Last month at DIY MFA, we launched the four-part series “Developing Themes in Your Stories” with a piece on consciously developing themes using the protagonist’s character arc. Today, it’s all about premise themes. Believe it or not, that single sentence that sums up your story (a.k.a. your 140-character Twitter pitch) actually hints at potential literary themes. How is this possible? And, how can you build your premise sentence if you don’t have one yet? All of that is covered in “Developing Themes In Your Stories: Part 2 – The Premise.” Click here to read it.
New Worksheet on Premise Themes
Why not? 🙂 A number of readers were excited about the Character Arc Themes Worksheet when it posted. So, I thought I’d make one available for premise themes as well. This new worksheet is comprised of the three activities in “Developing Themes In Your Stories: Part 2 – The Premise” and can help you go from story pitch to premise sentence, and finally to themes.
Click here to visit Worksheets for Writers and download a PDF copy of the Premise Themes Worksheet.
Got any questions or suggestions for Theme: A Story’s Soul? Feel free to comment below or tweet me at @SaraL_Writer with the hashtag #AStorysSoul.
Sara Letourneau 
Sweet! Another set of worksheets to help me out. 🙂 I really appreciate all the work you put into these, Sara!
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You’re welcome, Elizabeth! 😀 Have you used the others yet? Do you find that they are in fact helpful?
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I have used the Titles worksheets, and it has really helped me figure out what to look for in a title! I also want to use the characters’ theme worksheet when I have more time. I really want to develope a good pitch and premise for VChronicles, so I will be using this and drafting up ideas! Btw, I didn’t know about the Twitter #PitMad before until now. Lol, there are so many # out there I don’t know about yet!
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Same here! I didn’t know about #PitMad until seeing the hashtag pop up from other users I follow on Twitter. I have a pitch sentence (sort of) for TKC, but I’m not going to pitch it until the story’s ready for other people’s eyes. I don’t like to do things too soon. 😉
Ohhh I’m really glad the titles one was helpful! Let me know about the other one once you’ve had a chance to use it.
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Same way here! I won’t give the pitch or premise publicly until VChr is closer to getting published. 🙂
I worked a little yesterday on a pitch and premise using your worksheets! Mine is still a work in progress, but before I didn’t have anything. I feel a lot better about it now. ^_^ I may email it to you next time (if I don’t forget lol) to hear your thoughts about it. 🙂
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That’s great, E. 😀 I’d be happy to take a look at it at some point. Maybe we can swap – you can look at mine for TKC once I’ve had a chance to tweak it?
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Yes, we can do that!
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