Does this premise sound good?

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Notadate

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A world of constant rain. Only a few days per week unburdened by the downpour. Since the downpours coming came change, both bad, and good. Lets see if the survivors thrive, or if the downpour consumes all in a watery grave. Povs: A gator, A Florida man, a patch of moss, and yes, you guessed right this patch of moss is from Florida.
 
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Notadate said:
A world of constant rain. Only a few days per week unburdened by the downpour. Since the downpours coming came change, both bad, and good. Lets see if the survivors thrive, or if the downpour consumes all in a watery grave. Povs: A gator, A Florida man, a patch of moss, and yes, you guessed right this patch of moss is from Florida.
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A good premise is worth a lot less than good execution. Even the most bland ideas can be made brilliant with good storytelling, characters and description of events and locals.
 
RepresentingSilence

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Notadate said:
A world of constant rain. Only a few days per week unburdened by the downpour. Since the downpours coming came change, both bad, and good. Lets see if the survivors thrive, or if the downpour consumes all in a watery grave. Povs: A gator, A Florida man, a patch of moss, and yes, you guessed right this patch of moss is from Florida.
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Add a talking double barreled shotgun as Florida man's trusted companion as the voice of reason all ways looking for the peaceful solution and it sounds golden
 
Jemini

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So, what's the premise? You told us plenty about the setting and a character, but I didn't see any premise here.

Setting = location and environment, like a world of constant rain.

Character = the identity of a person, like this Florida man.

Premise = a state of things and a direction that can be used for a story, like Florida man is looking for a lost treasure somewhere in the everglades.
 
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Jemini said:
So, what's the premise? You told us plenty about the setting and a character, but I didn't see any premise here.

Setting = location and environment, like a world of constant rain.

Character = the identity of a person, like this Florida man.

Premise = a state of things and a direction that can be used for a story, like Florida man is looking for a lost treasure somewhere in the everglades.
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It’s Florida. It’s Florida residents. It’s surviving fantasy Florida
 
Jemini

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Notadate said:
It’s Florida. It’s Florida residents. It’s surviving fantasy Florida
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Ok, you just said 3 sentences. 1st was a setting, 2nd was a character, 3rd finally was actually a premise.

That said, it only barely qualifies as a premise. It's incredibly shallow. What about fantasy Florida is a threat that this guy has to survive? I could survive just fine in IRL Florida, and just adding rain doesn't add any kind of threat. In fact, a little rain in Florida would make it easier to live there if anything by bringing down the average temperature.

That said, even fleshing out the threat is not adding anything to the premise. That would be adding to the setting.

Let's use "The Last Of Us" as an example. What's the premise of "The Last Of Us?" If you said surviving the zombie apocalypse, you would be dead wrong. The zombie apocalypse was the setting in that game. The premise was getting a girl who's immune to zombification through the zombie infested lands to a safe secure facility so she can be researched for a potential zombie vaccine.

So, if your question is whether or not "surviving fantasy Florida" is a good premise, the answer would be "no." Just like surviving the zombie apocalypse is not a good premise. Even the earliest zombie movies, like "Night of the Living Dead," didn't have simple survival as the premise. Yes, "Night of the Living Dead" had survival as a core aspect of it's premise, but it's actual premise had a little more to it. It was surviving the zombie apocalypse with a disparate group of people stuck together in a house. In this case, the way the different personalities played off of each other was a huge part of what made the premise work.

You really need to add more to it in order to make it work. You need to have some sort of objective.

What's your Florida man trying to do in "Fantasy Florida?" Is he trying to reunite with a family member? Is he trying to raise a child he found orphaned in the hellish land? Is he looking for lost treasure? What's he doing?
 
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Gibbs505

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Notadate said:
A world of constant rain. Only a few days per week unburdened by the downpour. Since the downpours coming came change, both bad, and good. Lets see if the survivors thrive, or if the downpour consumes all in a watery grave. Povs: A gator, A Florida man, a patch of moss, and yes, you guessed right this patch of moss is from Florida.
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If all the rain comes down, it won't rain anymore!
 
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Jemini said:
Ok, you just said 3 sentences. 1st was a setting, 2nd was a character, 3rd finally was actually a premise.

That said, it only barely qualifies as a premise. It's incredibly shallow. What about fantasy Florida is a threat that this guy has to survive? I could survive just fine in IRL Florida, and just adding rain doesn't add any kind of threat. In fact, a little rain in Florida would make it easier to live there if anything by bringing down the average temperature.

