What’s Your Book “About?”- Author, Reader, and Protagonist Might Not Agree
By Barbara Linn Probst | December 20, 2023 |
As writers, we’re often asked the deceptively simple question: “So what’s your book about?” There are many ways to answer, even for the same book.
Suppose we asked the protagonist.
If you were to ask the protagonist what the story is “about,” she might talk about her goal or desire: why she has that goal or desire, what she must do to achieve it, the challenges that stand in her way, what it would mean for her to attain it.
Depending on the kind of book it is, she may end up achieving, abandoning, or transforming that goal—that is, discovering that it wasn’t her true goal after all. When her goal is resolved, one way or other, the story is over.
Suppose we asked the reader.
For the reader, the story isn’t “about” character arcs or the meaning of friendship, resilience, or loyalty. It’s about the story question: What’s going to happen? How is this thing going to end?
There is a question the reader is burning to resolve that makes her keep turning the pages. When she learns the answer to that question (or, sometimes, that there is no answer), the story is over.
Suppose we asked the writer.
Even when the story is framed by a trope like solving a mystery, saving the planet, or finding true love, there’s usually something the author wants to say about how life works. A Big Idea, stated in abstract or universal terms. In other words, a premise.
A premise is a generalization. Forgiveness is always possible. Courage takes many forms. It can also be framed as an “if/then” statement. If you follow your heart and not your fear, it will lead to what you truly need.
The premise is illustrated by the way the story is resolved. When the premise has been fully demonstrated, the story is over.
Sometimes these three elements—goal, question, premise— line up neatly.
As writers, we may develop a story because there is something we want to illustrate.
- My premise is the over-arching idea. It drives my choices for how the plot unfolds. For instance: It’s never too late to make peace.
- The story question “incarnates” that idea into specific people and events. In spite of everything, will Lucy be able to let go of her anger toward her father?
- This question determines the protagonist’s goal. The goal is actually the story question turned into a statement that contains the desired answer to the question. Lucy’s goal is to let go of her anger and reunite with her father.
As readers, we may proceed in the opposite direction, from concrete to abstract.
- We understand that the protagonist’s goal is, for example, to find or acquire something that’s been taken or lost, like a kidnapped child.
- The story question that arises is whether the protagonist will reach her goal—which she does, often by acquiring a quality she lacks like courage, perseverance, or the willingness to accept help.
- The author’s premise is thus demonstrated: Courage and determination can achieve what may seem impossible. Or, perhaps: There is true strength in accepting help.
And sometimes they don’t line up.
In Gone with the Wind, for example, Scarlett O’Hara’s goal is to marry Ashley Wilkes. The reader, however, wants to find out if Scarlett will come to her senses and realize that Rhett is the one she really wants; the reader doesn’t share Scarlett’s goal. This discrepancy adds to the book’s tension, which keeps us engaged.
In other stories, the protagonist’s goal changes. Perhaps the first goal turns out to be false, a mask for the true goal, or perhaps circumstances require a new goal. In Lisa Genova’s Every Note Played, Richard’s initial goal is to preserve as much of his identity as a musician as he can. As his disease progresses, however, he must abandon this goal in favor of a neglected desire—to connect with his family.
Sometimes the protagonist’s failure to achieve her goal—or the reader’s realization that what seemed like the story question wasn’t, in fact, the right question—is the way the book’s premise is ultimately demonstrated. For example, the premise that the thing you’re seeking may have been right in front of you all along might not be apparent until the very end of the book.
In stories about awakening to what one really wants, it may seem (at first) as if the premise, story question, and goal are unrelated. It’s only after that awakening takes place that the true but “masked” relationship is revealed.
So far, so good. But what about the plot? Isn’t that what the story is “about?”
Plot is the cause-and-effect sequence of events. Things happen in a logical order, each unfolding from what came before and causing what comes next. Otherwise, it would simply be a string of episodes.
A particular event, often called the inciting incident, starts the chain reaction. A new “something” disrupts the protagonist’s life. It’s often said, in fact, that there are only two stories. Someone goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town.
