Theme and Premise: What’s the difference?
A writers’ group that I belong to recently decided to do an activity regarding premise. Each member posted the premise of their current WIP. It was no easy task for most of us.
Our group leader cited a number of writers and gave us a detailed explanation of premise. Alas, I either had a blonde moment – or a senior one. Several of them. Strung together. For the life of me, I couldn’t get the concepts.
So I drudged up my trusty dictionary and various books on the writing craft, looking for something to help me “get it.” The result is a brief article on theme and premise. I’d appreciate knowing if this helped anyone – or not – so feel free to comment.
Theme and Premise: What’s the Difference?
Theme and premise, while closely related, are not the same. Read more
June 16th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Hi,
I read your article with interest and feel that you should post it wherever for your writing group. The article is very interesting and I was pleased to see that you looked it up in so many places. That must have taken lots of time.
I don’t think you had a blond moment–more like you wanted to prove the facts of the two words, theme and premise. How more might you have understood if you had tried to write a premise for each of your works. It might have taken the same amount of time and lead you to some sort of conclusion.
For minor clarification (and I’m no expert) pick an important point, a happening, in a current novel, That point LEADS to something else. Wherever the first point led and the conclusion that your novel ended with (that is if you have an ending) becomes your premise. I have had to change mine several times.