Leaning into your premise

[sholio]

Just FYI, my latest book as Zoe, Dancer Dragon, is out on Amazon now.

--

There's something I've been thinking about lately, after some conversations with rachelmanija about ... well, it didn't even start out about writing at all; it was just that she was looking for books set in circuses and observing how few books with circuses in the title and/or on the cover are actually ABOUT CIRCUSES. And then we got to talking about it, and now I'm seeing examples everywhere of books (and movies, TV shows, etc) that promise to be about something interesting and then disappoint because they don't lean in. There's a circus on the cover, but only one chapter is set there, or the whole book is set there but it might as well be anywhere because they never really do circusy things.

It's intriguing to me how often books/movies do this, and how I've never actually seen this (as such) in any advice I've ever read -- lean into your premise, your setting, whatever's unique about your characters. Use it. I guess it's sort of a Chekhov's gun kind of thing (that everything in the book should serve an eventual purpose) but it's not exactly that. It's more like, if you're going to put ghosts in your book, why not use them to do uniquely ghosty things rather than just floating onstage for their one moment? If your protagonist is a con artist, she shouldn't solve problems like a normal law-abiding person would! I think a number of the works of fiction that have disappointed me have done it because, on some level, they were failing to do this. I can remember being annoyed, for example, with books that tell you about somewhere fascinating the characters might go, but never actually take you there.

(Insert obligatory disclaimer that it also depends on what an individual finds interesting; some people will be there for the detailed descriptions of dressmaking and some really wish you'd skip the dresses and get straight to the murder, etc.)

But honestly, even if it's not something the reader is actually into, I think that writing it so that it fills the page makes it interesting. I could not have cared less about either sailing or the Napoleonic Wars, but Patrick O'Brian's books are wall-to-wall both of those things, and they actually make me care about page after page of nautical terminology and blow-by-blow descriptions of battles, because he cares. You can practically feel the creaking of the deck under your feet.

... And you know, like anything else, not everything interesting has to appear on the page; maybe being stuck somewhere the protagonist finds dull is the plot. But I mean, even there, the reader shouldn't be bored, reading it; the dullness of the setting should fill the page until it becomes fascinating, like the vivid grayness of Dorothy's Kansas. The issue is when, as a reader, you find yourself thinking, "Why did you even tell me about that interesting thing if you weren't going to show it?"

To be fair, Dancer Dragon probably could lean in a lot more than it does. If readers are reading it for detailed descriptions of ballroom dancing they're probably going to be disappointed. On the other hand, there's definitely dancing in it; it's just really more of a thing the plot wraps around than the main plot. There's also the problem that what I know about ballroom dancing could fill a very small thimble with room left over.

I got some negative reviews on the first book in the series, Bearista, because it didn't have enough coffee shop in it! I mean, you wouldn't think coffee shops are something that people reading a romance novel would really care about, but they actually did; the premise promised a big dude working in a coffee shop, but we actually only got a couple chapters of that before Plot Happened and he ended up exiting stage right pursued by bears (literally). In retrospect I think the book those readers wanted to read would have been a fascinating book, and maybe I should write that book eventually.

Anyway, I don't really have a point here so much as ... I don't think this should be treated as any kind of a hard-and-fast rule, but it's another tool in the toolkit for editing and tightening a flabby plot. If your story feels flat, maybe you need to lean into the premise a bit more.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

That is so true. Failure to engage with its own premise is such a common and frustrating problem with stories.

I don't mean misleading covers/titles, like Dragons in the Waters or The Young Unicorns, neither of which feature dragons or unicorns but which never suggest that they will in the book itself. I mean when the book promises to be about something, and then never really engages with or features it.

Season 4 of Buffy disappointed me because after three seasons of magical metaphors for high school experiences, I was really looking forward to magical metaphors for college experiences. But there was very little of that in the season. It instead had a Big Bad that had nothing inherently to do with college, and while it did have a fair amount of stuff about living away from home, there wasn't much that was specifically college. I wanted demon roommates and tests that will kill you if you don't pass them and vampire professors and parties where everyone gets possessed and haunted dorm rooms, and instead I got Frankenstein and government super-soldiers.

On the flip side, Wiseguy really, really leans into its premise. It's about an undercover cop, and it leaves no undercover trope unturned.

Dick Francis never, ever fails to lean into his premise.

[sholio]

I don't mean misleading covers/titles, like Dragons in the Waters or The Young Unicorns, neither of which feature dragons or unicorns but which never suggest that they will in the book itself. I mean when the book promises to be about something, and then never really engages with or features it.

