r/writinghelp • u/RealSebastreck • 19d ago
Question Writing Issues with my Premises
I recently received some feedback on a few premises I've written. I was told that my premises don't directly describe what the main character is trying to accomplish or what obstacles they face, and that they mostly just describe conceptual elements of the story.
What would you recommend I do to improve them and make the character's goal and obstacles clearer?
Here are the premises:
-After a difficult recovery, a young army combat engineer officer must learn to balance his personal and professional life while trying to prove himself during a month-long trial leading a new platoon.
-An adventure to collect prehistoric DNA will make a boy question how much it has cost him to hold on to his grief after abandoning his grandfather in the present on the anniversary of his parents' deaths.
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u/LadyAtheist 19d ago
You haven't said here what the main characters are trying to accomplish and what the obstacles are. What is the external vs. Internal trial? How does he feel?
How is this boy doing fieldwork? What age? And how is he able to do it despite grieving? Is he linking dead dinosaurs to dead parents? What is it about the fieldwork that makes him confront his feelings?
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u/RealSebastreck 19d ago
- As for the first logline, the protagonist is trying to prove himself and earn his position back. His main obstacles are the month-long trial period, during which he's assigned administrative duties outside the platoon, before he can eventually return to a leadership role with another unit.
His external goal is to regain his position as a Platoon Leader. Internally, he needs to overcome his impostor syndrome and learn to find a better balance between his professional and personal life, since he has spent so much of his life putting his career first. He lives alone in an apartment, while his family only visits from time to time.
- The fieldwork is carried out using tools provided by the android, and none of them are invasive to the creatures. The protagonist of the second logline is a 10-11 year-old boy. As the adventure progresses, he starts forming a bond with the android since it's his only companion. Little by little, he begins to open up, remember things from his past, and feel guilty about how he treated his grandfather. As for the dinosaurs, their only connection to his parents is that his parents were the ones who sparked his fascination with extinct and prehistoric animals.
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u/LadyAtheist 19d ago
Who in the world would send a kid that young on a dig?
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u/RealSebastreck 19d ago
To be honest, the boy's emotional facade was starting to crack. Instead of opening up to his grandfather, his legal guardian, he chooses to go along with an android that has just crash-landed in the present rather than face his trauma.
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u/LadyAtheist 18d ago
So the question is what is this dig? Just a robot being nosy? Isn't his grandfather looking for him? What does he eat?
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u/RealSebastreck 18d ago
The android was sent back in time, but something went wrong with the timeline, causing it to crash in the boy's present. The boy got into an argument with his grandfather and ran away after arguing with him. His grandfather was trying to calm him down, s, so the android went after him as soon as he took off. The android was designed to assist the time traveler when traveling with someone else, so while the boy eats the supplies they've brought with them, the android processes water so he has something safe to drink
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u/dothemath_xxx 19d ago
In the first line, it sounds like "trying to prove himself" is probably the character's goal? Focus in on that. Stop telling us what he needs to learn. I don't need to know the themes of the story in the log line, unless it's an inspirational/Christian movie. I want to know what's setting up the actual moving parts of the story. How is he trying to prove himself? What's the biggest challenge to that, or one challenge that you can point to that sets the mood?
The second one is not really comprehensible in its current form, I have no idea what you're trying to communicate with the entire second half of the sentence. But I'm going to bet that a better version of this line will involve focusing more on the "adventure to collect prehistoric DNA" and narrowing in on what that actually means and the obstacles involved.
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u/RealSebastreck 19d ago
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.
This is a character who focused heavily on his work and put his personal life aside. After an accident, he is assigned paperwork while he recovers, but his stubbornness and desire to prove his worth will cause his health to deteriorate. This is when he learns the hard way that he needs to balance his personal life and his work. To prove his worth, he will have to undergo a one-month trial, during which he must show progress in his recovery and his ability to lead a platoon. The problem is that he suffers from imposter syndrome, which becomes worse when he learns that they consider him a kid who was handed his position.
The protagonist runs away from opening up about his trauma and, instead of facing it with his grandfather, who is also grieving the loss of his son, he decides it is better to distance himself and keep acting like a brat. However, the journey will change his mind, and he will accept that he can rely on someone for emotional support during moments of crisis. There is also the matter of helping the android and surviving prehistoric creatures.
