You Have an Idea for a Novel! Now What?!

This is part one of a five part Creative Writing Series from contributor Cristina Schnizler. We thought the beginning of the offseason would be a perfect time to get started on that writing project you've always wanted to do, but maybe haven't had the time or know how to do it!

Do you have an idea for a novel, a screenplay, or a memoir? A little nugget of a thought that would make a great book. Or maybe you’ve been through something in your life that people simply have to read about. 

Congratulations! You’ve taken your first step toward writing a novel: You have an Idea.

Now what? One chicken nugget isn’t enough for an entire meal, and an Idea isn’t enough for an entire story.

So, how do you take that Idea and make it into a full story? How do you flesh it out?

What you need are a Premise and a Concept.

Do you have to?

If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking, I want to write a story. I’ve got a pretty good idea, and I even know some of the characters and dialogue. I already know the ending, for goodness sake! Do I really need a Premise and a Concept? Can’t I just start writing?

And I would say that, yes, you can start writing. But only if you want to delete it later.

Your one Idea, even with some of the elements of a story (like who the main character is and where she ends up) is a great starting point. Write down all of it, everything you know about your story so far, and use all of this information to develop your Premise and Concept. 

The Premise and Concept are vital! They are the foundational building blocks to storytelling. Without them you have no roadmap. Which means you’ll waste a lot of time writing a lot of words that will get you nowhere in your story.

I’ve made the mistake before of skipping over thinking through my Premise and Concept. I’ve written thousands and thousands of words to a story that went nowhere because I didn’t know the message of the story (Premise) or the basic story outline (Concept). I only had an Idea.

I actually had a lot of fun writing all of those words. But in the end, they didn’t make it into the story. Instead, they’re saved in a document titled “Unused Chapters.” 

Let me save you from making an Unused Chapters document for yourself. Take some time to flesh out your Premise and Concept.

So, what is a Premise?

A Premise is the guiding principle or framework for your story, the main point you are trying to make. The Premise is the thread that flows through the entire story, from page one to the end. 

Some examples may help:

• Relationships are more important than gaining glory for yourself (Cars)

• Creating trust can lead to courageous acts (The Help)

• Murder isn’t wrong if you’re killing a bad person (Dexter)

Each of these Premises is woven throughout the entire story. And for your story, your Premise should be present in one form or another on every page, whether that’s by proving it, hinting at it, or attempting to disprove it. 

Your main character may be living out your Premise on one page, while your villain is destroying it on another page. (Like in Cars when Lightning McQueen (the main character) stays behind to help The King cross the finish line, thus proving the Premise, while Chick (the villain) zooms past them to win the race, attempting to disprove the Premise.) In either case, though, the Premise is present. 

Knowing your Premise helps keep your story on track. If a piece of your story isn’t proving your Premise or pointing to it in some way, then that piece isn’t actually a part of the story. And as painful as it is to delete words you’ve written, you need to get rid of them.

Concept

Once you have a Premise, the Concept will supply more details of how you’ll use your Idea to fulfill the Premise. It is a very high-level outline of your Plot (which we’ll get to in later articles). The Concept is made up of three elements:

• Character

• Conflict and

• Conclusion

Examples really are the best way to understand this. So let’s look at the same three stories:

• An up-and-coming, ambitious race car realizes that winning is not worth sacrificing his character or his friendships. (Cars)

• A white journalist befriends black maids in the 1950s South, and together they expose the ugly reality of racism. (The Help)

• A blood-spatter analyst for police spends his evenings murdering other murderers. (Dexter)

You can see from these examples how the entire story is laid out in one sentence. You don’t know the details of how the character will get through the conflict to arrive at the conclusion, but you have a good grasp on the basics of the story. 

How in the world do you come up with the Premise and Concept?

It’s pretty easy to find the Premise and Concept in stories that are already written. But your story is still in your head. So, how do you figure out the Premise and Concept for your story?

One of the easiest ways to do this (and my favorite way) is to play the “What if?” game.

Playing the What if? game is simple. Start with your Idea, then think of some options that could happen based on that Idea. Phrase these options as what if questions.

Let’s say you have an Idea to write a book about the U.S. South. That’s a broad subject that could go in a ton of different directions. So, let’s start asking what if questions.

• What if a white woman in Mississippi doesn’t like the way black maids in her town are treated? 

• What if that woman is an aspiring journalist? 

