The Craft of Creating Romance Novels: The Premise

by Katie Lovette

The following article appeared in the April 2006 issue of Smoke Signals, newsletter of the Smoky Mountain Romance Writers. Other chapters can use with credit to author and chapter.

What is a story's Premise? The Premise is the issue that is being illustrated, the core belief that provokes the characters into action.

What is an issue? It is the basic driving force of human nature-love, hate, greed, jealousy, etc., and is the heart of the story. Each character in the story faces the Premise and either succeeds or fails. The bad guys are killed or jailed because they cannot refrain from committing the crime and the hero gets the girl because he brings to an end the evil or wrong doing. The bad guy fails and the good guy succeeds. Two good examples are "The Transporter" movies. In each, greed is the Premise. In the first movie the transporter, who follows the rules and is not greedy, halts those who are smuggling illegal aliens into the country for huge profits. He prevents evil from happening, prevailing over the bad guys. In the second, a child is kidnapped and infected with a virus. The child is used as a tool to murder the father, who is preventing the kidnappers from making large amounts of money.

Do not confuse Premise with the Concept or the Message. A Premise allows for several avenues to discuss and answer the issue. The Concept is how the Premise is presented, how the story tells it. The Message is presented and has only one outcome or one correct answer. A good example of a Message versus Premise can be found in the movie A Knight's Tale. The Premise is pretending. The Message is why do we pretend to be something we are not? The Concept is a servant pretends to be a knight in hopes of changing his station in life.

Today's popular fiction has either a Premise or a Message.

Award-winning books or movies always have a strong Premise. For example, the Premise of this year's Academy Awards Best Picture Crash was racism. The Message presented is that each of us is a racist to some degree. Although this is still a controversial subject, this script enticed plenty of Hollywood talent to take a role.

In the Romance genre, the hero and heroine are representatives of the Premise and this dictates the way they act and react to the issue and conflict. To add to the conflict, the hero and heroine have opposing ideas and reactions to the Premise. To illustrate this, make jealousy the Premise. Have your hero be extremely jealous of any man who is near the heroine. Have the heroine not experience jealousy because she trusts the hero to be faithful to her. Thus, the hero believes that the heroine does not love him and the heroine is afraid to talk to anyone. Showing how each main character handles the plot points-the meeting, the first kiss, the love scene, the dark moment, the resolution-as well as the external and internal conflicts adds to characterization.

Katie Lovette is the author of Loving Care for Alzheimer's Patients and is a charter member of SMRW.

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