Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Dramatic Premise

The Dramatic Premise

I'm getting to the part of the class where I’ll be discussing many of the strategic undercurrents that swirl about a story. At the top of the list is the Dramatic Premise (DP).

A DP is the heartbeat of the work. It’s something you need to be passionate about….something that gets you spun up. As you write you need to keep this notion constantly in mind and ask yourself… is this part I am currently writing, resonating with the dramatic premise?.

I need to digress for just a minute and remind my readers that the Workshop I will be teaching is called “Exploratory Writing.” In this course you're not yet actually writing a longer work. You are leisurely exploring some of the areas you intend to write about, following this workshop. So, much of what you think you already know is being put on hold as you decide the best way to write that future piece of literature. Indeed that is problem statement for this workshop and it eads, “The student will determine the best way to go about writing “Bozo the Clown.” You might not have a clue at this point what the Dramatic Premise is and that’s OK. The workshop is designed to help you discover what it is.

What you are doing with a dramatic premise is putting a gloved ultimatum to the reader. It is a challenge….It says in essence… “This story is about the way people behave….You might find the material troubling and if you do, ask yourself “Why?“ Maybe its because of a troubling past experience or maybe something so disconcerting you don’t even want to contemplate it, much less write about it. For example say it deals with a serial killing and the whole notion scares the heck out of you. Still you feel passionately about your Central Character and this is part of; her story. It is a story that makes your heart go pitter-pat, pitter pat and is going to have the reader sitting on the edge of their seat. The audience will be affected the same way you are because your passion as a writer is contagious. The emotions you experience as you write will imprint on the pages and when the reader enters vicariously into you character they will be as frightened about aspects of the story as you are. The consumers of your work are big boys and girls each with a judgement and will of their own. They want to see that life changing experience in a characters life as if they were experiencing it for themselves. They want to decide how they would have handled the same situation. What we are discussing here is what separates humanity from the animal kingdom at large. As humans we can learn things through imagination without having to experience them first hand on the playground of real life. When reader’s pick up your novel they are embarking on a journey that will become real. For a brief period your characters will cease to be figments, and come alive, providing a validation of sorts to the reader's life.

The Dramatic Premise is the backbone of the story….analogous to the keel of a ship. You can’t see it when you take that cruise on Caravel but it’s down there. It is traditionally described as a relationship between two key ideas linked by an active verb. For example

Idea #1 (Active Verb) Idea #2

1. Love conquers everything
2. Jealously Kills the one we love
3. Suspicion undermines the trust we have in one another
4. Rage drives the human spirit from our lives
5. Kindness soothes the pain of reality

The key is this needs to be a relationship that you feel strongly about….Strongly enough to pour your creative energies into a serious work such as a novel, stage or screen drama. It is your reality check and when you realize the story is getting off track. An alarm bell clangs…a wake-up call buzzes on the speaker phone of your judgment. The dreamlike voice whispers, “That dumb-assed muse of yours is leading you astray.“

There are two types of Premise. One that tells you what to do and one that tell you what not to do. These are called positive and negative premises. For my part I tend to like the positive ones. For example “A loving heart makes someone a better person…. A helping hand leads to a better world. Prayer leads to a sense of humility and rightousness.” Negative ones are reflected in #2-#4 listed above. They go on and on and each one should be a unique expression of something you strongly believe in. This is what your work is really all about and a constant reminder that your story is on the right track.

In the military one of the first steps in the planning process was the Estimate of the Situation. The first step in the Estimate is defining the problem. In order to avoid a go/no go outcome and instead have a number of discrete possibilities a planner uses the standard template… “The problem is to determine the best way to ……” This is opposed to one that might read…“We need decide between X and Y.“

The same idea holds true for a dramatic premise. Don’t say “Lying is wrong“ or that “Greed is self-serving or that God is great.” This sort of premise puts you in a box with two choices. Rather say something like “hope leads to an eternal optimism. Charity leads to a kinder world…. This sort of open ended relationship offers infinitely more room for the themes and possibilities.

In the Workshop, you are attempting to discover what this premise is. You come up with a “Straw Man” and begin from there. This straw man becomes a working assumption and you follow it until something better comes along or until your initial gut hunch proves to be correct. So, nothing is etched in stone to begin with and you latch onto the coat-tails of your muse and follow along for the ride.