Premises and Particulars: A Writing Model

Those of you who know my approach to craft understand that I see fiction writing as one of the most difficult of all art forms—but it’s not neurosurgery. My goal in teaching, always, is to simplify the process, not with rigid formulas but by providing models that help writers think through their stories. I use these models myself, particularly in revision. At the drafting stage, my process is mostly the opposite, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Breaking Down Stories

We typically analyze stories through various elements: character, plot, tone, theme, point of view, voice, and so on. In upcoming seminars, I will be breaking down stories into “floaties” and “groundies.” Today, however, we’re looking at something more encompassing. “Premises and Particulars” is a way to view an entire story, both on a macro and micro level. How it applies depends on the specific story and what isn’t quite working.

What Is a Premise?

Every story has a premise—a distilled version of the plot, sometimes resembling a tagline or elevator pitch. Let’s take one of my own old stories, “Beneath the Deep, Slow Motion.” If you read it, you will discover that it’s about two down-on-their-luck men planning to murder someone and steal his horde of diamonds. That’s the premise in one line. Simple, right? And also familiar. How many movies/TV series? Dateline episodes have we seen with exactly this plot? Quite a few.

Now, let’s consider my student’s story. Their premise was: A man gets drunk at work, loses his temper with his boss, and gets fired. Again, familiar? Absolutely. In fact it’s so familiar, that some of us may have actually witnessed this happening in real life.

Strange vs. Familiar

So, a story’s overall premise can be either strange or familiar. Some stories contain elements of both, but for now, let’s assume they all lean one way or the other. A familiar premise is one we recognize, one we’ve encountered a hundred times before. A strange premise feels fresh, unique, weird, or unexpected.

Here are some that should sound very familiar:

·         A detective on the verge of retirement takes one last case—one that turns out to be more personal than he ever expected.

·         A woman returns to her small hometown after years away and rekindles a romance with her high school sweetheart.

·         A man wakes up with amnesia and must piece together his identity, only to realize he was involved in something dangerous.

Now, here are some that are strange:

·         Every night, the residents of a small town share the same collective dream, until one night a stranger appears in their dream, claiming he’s real and needs their help to escape.

·         A man discovers that every time he buys a snack from a mysterious vending machine, the nutritional label reveals a secret about his future.

·         A woman wakes up each morning to find that her house has moved to a different location—sometimes a new city, sometimes a different time period.

Before you start thinking that the strange ones are awesome ("So original!") and the familiar ones are lame, just hang on and bear with me....

What Are Particulars?

Particulars are the details that fill a story—setting, character traits, specific moments, sensory elements. They can also be either strange or familiar.

In "Beneath the Deep, Slow Motion,” my two protagonists live as river rats, foraging from the water; one of them has shoulder cancer; one delivers newspapers as a side gig;', one is obsessed with chocolate milk; both of them go scavenging on the bottom of the river using an abandoned hot water heater as a diving bell. They they live on a welding barge and every night watch Jeopardy together on a tiny TV. These details create a distinct and fresh world. In other words, the particulars are strange (in the sense of unique, not so much “weird,” though there is a bit of that too), even if the premise isn't.

By contrast, in my student’s story, all the particulars were also familiar: a thirtysomething auto mechanic who drinks Budweiser, watches football, and lives in a cramped trailer. Everything about his life felt recognizable. So not only is the premise familiar, but the particulars are familiar as well. This is a problem, and leads to a story we feel like we have read a million times before.

The Key to Strong Stories: One Strange, One Familiar

Here’s the main takeaway: for a story to be engaging, either the premise or the particulars must be strange. If both are familiar, the story risks becoming a cliché, trite, etc. As writers, we tend to think that all of our premises have to be unique. How many times have we heard writers (or maybe ourselves) bemoan, “there are no new ideas”?

We don’t have to have new ideas. We just have to have strange particulars.

Take my student’s story—her premise (a man loses his job due to drinking) was familiar, and so were the particulars. The result? A well-written but predictable story: a good-old-boy mechanic drinks too much Budweiser, drives drunk to work in his pickup truck after leaving his double-wide mobile home, fights with his boss, and gets fired.

How do we fix that? By making the particulars strange. But that doesn’t mean turning him into a alien drinking arsenic on Mars. Strange can simply mean a fresh combination of details.

In my river rat story, the premise was familiar, but the details—picnics on the barge after they rake clams off the riverbed, carp-shooting, the aforementioned character obsessed with chocolate milk—made it unique. Readers don’t notice the familiar premise, because they/we have never seen it played out in this particular world.

Alternatively, strangeness can come from reversing expectations. Imagine my student’s protagonist was a woman, the chief of thoracic surgery at Boston General. A high-ranking surgeon getting fired for drinking on the job? Unexpected, and maybe a good place to start revisions.

When the Premise Is Strange

So far, we’ve discussed familiar premises with strange particulars. What about the reverse?

When your premise is strange, you must ground the reader with familiar particulars. If both Premises and Particulars are strange, the story tends toward wackiness, or just feels odd for the sake of being odd. A great example of this balance is the iconic twin sunset scene in Star Wars: A New Hope. Luke Skywalker, like any young man contemplating his future and yearning for something different, sits and thoughtfully watches the sunset—except there are famously two suns. The premise of that scene is familiar; the particulars are strange.

Final Thoughts

Balancing Premises and Particulars is one way to keep your story fresh. If both elements are familiar, you risk cliché. If both are strange, you risk alienating the reader. But get the balance right, and you create something unique yet relatable—something that resonates. So, as you revise your work, ask yourself: What’s strange? What’s familiar? And how can I push one or the other to make my story stronger?

I'd love to hear your comments or questions below.