What Happens When You Write Your Premise Before the Manuscript

How learning to write a great premise will help you write faster (and finish)

When I started writing fiction I did just that — start. I had a bland idea in my head, sat at my desk, and went for it. The bird-cage-liner result on the other end was a good indication my sit and write method would not benefit me into the future. There had to be another way to write with more confidence as to where I was going.

I had yet to discover the premise.

There was an answer. I was a noob. I didn’t understand the importance of certain milestones in the writing process. At the time, I had no idea how important a pre-written book premise is to the success of a well-written novel.

I liken the premise to a little two or three sentence book version of your big book.

When we write a premise we describe the goal of the story (not the details), to act, not only as our north star for writing the book, but as a synopsis for anyone interested in the finished product. The premise is both a compass and a quick synopsis.

When I started, I didn’t know what I was going to write before I wrote it.

Now, although I don’t outline, I do start with a premise to act as my GPS while I write the book. A premise allows you to make micro course-corrections as you go. A good premise will help prevent you from writing yourself into a hole. And a good premise will help you see the end of the book before you write it. Even if you don’t want to know the final destination, at least you’ll know which direction to point the car.

This was my trouble when I first started. A story is a snapshot in both time and place. We can’t write everything. A writer must have boundaries to the story or the thing expands to something un-readable and unimaginable.

I had a writer email me once, asking if I thought her 250K-plus word manuscript was too big. Maybe it wasn’t. Not for George R. R. Martin. But the rest of us need serious boundaries.

What we don’t write is as important as what we do write.

Not only does a premise help us see the end of a book, but the process of writing a premise helps us finish the book too. It’s easy to quit on a manuscript. I’ve done it more times than I care to admit. All you do is give up, turn off the computer, mope-around, and start the next random story that pops in your mind, as escapism.

Finishing a book is the hard part.

A good premise will help sort the giant arcs in your story before you reach them. Every word of a premise is deliberate. Nothing is left to chance or interpretation. This three-sentence mini-book is your constant writing guide.

We can’t get our time back. If we spend our writing time inefficiently, it’ll take that much longer to finish the novel, especially if you aimed the car in the wrong direction when you started.

How to write a premise

Although I don’t use this template exactly, if you start with this model, you’ll have a great compass with which you can write your novel. But, there is no exact way you must write a premise. Premises are as different as the author who wrote the book.

Here’s the basic template:

[When] some event sparks a character to action, that [main character acts] with deliberate purpose [until] that action is opposed by an external force,[leading to] some conclusion.

Before we work on yours, here’s the premise I wrote for my crime thriller, The Barrel:

“Shawn wants more from life than death in a tiny cubicle — shoehorned next to the office bathroom, and a boss who wants him gone. A chance encounter with a mysterious woman forces Shawn to make the career choice of his life. What starts as a lucrative job in wine sales tumbles down a dark rabbit hole of world travel, murder, madness, and mayhem.”

We start with the ordinary word. There’s a hint of an inciting incident without giving the story away. There’s a bad guy/gal. Quickly things spiral out of control.

I didn’t end my premise as many authors do, because I didn’t want to leave a chance of spoilers. As I said, every premise is a little different. But no matter how you write it, think of your premise as a sales pitch for your story. Not only are you pitching to your reader, but you’re also motivating yourself to write a great book to match the great premise.

Here are a few more examples of best-selling premises:

The Martian, by Andy Weir —

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive — and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, by J.K. Rowling —

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry’s eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

Side benefits of your premise

The hard parts of your book blurb are almost done. The premise is the sun-dried version of your entire novel (minus the good parts and the spoilers). Your reader wants a guarantee she’ll like the book before she reads it. We don’t have time to read bad books anymore.

While no book can provide a guarantee for an individual reader, we can make a promise to our audience that we’ll describe the story as best we can without giving away all the magic.

Your premise delivers that promise.

You can also use longer versions of your premise in your back-matter, your web descriptions, your advertising, and any piece of content you write to promote your book. The work is done. This is the best, condensed version of your story. All you have to do is cut and paste.

When you write the premise first, even if you’re a pantser, you aim the car in the right direction before you start the journey. Not only will you have a compass, but the novel will be easier to finish. You wrote something exciting will happen to your main character. There’s a conflict. At the end there will be some kind of resolution.

Now, all you must do is write towards those milestones.

I’m not saying writing your novel will be easy. It won’t. But there are worse jobs. And with a premise in hand, you won’t have to spend the next three years working on some ever-expanding manuscript without boundaries.

It’s time to aim the car.

We’re waiting for you.

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August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. A self-proclaimed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indie authors how to write books that sell and how to sell more of those books once they’re written. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.

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