• What if a murder of a black maid causes the white woman to want to write a story about the victim?

• What if the maids join together to protest their treatment? 

• What if the maids agree to work with the white woman to tell their stories?

Sound familiar? Not all of these what if questions are actually in the story. But some of them outline the story from The Help.

The What if? game has no limits. You can ask any what if question you want, no matter how crazy. (Honestly, sometimes the crazier the question the better.) 

You’ll find that each question will lead you to another and another. It’s even better if you have a partner throwing out what if questions, too. 

Once you have a healthy sized list, you can start to hone it down. 

Is there a common thread or message running through some of the what if questions? You may have found your Premise.

Do some of the questions seem to make a logical sequence of events? This could be part of your Concept.

On the other hand are some of the questions too far out of left field (like some of the questions in the What if? game above)? Take these out of the running for now. (But still save them for another story. You may use those crazy what ifs another time.)

The What if? game is an easy way to warm up your brain, come up with lots of options, and then choose the best ones. Pretty soon you’ll have a decently fleshed out Idea, Premise, and Concept for your story. 

What about memoir?

When it comes to memoir, the What if? game is a little more constrained by reality because you’ll be telling what happened to you (with an artistic flair). Your what if questions will be more like: 

• What if I tell this particular part of the story?

• What if I leave out this part of the story?

• What if I explore what could have happened if I’d made a different decision?

• What if I leave out this person?

• What if I combine these two people into one person?

Even though the What if? game isn’t quite the same for a memoir, it will still help you figure out your Premise and Concept. 

Which comes first?

Because the Premise and the Concept go hand in hand, you may be able to come up with one before you come up with the other. So, even though I talked about Premise first, you may have a Concept come to you long before you’ve figured out your Premise. And that’s fine.

When I’ve written stories, there are times when I know what I want to happen in the story before I know the message or framework I’ll be weaving through the whole thing. That’s when I know the Concept before the Premise.

Other times I know the main message I want to convey long before I know exactly how it’s going to happen. These are times when I know the Premise before I’ve figured out the Concept.

But in both cases, the Idea came first.

You have a Premise and a Concept. What now?

Now that you’ve fleshed out your Idea into a Premise and a Concept, what do you do with them?

You hold them tight. At first.

Type them up, print them out, and pin them where you can see them when you’re working on your story. Write them in pretty hand lettering and hang them above your computer. Tattoo it on your forehead backwards so you can read it in the mirror. (Only kidding. Don’t do that last one.) 

You need to be constantly reminded of your Premise and Concept because they will keep you on track for the rest of your story creation.

Having said that, you might get further into your story and realize that you’re actually trying to make a different point than you thought you were. Or maybe the way you thought the Plot would go isn’t actually going to work. It happens. All the time, actually.

If this happens to you, then update your Premise or your Concept to reflect your new direction. 

However, any changes to the Premise or Concept should be updates, small changes. Not total rewrites. If you feel like your original Premise is completely off, or that your original Concept is the worst ever and would never work, then there is probably something wrong with your Plot.

Let’s use Cars as an example. It may be that the original Premise for the movie was, “Winning isn’t everything.” If you’ve seen the movie, you know that the storyline goes far deeper than learning how to lose. It’s more about how Lightning McQueen grows and matures as a “person” into someone who values others and relationships. So, the more we delved into the Plot, our understanding of the Premise has changed from “Winning isn’t everything” to “Relationships are more important than gaining glory for yourself.” This is a change in the Premise, but it is more of a tweak than a complete re-write.

Remember, if you change your Premise or Concept you’ll be changing foundational pieces of your story. And just as it’s extremely difficult and impactful to do foundation work on a house, it is also equally impactful to change the Premise or Concept for a story. 

If you’re considering completely rewriting your Premise or Concept, take some time to evaluate whether you’ve gotten off-track in your writing since creating them or if you truly came up with the wrong Premise or Concept to begin with. To change these foundational pieces will have a dramatic impact on your story (and likely cause you a lot of re-writing). So, use caution when changing them.

(And if you do change one or both, you’ll be really glad you didn’t get that tattoo.)

To sum up

Having an Idea for a story is a great starting point, but it’ll only get you so far. You need to build the foundation for the story by creating a Premise and a Concept. It’s well worth your time to work on these two steps because it’ll save you from writing thousands of words you’ll only end up deleting later. Trust me. 

Build the foundation first, then move on to filling in the rest of the story.

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