Right, exactly! It's not a failure of the book if the title/cover is clearly metaphorical, and if some offhand reference to something the author never meant to be important sounds more interesting to me than the entire rest of the book, it's probably just that I'm a poor fit as a reader.

But Wiseguy is such a good example of a show that never fails to use its premise to the fullest. If there is ANY opportunity for Vinnie and Frank to pretend not to know each other, or for characters sneaking around in which each of them has about 1/3 of the relevant information, or for Vinnie's ordinary life to collide headlong with his undercover life, they are gonna ride that as far as it'll go. The writers clearly love undercover tropes, and mafia tropes, and you never get the impression that they've pulled back from something interesting that might otherwise have happened.

As opposed to, say, that Mrs. Pollifax book where she hides out in a carnival and they joke about having her go undercover as a fortune-teller and then everyone's like "haha, but of course we wouldn't do that" and she goes and does something way less interesting instead. WHY DO YOU TORMENT US, DOROTHY GILMAN.

[sholio]

Also, "failure to engage with its own premise" - yes, exactly. I really don't think I've ever seen this discussed in writing advice, as such -- aspects of it, maybe, but not really held up as a specific thing.

[lilacsigil]

I think this is what I liked about those big 1970s-80s airport thrillers - you got to learn all about how the skyscraper/airport/hospital/hotel/cruise ship worked before it all went horribly wrong!

[sholio]

YES. When they're well done, I really enjoy that kind of book and for that exact reason! (Ken Follett does well at this, for example.)

ETA: And also, the problems that go wrong usually incorporate the setting to a very large degree. It would be much less interesting and exciting if you got a few chapters telling you all about the airport and then the entire plot took place in one small room!

[rachelmanija]

No one can say The Poseidon Adventure fails to lean into its premise.

[kore]

Yeah, I remember reading books in the 80s that were all about the setting too -- Clan of the Cave Bear was a big example, about the tribes and stuff like toolmaking and finding herbs and hunting. Thorn Birds was about the forbidden romance &c &c but also had a lot of Australian background in it. Writers would work up a topic and do heavy duty research into it, although that often led to heavy-handed exposition and page filling (which in turn could lead to stuff like plagiarizing facts about ferrets). Of course people are still writing historical books today but yeah, it seems like the settings and history are more in the background? idk.

[kore]

(And of course sometimes the Big Historical Novels are done by men, and considered classics, like East of Eden or whatever. Or women do it too, like with Susan Sontag and In America, but I still think men get more respect for it.)

[sheron]

I'm constantly surprised how much people are into coffeeshops XD

[sholio]

.... although you know, relevant to the above discussion, I think most coffeeshop AUs are not actually about coffeeshops at all; the coffeeshop is just a backdrop. Which was basically what I did with Bearista, and it turned out that at least some readers actually want the coffeeshop!

I saw a post on Tumblr a little while back that was about writing coffeeshop AUs that are like actual coffeeshops instead of idealized ones. Which of course I either didn't reblog or didn't tag in a findable kind of way.

[yhlee]

Weirdly enough, this very thing came up in a tangent during a logistics (yes, logistics) panel I was on whose most notable panelist was the editor Ginjer Buchanan. I quipped that Americans are into Tom Clancy novels going on and on about weapons systems "because Americans," and Ginjer correctly me (gently, nicely) that actually, these novels are about getting into the gory details of whatever they're about--Dick Francis novels and...whatever they're about (I have never read a Dick Francis novel), or Tom Clancy and weapons systems, and this is a distinct style of novel that may not be of particular literary value but readers love them and they sell like hotcakes.

Of course, as a writer I find it impossible to tell when the thing I really really want to lean into is actually completely boring to readers, and the thing that I really really didn't want to write about is the thing the readers were clamoring for, but that is, I think, a separate problem.

[sholio]

Yeah; I think to some extent the difference between "absolutely fascinating" and "oh god make the infodumping stop" just comes down to is the reader's interest in the thing being infodumped (which isn't even necessarily a matter of how interested they were before reading the book!). I find the Tom Clancy variety generally unbearable, and yet, a lot of novels that really go into their settings or specific aspects of the characters' lives are absolutely riveting to me. I used the example of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels above, because I went into those books with absolutely zero interest in the Napoleonic Wars or naval warfare, and yet somehow he made it so fascinating that I devoured the series like a stack of pancakes. I think you're right that it is a particular thing, though. Along similar lines, I really love a certain type of SF that I think of as "problem-solving SF" -- The Martian is a really good recent example, and I saw a lot of criticism around for its writing style, but I didn't care; I was utterly fascinated by the problem-solving, technological aspect.