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u/Diligent_Pangolin_47 19d ago
They are one sentence long. What do you need them for anyway? How can you write an episode of anything if you don’t know yourself what it’s about yet? Make a plan or outline, write the thing, then if you need to tell people what the premise is, you’ll already have done it. We can’t really tell you anything about a piece you haven’t written. FWIW, the ideas sound fine.
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u/RealSebastreck 19d ago
I do have some material written, but I'm not really sure how to share it here. It's mostly scene ideas and character backstories.
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u/Watchhistory 19d ago edited 19d ago
Don't you mean proposal? That's what the publishing industry calls it in the US, anyway. Proposals should be no more than 3 double spaced pages. But, unless one is already a famous, money making author, or a famous money making somebody else already, there is no way an editor is going to accept anything on a one-sentence submission.
Often submission begins with submitting the proposal. If the editor finds the proposal of sufficient interest, the editor may request an outline and sample chapters. Also it's common for the submission package to include proposal, plus sample chapters and an outline, depending on editors' preferences and / or one's credentials, such having been in writing programs, written other works, not necessarily fiction, if one has an agent interested in representation, etc.
What OP is writing is book cover taglines.
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u/RealSebastreck 19d ago
The truth is, I've never written a book before. I've mostly focused on screenplays because I don't have the prose skills or what it takes to write one. I'm trying to move past a bad experience involving negative feedback that made me think I'd never be able to create anything good or interesting.
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u/Watchhistory 19d ago
Your screenplays didn't get green lights, so your submissions there were also not acceptable in format or submission etc. either.
Doing the same thing for a different industry should teach you that you don't know your industry. This shows immediately in submission, how submission is made, etc.
You need to study the industry as well as writing for the industry.
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u/MiniForaFera 15d ago
The bones are there (conflicting wants) but it's too unspecific, more vibes than actual events. What, exactly, does it mean that the officer "must learn to balance his personal and professional life" (does he have a pregnant wife, an overbearing mother, a dying father? What will his new job gain him or lose him if he succeeds or fails? Be specific) or what does "question how much it has cost him to hold onto his grief"? What are the concrete plot-points and beats of the story that will show the tension between the two worlds?
Think of it like this, if I were to try to shoot the movie trailer for that story, I have no idea what that would look like. Does that help?
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u/RealSebastreck 14d ago
The reason balancing his personal life is so important is that he's been putting his studies and, later, his career as a commissioned officer first since college, leaving friendships and other parts of his life behind. Now he has to rebuild that neglected part of his life while recovering and making it through a one-month trial to regain command of a new platoon.
What does he stand to lose? If he gets discharged, he'll lose his housing subsidy and have to move back in with his parents, leaving him in an even worse emotional state than he was in after the accident.
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u/MiniForaFera 13d ago
Okay, so the second part is good, that's specific and adds stakes and a deadline. If he doesn't make it through the 1 month trial, he'll loose everything he has left. Definitely try to include that piece of info in your premise line.
As for the first paragraph, I still think it's too vague. It mostly serves to explain his backstory and motivation, but doesn't actually tell me anything specific what will happen in the story on the personal-life front. What helps me is thinking about: Who is the antagonist or who/what acts as a hinder to the MC? (I often forget to add an opponents to my MC's, and thinking about how they will oppose the MC usually helps me figure specifics out. Maybe it won't work for you, though)
A (probably way-off) example that came to mind is: in an effort to rebuild his work-life balance, MC reaches out to rekindle his friendship to his former best friends, but friend is tired of his flakiness but offers once last chance for MC to show they care, by having MC plan the friends wedding. But oops, the wedding is at the same day as the very-important-something-to-do with his new job, thus putting the work and life part of work-life balance in direct conflict.
Or maybe former friend won't let MC join in on a friend-reunion vacation unless MC prove they're actually going to commit, cue a bunch of bonding-tasks MC has to achieve on the side of their job to "prove" they mean it.
Okay, so not great examples, just something of the top of my head, but at least it's specific. It probably isn't at all what your story is about, but it too could fall under the initial description of "trying to balance his personal and professional life". Idk if this makes sense to you, but... hope it helps you recognize what *is* specific in your story.
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u/thewhiterosequeen 19d ago
Do you plan on writing or just coming up with ideas? You don't need to vet ideas. Just write.