14: Finding My Premise
10/17/2011
Two days ago I decided to review my outline to make sure I had a consistent premise that all my chapters adhered to. And keeping it to one premise per book didn’t make it much easier. My outline for the first two books is 116 pages. It took time to synthesize each chapter of the first book into a two-sentence precis, then summarizing the consistent themes within each of the four parts. Only then could I look at it to determine what the book’s premise was.
I ask four questions: 1) What is continually testing Diallo? (Other people’s expectations) 2) What is he struggling to resolve that involves great risk? (Trying to create a life for himself of his own choosing that also satisfies societal expectations) 3) What is the result of the struggle? (Disaster) 4) What is the story trying to demonstrate or prove? (The needs of the individual are not always compatible with society)
So, the premise for the first book is: “A boy who is trapped by familial baggage and ancient prophecies feels he has no control over his life, and as he grows into a man and believes he’s finally managed to integrate his needs with the needs of his society, he realizes painfully that they are not mutually compatible.”
I don’t have to alter my outline at all for this premise to emerge, but now that I see it more clearly, I can emphasize it as I flesh out my chapters. It feels good to have this hook as I reenter the writing process of my main narrative. Which I should be doing here shortly.
Present-Day Reflection
6/8/2026
It took me a while for the lessons I was reading about on the craft of fiction to truly set in. Things like, let your first drafts come fast and easy without editing as you go. Things like, to write about everything is to write about nothing.
It’s not that I didn’t believe or trust the authors I was studying under when they told me these things, it just proved easier said than done. I have so many things I want to say and get out on paper it’s hard to restrict myself to writing an entire book with only one central premise.
It’s similar with painting. Galleries or publishers of art books like to see a pattern within a large body of work with a consistent theme or distinctive voice that binds it together as a unique whole. I’ve never been good at that. And with writing fiction it’s even harder, where the demand for a solitary premise is even greater. Every scene in every chapter has to be working together toward posing a single question about human nature. And though potential answers to that question may be ambiguous or conflicting – which the author would be well advised to avoid taking sides on – the central question itself should never be in doubt by the end of the book.
