PROMISE
The Five Ps of Premise Prep are:
Person, Pain, Prize, Pitfalls, and Promise
The fifth P stands for Promise.
This P has two main features: Reading experience description and resolution of Pain.
Reading Experience Description
Consider what kind of reading experience you want to provide for your audience. Is your content easy-to-read overview of a topic or a piece that is thorough and technical? Is your story chilling, inspirational, or hilarious? Is the format a board book, short story, or novel? This would include what genre or niche category of reading your book would fall under. Is it science fiction, self-help, romance, or a children’s book? Does it feature non-binary, racially diverse, or non-human characters?
Use part of the Promise section to note at least a couple of these elements. For example:
His Take is a heart-warming, grumpy-sunshine romance…
Small Scarlet Cloak is a modern novel offering a terrifying retelling of…
You Don’t Say is a new-parent-friendly handbook that teaches…
Resolution of Pain
The second element of the Promise section is describing the resolution of the Person’s Pain. You don’t even need the details about how exactly the Pain is addressed or resolved, just a statement that it is. You can plug in the how later if you want to.
The greedy Person becomes more generous. The cowardly Person becomes more brave. The Person with no boundaries becomes more assertive. This is simply where your current character ARC settles by the end of the book.
For self-help, this is where you describe how the reader would have been helped by the end of the piece. They may have learned to better regulate their behavior when feeling strong emotions, understand the differences between LED light bulbs and candles, or are fully prepared to take the GRE. The Pain that pushed them to seek out a book like yours has been addressed or resolved because they have the education that they came looking for.
The Promise section of premise prep helps you start to think about how you want the book / story / screenplay to end in a way that will satiate readers. You can’t please everyone, of course, but if you focus on creating the kind of ending you might like to read if you were a reader, you’ll thoroughly entertain readers like yourself at the very least!
For memoirs, you’ll just be noting where you are at this point in your life after having overcome everything that came at you throughout your existence. You can even note what your next step is in your life (new goal, new obstacle to overcome, etc.).
For self-help, you’re going to focus on considering what central lessons or information you want your reader to walk away with. When they are finished with the book, how will their life be changed? What new skills, information, or perspectives will they have acquired from your work?
Take a few minutes to complete your Promise section for your current manuscript. Ask yourself how the Pain of your Person is resolved and what kind of reading experience you plan on providing for your reader (genre, tone, format, etc.).