[lunabee34]

This is not the point of your post, but damn Bearista is a good title! Mucho kudos on coming up with that one. :)

[sholio]

Hahaha, I'm not gonna lie here: I am convinced that Bearista is the best title I've ever come up with, in any genre, in 30 years of writing. XDDD I will go to my GRAVE knowing that was Peak Writing right there.

[jenett]

Definitely agree with the advice - one of the current books I'm finishing I got really stuck on until my editor/first reader/excellent friend nudged me to lean into The Hero being a really super big classics nerd. (I mean, he is actually a classicist.) Once I did, his voice actually worked, and the book got a lot better really fast.

(Ok, so, leaning into Greek concepts about colour terminology, also just fun.)

In terms of avoiding the infodump, the thing that works for me (both as a reader and I hope as a writer) is use the context to make it how people think about what they're experiencing, and putting it into that situation. And then, as necessary, adding enough detail that a reader who doesn't know the thing can get the relevant stuff from context.

The trick with it is - as other commenters have noted - leaning into it, but also having enough knowledge to get it right. A lot of the YA/New Adult books at boarding schools and colleges completely kick me out of the narrative, because having worked at an independent day school, a college, and a university, as well as having gone to boarding school, people keep doing things that make absolutely no logical sense (and have no plot benefit) if the institution is going to survive for more than like, a week.

(Hogwarts mostly gets a pass, because house elves, magic, and because clearly no one is actually applying necessary details of health and safety concerns consistently, and that's actually a relevant plot point. But if you have a theoretically functional institution, then there's a lot of stuff that has a relatively limited number of options for how it can work at an institution of any size if people are not dying all the time, and getting regular meals, and so on.)

[indywind]

"In terms of avoiding the infodump, the thing that works for me (both as a reader and I hope as a writer) is use the context to make it how people think about what they're experiencing, and putting it into that situation. And then, as necessary, adding enough detail that a reader who doesn't know the thing can get the relevant stuff from context."


Yes, this. Well-written leaning-in details don't just give the details with disinterested omniscience, the story - by way of the narrative voice/focus and/or the characters - shows the reader why the details are interesting or relevant, how to think and feel about them.

[indywind]

Soooo much this.

I have a really big competence kink, but, most centrally, it's not just for stories proclaiming or even showing that Character Is Super Competent At Thing. Rather, it's for storytelling that reveals the great depth of knowledge and intense familiarity about Thing that the competent character necessarily has in order to be competent. And so the writer must have at least a significant fraction of the knowledge and or fascination with the topic, in order to portray it convincingly and make it interesting and relevant to the audience.

Failure to lean in to the premise is one failure state (my guess is half the time failure to lean in happens, it's because writer had an idea they thought would be cool but not enough personal knowledge to fill it out, nor enough personal fascination to build the knowledge just for the story). And fumbling the lean-in is another failure state that happens when the author has more fascination/enthusiasm than actual expertise or discernment about what parts are relevant. So they infodump detail that's not relevant -- stuff that an expert immersed in the Thing wouldn't even notice or care about, let alone a reader approaching it cold -- or they give only attention-getting details without sufficient context to show why, apart from sensationalism, they're interesting and relevant (and may misconstrue/misrepresent or actually get details flat wrong enough to aggravate readers with some expertise. (Why I'm leery of much 'historical' fiction especially romance, why I despair of writing realistic modern paramilitary-flavored action-adventure)). In either case -- failing to lean in, or leaning in but fumbling it, the 'good bits' end up feeling shallow and pasted-on rather than integral to the characters or the plot... because basically they were.

[cahn]

OH! Reading your comment elucidated for me why I bounced hard off Kowal's Calculating Stars, where I never got the "knowledge and intense familiarity," as you say, that I would have expected of the heroine.

stuff that an expert immersed in the Thing wouldn't even notice or care about

Heh, I've had conversations about this about writing grant proposals -- when one is writing a proposal about something one doesn't know much about, it's a hard thing to get right and a fairly big tell that one doesn't know much about it.

[sophia_sol]

I love stories that really lean into their premise - that kind of all-in enthusiasm for something specific is the kind of thing I'm super here for. Even if the premise that's been gone all-in for isn't one that ends up being For Me, I still appreciate the dedication. (Eg, a book I read a little while back which is about trans Peter Pan, which it turns out doesn't work for me because I don't care about Peter Pan, but I still was glad I read it because it was wholeheartedly doing its thing!)

