The Importance of Premise in Memoir
Premise is the short summary of your story, also known as the hook or logline, that informs the reader’s expectations of where the story will go. Strong premise in memoir keeps you on track and guides you in how to structure your story.
The premise maps the road to your memoir’s destination.
The Purpose of Premise
The premise in memoir often revolves around something that happened in the writer’s life, possibly a series of events, that impacted them in a way that changed the trajectory of their lives, or brought them to who they are today. Memoir is different from an autobiography in that it highlights a specific time in the writer’s life, not their entire life from birth to present day. While it can be tempting to include an entire journal’s worth of information, only the points directly related to the story will interest the reader. Anything more runs the risk of creating a narrative tone of “this happened, this happened, and then this happened,” without getting to the deeper emotional level of why what happened was important.
For example, the premise of Tara Westover’s Educated is “the story of a young girl who grows up in a survivalist family that doesn’t believe in formal education, and goes on to earn her PhD from Cambridge University.” The book details her childhood experiences to show what her family valued, and how she spent her time instead of going to school, and then how she broke away from that life to attend first Brigham Young University and then go on to earn her PhD. The anecdotes she includes fit her chosen narrative, building a story that shows the setting of her childhood, developing the characters of her family members, and shows the cause and effect of how each scene informs the next, giving the reader a clear sense of her journey and why she feels education is important.
Three questions to ask that inform the premise
To develop your own memoir premise, ask yourself the following questions:
When (in my life) does my story take place?
In order to crystallize your experience for your reader, consider when things really began to change, then back up a bit to show who you were before the change happened. Which part of your life do you most need to focus on? Is it a period of months or years?
What triggered the change?
This could be an event, something happening to you, or a realization you came to because of something that happened. It could be external, like getting or losing a job, or internal, personal choices you made, good or bad decisions.
How did I change because of what happened?
This gets into your story arc, or the promise of the premise. You show a series of events, and like the character arc of a novel, how each event gradually changed you, until you learned and acted on the new mindset you want share with the reader. This is the point of your story: Because these things happened, this is who I am today, and I hope you can learn from my experience.
Now write your premise
Once you’ve answered the above questions, you’re ready to fill in the blanks of a standard premise. (Think of it as playing Memoir Mad Libs! ) Now you can complete the following formulaic statement:
This is the story of [noun], who [verb, or several verbs)], which led to [something else, showing change]. Because of that, [noun] now [verb, showing what you learned/how you changed/what you want the reader’s takeaway to be].
You don’t need to use this statement exactly, but it gives you an idea of how to include the necessary premise components concisely.
The Memoir’s Premise Is the Story’s Road Map
Remember, your goal is to show what your story is about, why you think it’s important, and what you hope readers will learn. Then, once you have it nailed down, write it on a card or put it on a desktop sticky. Read it whenever you write, and it will guide you through the process. If you can establish a tight premise for your memoir, it will help lay out the road map of the story that will follow, and help readers decide whether they want to go along for the ride.
In the Story Mastermind Novel and Outline Intensive classes, we spend a significant amount of time honing each project’s premise, because good stories are built on strong foundations.
