Premise Workshop
Overview
Turn a spark into a premise that can carry a book, before story init
builds the project. The workshop generates what-ifs from the spark, tests
them as loglines, drafts the controlling idea and its counter-argument
(premise and counter-premise in story.md), names the stakes, chooses
a form (the form field), brainstorms titles, sanity-checks the idea
against comparable books, and hands a filled-in brief to the story-init
skill. The author owns the idea: offer options and tests, never decide for
them.
Prerequisites
None. The workshop usually runs before a project exists. If the user wants
the work saved before story init, keep it in one premise-notes.md file
in the current directory (outside the future project folder) and move the
kept material into story.md after init.
When to Use
- The user has a spark but no premise, or several ideas and cannot choose
- The user has a premise and wants to know whether it holds up
- Choosing between short story, novella, novel, serial, or a children's form
- Brainstorming a title, or checking a working title against the cast
- NOT for creating the project folder (use
story-init; this skill hands off to it) - NOT for refining the controlling idea of a drafted book, arc types, or the lie/truth machinery (use
theme-craft) - NOT for outlining once the premise is settled (use
plot-structure, ordiscovery-draftingfor pantsers) - NOT for comp titles, pitch, or blurb for submission (use
submission)
Workflow
1. Capture the spark
Ask what the user has, in their words, and do not improve it yet. Sort it: an image (a drowned bell tower), a what-if (what if grief could be sold), a character (a lighthouse keeper who has never left the rock), a setting (a city that moves every winter), or a feeling they want a reader to have. Ask what drew them to it. The answer is often the book's real subject and should survive every later change.
2. Generate what-ifs
Following references/what-if-generation.md, produce 8-12 short what-ifs
from the spark across different angles (invert it, raise the cost, move it
in time or place, give it to the wrong person). Present them as a numbered
list and ask the user to pick one to three, or to combine. Do not rank them
for the user unless asked; do say which ones already imply conflict.
3. Workshop the logline
For each chosen what-if, draft a logline with the recipe in
../story-init/references/title-logline.md (protagonist + want + obstacle
- stakes). Then run the stress tests in
references/premise-tests.md: active protagonist, opposition that can win, a choice at the end, stakes that are personal, and a situation that can sustain the chosen length. Report each test as pass, weak, or fail with one sentence of why, and offer one revision per weak or failed test.
4. Draft premise and counter-premise
story.md's premise field is the controlling idea (value + cause), not
the logline. Draft it and the counter-premise as working hypotheses
using ../theme-craft/references/controlling-idea.md. If the user wants
to discover theme in the draft, record premise: tbd-discovery and move
on. Keep the logline for the Synopsis section.
5. Name the stakes
Write the stakes on three levels (see references/premise-tests.md):
external (what is lost in the world), relational (who is lost or
betrayed), and internal (what the protagonist becomes if they fail). At
least two levels must be concrete and personal.
6. Choose the form
Use references/form-choice.md to match the idea's scope to a form:
novel, novella, novelette, short-story, flash, serial,
picture-book, or chapter-book. Count the idea's moving parts (POV
characters, threads, locations, time span) and recommend the form they
fit, with the trade-offs. The user decides.
7. Brainstorm titles
Follow references/title-and-comps.md: generate titles across the
families listed there, cut to a shortlist of five, and test each against
the logline and the genre shelf. The title craft principles live in
../story-init/references/title-logline.md; do not repeat them to the
user, apply them.
Once a project exists, check title words and new names against the story's entities before adopting them:
story names "Bell Tower" Bell "Maren" --path .
An exact clash exits 1 and must be resolved: the candidate equals an
existing name, alias, or term, or its given name (first word that is not
a title such as Lord or The) equals a character's given name.
Look-alike warnings (same first four letters, or same initial and one
letter apart, two for longer words) and a shared initial with a major
character are the user's call. Multi-word names are only checked for
exact clashes, so pass a multi-word title's distinctive word separately,
as Bell is above.
8. Sanity-check against comparable books
Ask the user for two or three recent books the idea sits beside. Use
references/title-and-comps.md to check whether the premise is
distinct from them and whether it fits the shelf they imply. Never invent
titles, authors, or sales claims; if web search is available, verify that
each named book exists and note what you checked. If not, mark the list
unverified.
9. Hand off to story-init
Present a one-screen brief: working title, logline, premise,
counter-premise, stakes, form, genre and sub-genre, POV and tense if
known, themes, and the comps. On approval, follow the story-init skill
with the brief:
story init 'The Keeper of Skerry Light' --form novella --genre fantasy --sub-genre coastal --synopsis 'A lighthouse keeper who has never left the rock must choose between the light and her drowned brother.' --theme isolation
Workshop text is the user's own words, so quote every value for the shell
before running the command: wrap each in single quotes and write any
single quote inside it as '\''. Never paste a value into double quotes,
where $(...), backticks, and " still take effect.
--form sets form in story.md and a default target-words for the
form when none is given (serial sets none; set per-episode chapter
target-words instead). Then hand-edit premise and counter-premise
into story.md, and move the stakes, rejected what-ifs worth keeping,
title shortlist, and comps into its ## Notes section. Keep
premise-notes.md if one was made: offer to move it into the new
project as notes/premise-notes.md, and delete it only when the user
asks after seeing what was carried over.
Conventions
- Present options, not verdicts. The user chooses the what-if, form, and title; record why when they reject a recommendation.
- Keep the spark's original wording in the notes. Premises drift during workshop; the spark is the check that the drift was chosen.
premiseinstory.mdis always the controlling idea (value + cause). The logline goes in the Synopsis section.- Titles and names are provisional until
story namespasses. Rename a title freely before chapter one; after that, rename characters withstory renameso references follow. - Never present a comparable title, author, prize, or market fact as verified without a source.
CLI Maintenance
Use the Story CLI when it is available. If story is not installed, use
bun run story -- from the Story Skills repository checkout or the bundled
fallback node ../story-maintenance/scripts/story.js with the same
arguments, resolving the path relative to this skill folder. If no CLI is
available, create the project by hand as the story-init skill describes
and check names against the registries by reading them.
After story init and the hand edits to story.md:
story validate .
story report .
story validate warns when target-words sits outside the chosen form's
usual range; either adjust the target or confirm the choice with the user.
Reference Files
references/what-if-generation.md- Angles for turning an image, character, setting, or question into conflict-bearing what-ifs, with worked examplesreferences/premise-tests.md- Logline stress tests, the three levels of stakes, and common premise failures with fixesreferences/form-choice.md- Matching an idea's scope to a form: moving-parts count, what each form does well, and theformvaluesreferences/title-and-comps.md- Title brainstorming families, shortlist tests,story nameschecks, and the comparable-title sanity check