Premise

From Lajos Egri, The Art of Dramatic Writing:
No idea, and no situation, was ever strong enough to carry you through to its logical conclusion without a clear-cut premise. If you have no such premise...you will not know where you are going. You must have a premise--a premise that will lead you unmistakably to the goal your play hopes to reach. Must be worded so that anyone can understand it as the author intended it to be understood. An unclear premise is as bad as no premise at all.

Every good premise is composed of THREE parts.

FRUGALITY LEADS TO WASTE

1. FRUGALITY - suggests character
2. LEADS TO - suggests conflict
3. WASTE - suggests the end of the play

Other premises:

• Bitterness leads to false gaiety.
• Foolish generosity leads to poverty.
• Honesty defeats duplicity.
• Heedlessness destroys friendship.
• Ill-temper leads to isolation.
• Materialism conquers mysticism.
• Prudishness leads to frustration.
• Bragging leads to humiliation.
• Confusion leads to frustration.
• Craftiness digs its own grave.
• Dishonesty leads to exposure.
• Dissipation leads to self-destruction.
• Egotism leads to loss of friends.
• Extravagance leads to destitution.
• Fickleness leads to loss of self-esteem.
• Ruthless ambition leads to its own destruction.
• Escape from reality leads to a day of reckoning.
  

You must believe in your premise, since you are to prove it. Great love defies even death. You must show conclusively that life is worthless without the loved one. And if you do not sincerely believe that this is so, you will have a very hard time finding the emotional intensity needed. The premise should be a conviction of YOUR OWN, so that you may prove it wholeheartedly.

It is idiotic to go about hunting for a premise...it should be a conviction of yours. YOU know what your convictions are. Look them over. Suppose you do find a premise in your wanderings. At best it is alien to you. It did not grow from you; it is not part of you. A good premise represents the author.

You may start with an idea which you at once convert to a premise, or you may develop a situation first and see that it has potentialities which need only the right premise to give them meaning and suggest an end.

ONLY ONE PREMISE PLEASE.

Hide the premise. It is impossible to denote just where the premise is and where story or character begins.