Writing tips: what is 'the promise of the premise'?
When a fossilised claw is also a pact.
Welcome to another monthly writing tips column. This time we’re looking at ‘the promise of the premise’, and why it’s an essential part of creating a satisfying story.
What is the promise of the premise?
Every time an audience (reader, viewer, player, listener) decides to spend time with our work, there is an unspoken pact: I will give you my time, and in exchange you promise to deliver the essence of my expectations based on the set-up.
Writers take great pains over their first pages, and especially the first line, because these are crucial for establishing genre, tone, and even key events of the plot. But these first moments aren’t just establishing, they’re promising: we are making a bargain with the audience.
As an audience, this typically works on a subconscious level, but it’s a key decider into whether we are likely to enjoy what’s to come. If we’re watching a film, how interesting ‘the promise’ was also probably shaped whether the film got made in the first place.
Example: Jurassic Park
The opening scene features animal handlers on a remote island. It’s night and mist swirls under industrial lamps. Hordes of men struggle to contain a ferocious creature contained in a metal crate.
Despite all precautions and efforts, this living creature finds a way to attack its captors. Life finds a way. The expense and scarcity of the dinosaur is apparently worth risking human life. Mauling and death is implied, but there’s no explicit gore.
Soon, we move to a dig site where Doctor Alan Grant (Sam Neill) terrifies a small child with the fossilised 6-inch retractable claw of a velociraptor. This is both sinister and funny.
What is the promised genre? Modern-day science fiction + dinosaurs.
What is the promised tone? Dark, but safely scary for kids, with a little comedy.
What key events are promised? The doctor will face velociraptors, and probably save a child.
If the filmmakers had made the film gorier, the expectations from the beginning would have been betrayed.
If the tone had gone darker (e.g. through a child dying) that would have broken the pact where the children would be scared but okay, likewise if there were never any jokes we’d feel the premise wasn’t fulfilled.
If there was never a face-to-face confrontation with velociraptors it would feel like something was missing.
Jurassic Park’s opening scenes make promises, and the film delivers in spades.
What do you promise with your opening?
If you:
Begin with quarrelling lovers, by the end you need to resolve the dispute (either with unification or a decisive split)
Start with a bloody axe-murder, by the end the murder must be addressed (e.g. through insight into the cause, or justice being served)
Commence with futuristic spaceships, by the end the audience will expect to have seen some interstellar dog-fighting.
Imagine instead:
Begin with quarrelling lovers, but at the end they’re ambivalent about each other - we’d feel cheated!
Start with a bloody axe-murder, by the end the murder spree hasn’t escalated, the murderer hasn’t been found, and it turns into a romantic comedy - what even is this thing?
Commence with futuristic spaceships, but then it’s a whole film about politics and taxation, with barely any lasers - you could practically wreck a multi-billion dollar franchise like that!
The promise of the premise shapes everything that follows.
Isn’t this too predictable?
This is where your craft is going to have to shine. Let’s look back at the definition of ‘the promise of the premise’ from the audience’s perspective again:
you promise to deliver the essence of my expectations based on the set-up.
The key term here is ‘the essence of my expectations’.
What is the essence of the promise? What scene must happen, based your set-up genre, tone, and outcome?
The Jurassic Park’s archaeologist must have a confrontation with the velociraptors
Laurie Strode must meet Michael Myers face-to-face in Halloween
In Blade Runner, in an inhumanly vast city, Deckard must confront the leader of the replicants.
These confrontations are the essence of the films—they are essential based on the promise of the premise—but it’s how they are handled that makes them classics.
The archaeologist could have killed the velociraptors with a spear gun or stunned them with tranquilisers, but isn’t it much cooler to suddenly have the T-Rex turn out to be the film’s hero?
Laurie could have stabbed Michael. Using all her desperation and cunning, she could have cut him down, or lured him into the street for the neighbours to confront. But isn’t it more exciting for her to almost meet her death, and then Michael mysteriously survives?
Deckard could have killed Roy Batty, the replicant leader, but instead his limited lifespan washes him away. In the end, Batty is both superhuman predator and a more vulnerable human than every other character in the film. He is, as his corporate creator designed him to be, ‘more human than human’, and his humanity is lost in the city’s night. If Deckard had killed Batty, would it have been nearly as powerful?
These endings fulfil the promises, making them feel inevitable, but they also surprise and shock us.
That is brilliant writing craft.
Enhance your promised scene(s) with the theme
It’s worth noting that in each of the examples above, the handling of these also scenes addresses the story’s themes:
the triumph of nature over human restrictions (Jurassic Park)
the strength and vulnerability of women fighting in a patriarchal world (Halloween)
and that truly living requires embracing all of our most powerful emotions (Blade Runner).
Having a simple victory of the protagonist wouldn’t, in these examples, have addressed any of the deeper themes of the stories. A victory would have delivered the promise of the premise, but the deeper theme wouldn’t have been unfurled.
So, make sure you keep your promises, but take your themes and use them to shape the essentials into something more unique to your vision of that premise.
Writing exercise
Step 1
Look back at a story you’ve written, paying close attention to the first scene (or two, at most), and then consider this against the whole story. Pay particular attention to the ending. (Alternatively, do this with a book, film, or short story you admire.)
How did you/they establish the genre? Could this have been done another way? Did the story follow through with the promise?
What tone was promised? Did the story deliver or did it introduce new elements that weren’t hinted at in the beginning?
What key events were promised? Based on where the story begins, what question is raised or confrontation is promised that simply must be addressed by the end? Does it happen?
Bonus: are there underlying themes in the opening that appear later, perhaps at the very end, reintroduced to add an unexpected turn during an obligatory scene?
Step 2
Write the beginning of a micro-fiction—aiming for less than 1000 words. After the opening paragraph or two, consciously go through the following list:
What genre have I promised?
What tone have I established?
What event must occur before the end?
Bonus: Can I both deliver that obligatory event but also create an unexpected twist?
Try and think of three different options for how to subvert the obligatory event, while still delivering the essence of the promised scene(s).
With these answers in mind, pick the best of the options and continue writing your story.
Step 3
After you’ve finished, reflect on whether this helped!
Not everyone likes to stop and think while writing, but sometimes it’s useful to consciously add new ideas into the mix.
I’m a firm believer that we learn by going through phases of conscious application to unconscious integration.
Each time we deliberately add a new idea into our craft, we build a new path in our behaviours: the first time we walk it, it probably feels awkward, but over time it becomes second nature. Before we know it, we’ve got a new approach to enhance our writing.
Thank you for reading. I hope this inspired and helped you reflect on your writing craft. Forwarding, sharing, and spreading the word about this newsletter is much appreciated.
There are new posts every week. Each month we have a new horror story, critique, writing tips, and more, so please hit that subscribe (if you don’t already) and I’ll pop into your inbox next week.
See you then, and happy rabbit-egg day to all those celebrating!
Be excellent to each other,
Mata xxx