- Define Premise, using your own words
A premise is a short, one to two sentence hook line describing the story. Not necessarily a summary, but it for a lack of better words summarizes what the story is about.
- 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.
Star Wars (Episode IV) – A small town boy comes across a secret message containing his destiny, he must leave behind everything he once knew and save the galaxy from the oncoming threat.
- 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.
- Premise:
Write down your premise in one sentence.Ask yourself if this premise line has the makings of a story that could change your life. - Possibilities:
Look for what is possible in the premise. Write down options. - Story Challenges and Problems:
Describe as many of the story challenges and problems that are unique to your idea as you can think of. - Designing Principle:
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. - Best Character:
Determine the best character in the idea. Make that character the hero of your premise. - Conflict:
Ask yourself “Who is my hero fighting, and what is he fighting about?” - Basic Action:
Find the single cause-and-effect pathway by identifying a basic action that your hero will take in the story. - Character Change:
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. - Moral Choice:
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.
- Premise:
1. A man gets stranded on a deserted island where he meets the natives and learns a new way of living.
2. Before getting stranded, the man is heavily in “the business” and his very wealthy yet unhappy. Struggles to adapt to new life. Is at odds with natives. Learns to work together with them. Appreciates the lifestyle change. Decides to stay when given the option to go back to normal life.
3. Dealing with native people on a “deserted island”. Even though character is very smart, rich, ect, he is comic relief as he is quite “dumb”. Challenge isn’t trying to get off island, its trying to adapt with environment and people there.
4. Make the “intelligent” main character seem dumb (which he is), but the native “dumb” characters seem very intelligent. Make the survivor life seem better than societies life.
5. The main business man character is the main character. Since he is very rich and well off he comes off as very intelligent and such, but in reality he is very dumb. Not just “dumb’ to the island life, but actually a very dumb character who got lucky in his business.
6. The hero is fighting off his environment and for part of the story the natives. He is fighting for survival but also in turn happiness.
7. Cause and effect action is he crash. Either a plane or boat crash. I feel like it would be funnier if it was a massive yacht not a charter plane. Gets stranded on this island.
8. Character change where the hero changes his mindset against the natives and wants to learn from them. He is struggling for food, he tries to hunt but to no success. Off in the distance he sees a native very easily capture an animal in a trap with very little effort. Now he is more willing to learn and work with them instead of against. This leads him to become one of them.
9. The moral choice he has at the end is not to “save the natives” like in other mediums like Avatar. But his moral choice is where help finally comes to rescue him but he chooses to stay as he is much happier on the island with the natives.
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