What Is A Premise?

[Guest]

Largely speaking, that's a moral.

A premise is just a common knowledge or a question. A tale will then explore that question or be set against that common knowledge.

eg what happens when love conquers all? The moral: shit happens.

*swoon*

Gauche, you're such a romantic.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

GAUCHE

Like, "Chicago teachers suck."

 

[dr_mabeuse]

On the contrary, as a linguistics expert, I can tell you that premise actually derives from 'pre-' = before and 'mise', from the French verb 'mettre', to put.

A 'premise' is simply a theory or POV put out to be argued over or debated. Nothing at all to do with ~Romeo and Juliet.

Until you grow up and get out of Senior School, can you please stop using words you don't understand.

Lloyd is right. The "premise" of a story is the presumption the author makes to get the story off the ground. In R&J the premises concern the Montagues & Capulets feuding in Verona or wherever they were and the idea that a boy from one family and a girl from the other could fall so mindlessly in love that they'd defy their family's orders.

Adult supervision, or whatever message you take from the play, isn't a premise. It's more like a moral or conclusion taken from a fable-level understanding of the piece.

But even if the point of the play were to have a moral, "adult wisdom" in this case means keeping the barriers of hatred in place for no good reason. The moral I'd take from the play (if it had one) is that hatred inevitably leads to tragedy.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

DOC

A lot of experts cant seem to agree what a premise is. I read one this morning who says 'premise' is the 'high concept' you sell to publishers or producers. Like, JURASSIC PARK's premise is: Stupid scientist unleashes hell toying with animal hybrids. The entire chain of events is people being dum-shits. So I dont think THAT captures the full flavor of a premise.

I mean, I keep coming back to 'What was Michael Crichton's point?' It isnt "People are dum-shits." I think it's Murphy's Law; If something can go wrong, it will."

 

[jomar]

In the case of R&J, "Love perseveres" would be a bad premise for Shakes to have started with because he failed to prove it -- not only did he fail to prove his premise but he proved the opposite -- Love does NOT persevere-- it does not persevere against stupidity, petty bullshit, nor teenage melodrama. Unless you believe that R&J go to a better place where they can live happily ever after because there are no divorce lawyers.

I dunno. Love did persevere, they just fucked up the happily ever after part.

I was thinking along the lines of Gauche and Doc before I saw their posts, though agree the term premise seems interchangeable with moral in some of the sites I've visited.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

DOC

A lot of experts cant seem to agree what a premise is. I read one this morning who says 'premise' is the 'high concept' you sell to publishers or producers. Like, JURASSIC PARK's premise is: Stupid scientist unleashes hell toying with animal hybrids. The entire chain of events is people being dum-shits. So I dont think THAT captures the full flavor of a premise.

I mean, I keep coming back to 'What was Michael Crichton's point?' It isnt "People are dum-shits." I think it's Murphy's Law; If something can go wrong, it will."

Yeah. A lot of experts are lazy when it comes to the definition of words, or maybe just stupid. I think the Hollywood definition of a premise is probably different than the Humanities definition. In Hollywood they're trying to sell a script or concept so a "premise" is the basic movie idea. Not that way in the study of literature.

If it's anything, a premise is is something presumed. That's what the word means. In fiction, I take that the mean the assumptions the author makes to get his work up and running, not the message he's trying to deliver or the conclusions he leaves us with.

You can argue that Bill's premise in R&J is "Love Conquers All" in the sense that that's the idea he wants to challenge in the play, but that's a very loose application of the word to me. To say that the premise is "True Love Never Runs Smooth" is just silly, though, a reduction of the play to the level of "Angry Men Fight With Swords". That's not even the theme, which would be the core idea and might be something like, "Forbidden Love Against a Background of Family Hatred".

The most cogent use of the word "premise" in fiction comes in science and speculative fiction, I think, where the word unambiguously refers to the axioms of the author's alternative world. In normative fiction, "premise" is best understood as denoting the moral and other assumptions the author makes about the world he sets his characters loose in: whether people are good, whether life has purpose, whether love exists, the role nature plays, whether there's justice...

Movies have premises too. Compare "No Country For Old Men" with any Harry Potter movie, say, and you'll immediately see the different premises the two movie worlds are based on.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

DOC

Syd Field says pretty much the same thing. When he got in the movie business there was utter confusion about what made a great screenplay; F. Scott Fitzgerald was a disaster at writing screenplays. So Field examined the great movies to see what they had in common. That is, what were the best screenplay writers doing intuitively. But most writers couldnt agree on what any of the terms meant.