That said, even fleshing out the threat is not adding anything to the premise. That would be adding to the setting.

Let's use "The Last Of Us" as an example. What's the premise of "The Last Of Us?" If you said surviving the zombie apocalypse, you would be dead wrong. The zombie apocalypse was the setting in that game. The premise was getting a girl who's immune to zombification through the zombie infested lands to a safe secure facility so she can be researched for a potential zombie vaccine.

So, if your question is whether or not "surviving fantasy Florida" is a good premise, the answer would be "no." Just like surviving the zombie apocalypse is not a good premise. Even the earliest zombie movies, like "Night of the Living Dead," didn't have simple survival as the premise. Yes, "Night of the Living Dead" had survival as a core aspect of it's premise, but it's actual premise had a little more to it. It was surviving the zombie apocalypse with a disparate group of people stuck together in a house. In this case, the way the different personalities played off of each other was a huge part of what made the premise work.

You really need to add more to it in order to make it work. You need to have some sort of objective.

What's your Florida man trying to do in "Fantasy Florida?" Is he trying to reunite with a family member? Is he trying to raise a child he found orphaned in the hellish land? Is he looking for lost treasure? What's he doing?
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What it isn’t surviving zombies?
-

The standing point is, or better words blah blah: A world wide storm called the Downpour has arrived. It has a supernatural effect upon the world. Water coming out of nowhere, lands where the gravity is like the moon, rising oceans with animals mutated by the storm, creature emerging from the storm, and hunting the local inhabitants.

And here are three beings, a man who is trying to fight off the mental effects of the storm as his body is changing to live within it. A alligator who has already been mutated - his already keen mind being changed to fit his intelligence & ego -- who is named King, he has royalty type complex; life goals is to eat that human that punched him. And finally, a patch of moss growing, and spreading to build its mossy kingdom, while resisting the effects of the storms floods. All three fates are intertwined.


(Does that work?)
 
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Jemini

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Notadate said:
What it isn’t surviving zombies?
-
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Yes. THE PREMISE is not surviving zombies. That's just something they wind up having to do as a result of the setting. The premise is getting the zombification-immune girl to the facility. The premise is what guides the direction of the story.

Notadate said:
The standing point is, or better words blah blah: A world wide storm called the Downpour has arrived. It has a supernatural effect upon the world. Water coming out of nowhere, lands where the gravity is like the moon, rising oceans with animals mutated by the storm, creature emerging from the storm, and hunting the local inhabitants.

And here are three beings, a man who is trying to fight off the mental effects of the storm as his body is changing to live within it. A alligator who has already been mutated - his already keen mind being changed to fit his intelligence & ego -- who is named King, he has royalty type complex; life goals is to eat that human that punched him. And finally, a patch of moss growing, and spreading to build its mossy kingdom, while resisting the effects of the storms floods. All three fates are intertwined.


(Does that work?)
Click to expand...

Alright. I suppose this actually qualifies as a premise now that you've laid all that out. That said, it's an extremely weak premise, mainly due to it's lack of direction. There's a reason I used "The Last of Us" as my example. It's because it has a premise that implies survival, but more than that, it also gives the story direction. Your premise is actually about survival, which makes it weak due to the fact that simple survival by itself does not give the plot any direction.

You need some form of direction in your premise.
 
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It’s a setting. And that’s an interesting setting but you need details about what’s going to happen at least in a professional and provocative way for yourself before you translate that to your readers into some kind of introduction.

This is kind of a bad example from me because I basically abandoned this particular narrative for the moment.

Ciara Reid is a simple librarian in the human-fae border city of Maysra. She's still getting the hang of her fetch; a magical, mischievous doppelganger who seems to cause more trouble than she's worth. But, on the eve of Samhain, a shared holiday on October 31st celebrating the peace between human and fae, she receives a mysterious book which could hold the fate of all worlds in the balance. Pulled into an ancient conflict, Ciara must journey far to defend those she loves against dark, undying forces.

that’s the description of the narrative that I came up with but the part in bold is basically what you have translates to. It’s where the story is set and what’s happening. But it’s not the story of the character that you’re telling.

Think of it like OK there’s this crazy fantasy Florida so how is the world different from our own and possibly also allegorical in that there’s creatures that live in the swamp that you have to be aware of and there are hunting parties or there are tourists and there’s an upset when someone is murdered or someone is seeking the crown for this Floridian kingdom etc. there’s a lot you can do with that kind of setting once you place characters in it there was actually a really cool Tumblr post a while ago that captivated me in describing southern lovecrafty Gothic.
 
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