Define the Premise, using your own words

A premise for a story is the idea of the story, what’s going to happen to the characters and the plot.   

Given an example of a premise from a popular movie or story that we might all know. This can be from an anime story or a different kind of story.  In Star Wars the original trilogy, the premise is Luke Skywalker leaving his home planet and training to become a Jedi; In doing so, he is to defeat Darth Vader.  Throughout the story we see Luke train to become better, we see him lose to Darth Vader, and we see him become a stronger person and character.    

Craft a premise for a story you’d like to create this semester. To do this, answer the following (you may want to copy this list into your post and then answer each point.

1. 1. Premise: a man running from the law after failing to complete a mission gets sentenced to life in prison.  The protagonist will be trying to blend in and not make himself known.  In order to get to the safe house, he must do any means possible to not get caught.

6. 2. Write down your premise in one sentence. Ask yourself if this premise line has the makings of a story that could change your life.
   3. Running from the law,  must get to a safe house, safety.    
   4. Possibilities: blending in: shopping; stealing cars; passenger on a plane, different countries, different people, different police, different problems.    
   5. Look for what is possible on the premise. Write down options. It could be a man running from his failures and problems.  He could be in the right be can’t/ won’t get a chance to explain himself and must run away.   
   6. Story Challenges and Problems: the main character, will always be on the run so meeting people, making friends that won’t last long.  His goal will be to make it to the safe house and try to blend in; on the bus, taxi, airplane.  The problem will arise when they get notices and will need to immediately evacuate the area, leave friends and personal things all behind    
   7. Describe as many of the story challenges and problems that are unique to your idea as you can think of.
   8. My goal is to make a character like in Princess Mononoke, not bad guys, just different viewpoints.  I want to make the protagonist a rather likable person, despite doing some horrible things in the past.  Throughout the journey, we might see that being constantly chased isn’t the worse part, but by being in constant fear of what’s going to happen, have they caught up to him.  As a result, he could develop anxiety, or depression, or some other mental damaging outcomes.  
   9. Designing Principle: the main principle is just because you’ve made a lot of bad choices in the past doesn’t mean your a bad person and not worth saving/helping.  The hardest part will be trying to change, even though the past always is pulling you back down.  
   10. Come up with the designing principle of your story idea. Remember that this principle describes some deeper process or form in which the story will play out in a unique way.  Our main character will meet people along their way, make friends, but nothing too much, as they can’t stay in the same location for very long.  The new friends and people he meets and interacts with might give advice and otherwise help out our protagonist along the way.      
   11. Best Character: having one of the characters that the protagonist meets, be a wise old man, who secretly knows who the protagonist really is; but he doesn’t bring attention to him know that he knows.  For side characters this old man we could see the most, maybe in a few locations.       
   12. Determine the best character in the idea. Make that character the hero of your premise.
   13. Conflict:  nearly getting caught by authority, some people ultimately want to see the protagonist fail.   
   14. Ask yourself “Who is my hero fighting, and what is he fighting about?”  They are fighting to be free and to be a changed person, they might fight for people along their way helping others out.   
   15. Basic Action:  the running chase parts, hand-to-hand combat fighting, weapons, sword, knife, probably not guns.   
   16. Find the single cause-and-effect pathway by identifying a basic action that your hero will take in the story.  He messed up big time at work(whatever that may be) and because of that can’t return back home, and need to leave all his belongings, friends, family, and anything else that was close to him.
   17. Character Change:  The will go from being not happy to more accepting of their past and not letting it affect them.  Letting go of it.  Not caring for what they did in their past to have a hard time accepting of what they did in their past.  
   18. Figure out the possible character change for your hero, starting with the basic action ( A ) and then going to the opposites of the basic action to determine his weaknesses ( W ) at the beginning and his change ( C ) at the end.

Since they were in some sort of training, having their combat skills be quite good, but also have their strategizing and quick thinking is not that good, maybe our protagonist was out that day, maybe their a bit of a slacker.  they just want to fight or run(fight or flight).  because go always being chased there will learn to think on their feet and use more problem-solving skills. 

6. 19. Moral Choice: some hard moral choices might be abandoning someone our protagonist just met in order to better themselves   
   20. List a moral choice your hero may have to make near the end of the story. Make sure it’s a difficult but plausible choice. From Truby, John. The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller (p. 35). Faber & Faber. Kindle Edition.  Towards the end, he might get close getting caught and might need to sacrifice a new friend in order to get away again.  He won’t want to do this, he was friends with them, but getting away is much more important than a friendship.