON’T go with the first thing you think of. Ask: can I do better than that? What would be cooler/better/hotter/more tragic (whatever floats your boat)?