I seem to be fairly good at finding/reading books that do this, which makes it all the more disappointing when I come across ones that don't.

[sholio]

that kind of all-in enthusiasm for something specific is the kind of thing I'm super here for

YES. Same. It's the same way I'm really, really into books with a strong, specific sense of place; I can read an entire book on the basis of nothing but that, if it does it well enough.

... I mean, to be fair, I generally do need something else going on, particularly for a reread. And I do tend to be a person who latches onto characters and will read an otherwise bland book if I'm really enjoying the people. But specificity and premise can carry the majority of a book for me if it's vivid enough.

[leesa_perrie]

This is something to remember should I ever venture into original writing (and to remember for fanfic too, come to think of it)!

I read a lot of historical detective books. Now they really do need to lean into their premise, but even so, there was one I read that felt very 'Roman lite' and more about a silly little girl (sorry, but that's how she read to me!) getting herself into trouble. That one didn't lean in enough for my liking (for instance, she gets married, but no explanation of how Romans got married back then, the whole wedding itself is off screen. Like getting prepared to be married, then cut to the day after the wedding *sigh*).

There's another writer I've heard of who writes in the Roman era, but uses phrases that come straight out of the 50's/60's classic PI genre. I haven't read one of his books, because it's just going to annoy me, I know it is (also, apparently there's an awful lot of the 'f' word used, which isn't going to work for me. The odd 'f' word, fine, but lots of it? No for me)!

Of course, there's also the on purpose misrepresentation of the story. That happens in books about pets sometimes. Like one chap who was apparently writing a book about him and his search and rescue dog, but the book is actually 45% him doing search and rescue without a dog, 25% with a dog, but the dog still in the background. Yeah, that annoys me. But I guess that's a different thing altogether.

[rachelmanija]

I think the dog books are a perfect example of failing to engage with the premise. The premise is "doing search and rescue with my dog." The actual book mostly has nothing to do with the dog.

*

[minoanmiss]

I came here through Rachelmanija's post, and I am absorbing and contemplating this concept. It so well explains why I love some of my favorite books and a pitfall to make sure I avoid when writing myself. (I just write for fun, but still.)

*makes a note of this*

[ginger_rude]

Per carnivals: there's a YA book I've enjoyed called Pantomime, by Laura Lin, that does spend quite a bit of time with the circus that the protagonist runs away to join. It's also nice world building--not exactly steampunk, more alternate world that's vaguely 19th century England but also has artifacts from a much more technologically evolved, now extinct population. And the main character is--well, overall, it's refreshing in terms of sexuality and gender, that and its sequel, which is more about stage magicians.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29502206-pantomime

Thinking way back: Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg, another other-world book that's got a mix of more classic fantasy tropes and leftover high tech that most people forgot how to build (also aliens and a general colonial vibe that seems only partially conscious (more so for the indigenous population, later on in the series, anyway:)

It's, again, a very classic fantasy narrative--in fact, I'm now thinking the author may have explicitly used a Tarot deck to structure his hero's journey, since the specific images of various major arcana show up all the way through the book, especially at the beginning and end. But, early on, the protagonist joins a wandering juggling troupe, and there is at least some detail about how juggling works and life with the troupe before it all goes to shit and he has to regain his birthright.

Per "leaning in" and world building and general: recently recommended The Thinking Woman's Guide to Magic by Emily Croy Barker,

https://www.emilycroybarker.com/the-thinking-womans-guide-to-real-magic

and your post is making me realize why I liked it as much as I did. Again, it's structured around a lot of classic fantasy tropes, specifically straight-women-geared--there's a Pride and Prejudice romance motif--but, she's got a background in academia which she doesn't stay in long, but actually serves her to some degree in this fantasy medieval world she gets sucked into. And there's just a lot of rather patient world building both in that world and the fairy realm she's in prior to that--not just the world building, I want to say, but how she struggles to be in it. Maybe less "leaning in" than "settling in."

[trobadora]

I have no brain for a proper comment, but I wanted to tell you this is an excellent post. So, so true, and it really should be writing advice.

[copperfyre]

This is such a great post, and there are so many great comments on it. I've never really managed to articulate this concept before, but you're so right! Now I'm realising that so much of my enjoyment of fiction comes from having a premise and really, really embracing it

[starwatcher]

.
You make a good point about a book being "all-in" with its premise, but I think the folks who wanted more coffeeshop AU in Bearista are trying to mix two separate genres. I wonder if those disappointed folks are accustomed to fanfic coffeeshop AUs, where the whole point is to have the characters in a relaxed, non-pressure atmosphere where romance -- or friendship -- can blossom in a kind of tasty bubble where the world doesn't intrude.

