Day 449: Concept VS Premise

The book I'm reading, 'Story Fix,' defines a ton of terms that I had never thought too hard about before reading the book. I'm still not sure if these are just definitions that the author has made up for his own use, or terms that everyone uses, but they've been really helpful so far. For instance, he makes a distinction between concept and premise, two words I had always seen used interchangeably. He makes the point that a premise is deeper than the concept the story revolves around. It is the impetus for the story, the antagonistic relationship that utilizes the concept to actually form a plot. For example, the concept behind 'Inception' is that specially trained individuals can use shared dreaming technology to implant or extract ideas from other people. This is great, but it doesn't have a story. There's no inciting event, protagonist, antagonist, or anything else necessary to start writing.

The premise, on the other hand, has everything you need to get going: Cobb, a highly skilled 'extractor' with a criminal past, is hired by CEO of Proclus Global, Mr. Saito, to break up a rival corporation in exchange for clearing Cobb's charges so he can see his family again. The protagonist, antagonist, overarching goal, inciting incident, stakes, and even the concept too are all rolled up into the premise.

This distinction seems a little pedantic at first, but it's already helped me to start identifying different aspects of my story. In 'Jeffries' the concept is a near future where splitting one's consciousness into two bodies is becoming more and more common. The premise however, is that Jeffry, a talented bioengineer and double-body recipient, find his very sense of self in peril when a dangerous terrorist kidnaps one of his bodies. Before now, the distinction between these two was lost on me. Now that I've made the distinction for myself, I can more easily analyze the differences. The concept, I think, is great. I couldn't have come up with anything better. The premise though is not quite as strong because it's a bit cliche in my opinion. I think it's still pretty good, but it makes me wonder if I could have come up with something better than a kidnapping when I started writing several months ago. I had an inkling that something was not quite right, but without the ability to think about it in these terms, I kinda just brushed that feeling under the rug. Taking the time at that step to really consider all the options for a good premise is crucial, and at this point I can only really hope I invented one good enough to make the story as interesting as the concept promises.

I hope the rest of the book has insights just as profound, because it's already helping me spot mistakes in my writing process. I'm certain this book will only help me get better.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley