This setup breakdown is meant to help you understand the overarching premise of a book. By studying things like loglines, blurbs, and other forms of distilled content, you can better understand story structure (fiction) or content organization (nonfiction). This can assist you in becoming a stronger book planner and book summarizer. Being able to succinctly sum up what your book is about helps you with querying trade publishing agents and acquisitions editors. It also helps you create your own book blurb when it’s time to put your book on the market, if you’re an indie author.
Blurb
This is what the author has used as the book descriptor on the book’s sales page. Take a look at what it does and does not tell you about the book. What would you add? What would you remove? What would you rearrange?
She can heal any wound, but the price is her freedom, her humanity, and her love.After a brutal attack, medical student Cassie Whelan discovers she has empathic healing abilities. She’s become an exohuman – a non-human according to the law. She must choose between hiding the miracles she can perform or becoming an anonymous, numbered government slave – like Guardian 175, the horribly disfigured exo who is falling in love with her. With her empathic senses, she can actually feel his growing affection for her. But his loyalties are divided between love and duty. She wants to trust him, but betrayal by him could destroy everything. And the one thing she can’t heal is her own heart.
Five Ps of Premise Prep
Based on my reading and interpretation of the book, here is what the Five Ps might look like for Burden of Solace. After reading the book, do you find that you agree or disagree with my take? Which changes would you make?
Person: Cassie Whelan is a superb doctor living in Atlanta, Georgia.
Pain: A head-strong demeanor that has been honed by working to make her own name for herself instead of living in the shadow of her parents.
Prize(s): To make her own way in the medical world, to recover from the loss of her family, to learn how to use her powers to heal and not to hurt.
Pitfalls: Trauma from the loss of her parents, the fact that she is a woman working in a field that is mostly men, the fact that she doesn’t have superpowers, (later) the fact that she does have superpowers, her growing emotional attachment to Nate, the villains trying to commit evils around the city (including throwing her off of a cliff!).
Promise: That Cassie will learn to control her powers, clarify and act on her feelings for Nate, and stop the bad guys. That this will be a #strongfemalelead superhero origin story.
Premise
A book premise takes elements from your premise preparation and uses them to sum up the central story / concept of your book. They can be written in a multitude of ways. The one below differs greatly from the one the author used as a blurb. Studying book blurbs and synopses can help you get better at creating your own book descriptions, blurbs, and summaries. Premises can be written as a single sentence:
Cassie wants to learn to use her new superpowers to save Atlantans from nefarious forces, but she must overcome her lack of knowledge and her own ambivalence about the powers in order to do so.
Premises can also be fleshed out a bit more to help clarify the concept. This version can be crafted into a book blurb later.
After her parents die using their medical knowledge to save others, Cassie Whelan just wants to be the best doctor she can.
But when she experiences a mutation that turns her into an “exo-human,” she is gifted (cursed?) with the ability to sense the emotions of others and heal even mortal wounds.
This leaves her with a gut-wrenching decision. She can choose to hide her powers so that she doesn’t become a government-controlled Guardian with a number instead of a name. She can choose to register herself and learn to control and use her powers for good, as she gives up her freedom.
But the path to turning over her life to the greater good would push her closer to Nate, a.k.a. Guardian 175, and their growing love for one another feels almost as overwhelming as the idea of becoming a government puppet.
As she fights to protect Atlanta from a new threat, with Guardian 175 at her side, she must ultimately decide how, or if, she can live a free life and still serve the city she loves.
How would you re-write these?
Logline
Though Burden of Solace is not a screenplay, a logline is another kind of summary tool that helps you think through what the core of a particular story is. I construct a premise and a logline while I’m in the book planning stages.
A spitfire MD gains superpowers and tries to hide her abilities from a government superhero registration department.
How would you rewrite this logline?
What elements of this premise could you change to make it your own?
What Stands Out
Strong Female Lead
If you’re looking for a female main character who reads as sympathetic, powerful, and confidence, Cassie is your girl!
Ready to Read?
Check out how this setup works itself out in narrative form by reading Burden of Solace.