BUT! Bearista is part of your Bodyguard Universe; by definition, his job is to guard a particular body. Once the danger appears and he needs to do his job, it would be unprofessional to keep serving coffee and pastry while his client is running from the bad guy!

In other words, you wrote the action/true-mate/romance that the genre called for (very well, by the way) instead of a starry-eyed getting-to-know-you-over-coffee romance. The latter is a lot of fun to read, but a reader shouldn't expect that kind of vibe in an action-romance series, just because a cofffeeshop is a convenient place for the bodyguard to do his job.

And I popped right over to Amazon yesterday to buy Dancer Dragon. Working my way through Shifter Dads right now, then I'll have to catch up with the bodyguards. I like so wait until I have 3 or 4 to read in a row, so I remember who's who. But it'll sit comfortably in my Zoe Chant folder until I get around to it. <g>
.

[helen_keeble]

It’s also interesting when there’s a Big Premise that can support multiple leanings (as it were), and the author pics a particular direction. I’m specifically thinking of Neil Stephenson’s Seveneves, which I simultaneously enjoyed and was frustrated by, because I wanted to hear all about the interpersonal issues caused by being the Last Few Humans Crammed Into Tiny Adhoc Spaceships, and Stephenson was far more interested in telling me about orbital dynamics. Which, also an important part of surviving in space! ...just not the one I was most interested in.

[rachelmanija]

It's so fun when the author is also interested in what you're interested in. Every time Adrian Tchaikovsky starts describing new kinden or exploring the cultural implications of shapeshifting I go all *chinhands*.

[philomytha]

This is a really good point and is making me think about what I can do with the setting of my embryonic novel.

One series that really leans in like this is the Rivers of London books which leave you feeling like you’ve been on a highly specialised tour of the city.... Also, for all its faults, Pern really goes all-in with telepathic teleporting dragons, which I think is one of the reasons it’s so popular.

[silveradept]

Very much so with Pern, although I find that certain details that haven't aged well about the culture (and implications of that culture) kick me right back out of the narrative. I am biased in this regard, in that I'm re-reading and commenting on all the ways that Pern hasn't aged well, so I'm predisposed to find those spots. Someone who is there for the dragons and doesn't particularly care about the world around the dragons will be entirely satisfied with the series.

[scioscribe]

I was just reading through this post and Rachel's on the same topic, and seriously, this advice has become crucial for me.

I wonder if sometimes authors fail to do this because they think it will result in a rote story? Like, hypothetically, you could have started to make Wiseguy and then decided "people already know what undercover stories are like, so let's just dig into, idk, Vinnie's Italian-American heritage and throw in some financial fraud." But I really feel like there's a key difference between playing out the tropes exactly as your audience could imagine them and letting them point the way for your story to have its own unique life and way of satisfying expectations.

Avoiding it winds up feeling so cheap. Thwarting expectations, in the long run, is certainly as predictable as fully giving into them.

[rachelmanija]

Wiseguy really made me think about this because it was so satisfying to see a story about an undercover cop that really digs into the undercover aspect, and I realized how accustomed I'd gotten to stories that don't deal with what they're ostensibly about.

[winter_elf]

Yea.. I agree.

I read of lot of cozy mysteries + animals (mostly cats) as my go to. And it's popular, so lots of choices.

However, recently I got one that was inherited bookstore + cat and the person who inherited was pretty... hateful? mouthy? I don't know, but about 3/4 of the way through I gave up and just skimmed to the end. I didn't like how the cat was referred to - if the cat and the bookstore was your "premise" (and there are several in the series with the cat a big part of it) maybe it gets better... but this main character was very negative/against the cat, and I just couldn't read it any more.

[rachelmanija]

Oh my god, how frustrating. If I read a book about someone who inherits a cat and a bookstore, THEY MUST LIKE THE CAT.

They can be annoyed by the cat at times! It may take them time to warm up to the cat! But they cannot hate the cat.

[marycatelli]

I was thinking about circuses, and about Kurt Busiek's Astro City -- Local Heroes has a story in which a circus appears, but the circus is not really central, even if the hero's name is Roustabout.

But then I remembered -- Agatha Heterodyne! She has a circus interlude in -- ta-da! -- Circus of Dreams. More detail in the book version than the comic one.