The journey can be a quest, a flight, a summer job, a deployment, a return to the scene of a childhood trauma—a voluntary or involuntary change of location. Sometimes it’s a literal journey, as in Charlotte McConaghy’s Migrations or Allie Larkin’s The People We Keep.
The stranger can be an actual newcomer, a new neighbor or boss. It can also be someone who’s been gone for a long time and returns, as in Maggie Ginsberg’s Still True, when Lib’s long-abandoned son suddenly reappears in her life, or The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, when Elle’s childhood lover re-enters her life.
“A stranger” can also be someone the protagonist already knows but must interact with in a new way because of new circumstances. Book Lovers by Emily Henry is framed around this idea. Or it can be a strange object, whose appearance launches a search for its meaning. In The Catch by Alison Fairweather, for example, it’s the puzzling bequest of a baseball.
I’d argue that there are other core stories, in addition to these two.
For example: An impossible choice. A second chance. The cost of keeping a secret.
Premise, theme, and plot
I’d also argue that these core themes—going on a journey, facing an impossible choice, getting a second chance, and so on—are abbreviated versions of the premise.
The premise (Big Idea) is a more complete formulation because it includes the missing half of an if/then statement. If X happens, then Y will happen.
If you open yourself to a second chance, you may be surprised by what is still possible.
Facing an impossible choice can help you discover who you truly are.
Journey stories can be framed by using “where” instead of if/then. There is still a causal relationship; the causal element is the new place.
A woman goes to Iceland, where she meets an enigmatic glassblower and rediscovers the passion, vulnerability, and risk she has abandoned (my own book, The Color of Ice).
A man goes to the cabin that his brilliant-but-absent father left to him in his will, where he finds his own artistic vision at last (Moss, by Joe Pace).
Stranger-comes-to-town stories can be framed by using the word “when,” referring to the moment of arrival. Here, the new person is the causal factor, not the new surroundings.
When a mysterious mother and daughter move into a picture-perfect neighborhood, the lives of the rule-following family next door are upended (Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng).
Thus: it can be useful to break your story into two parts. First this, and then that.
The relationship between the two parts should be causal, not just sequential. One thing leads to the next because of X.
And here’s my Really Big Point.
That X does not have to be the pursuit of a goal. It can be a new influence, a loss, a threat. Something disrupts life-as-we-know-it, and stuff starts to happen.
If that’s so … then maybe we don’t need to focus so much on the protagonist’s goal.
A lot of my favorite protagonists don’t have one. Yes, really.
In Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, Lara doesn’t have a “goal.” She is simply telling her daughters what happened when she was part of a summer theater troupe, long ago, and had an affair with a man who ended up becoming a famous actor. She doesn’t overcome or “realize” anything. She matures, understands, appreciates, and shares that appreciation with those she loves.
Similarly, with Hello, Beautiful by Ann Napolitano, the protagonist has no goal that drives the story. William’s goal isn’t to find family and be loved. That ultimately happens, but only as a result of what the Padavano sisters do.
It’s the same for many of our most beloved and enduring stories. Scout doesn’t have a “goal” in To Kill a Mockingbird, the novel that tops all those “best books ever” lists.
A lot of wonderful books are not about how the protagonist achieved her goal. But they are still “about” something.
They tell us something important about how to be human, how to live one’s life. Isn’t that worth writing about?
Now, over to you … Think about a book you’ve read recently, or one you’re working on.
What is the premise? What is the author trying to illustrate? What is the story question that makes the reader keep reading, because she absolutely has to find out the answer? Does the protagonist have a clear goal? If not, is that okay?
Barbara (she/her) is an author of contemporary women’s fiction living on an historic dirt road in New York’s Hudson Valley. Each of her acclaimed novels (Queen of the Owls, 2020; The Sound Between the Notes, 2021; and The Color of Ice, 2022) was a medalist for prestigious national awards, including the Sarton Award for Contemporary Fiction, the Independent Book Publishers Award, the Hawthorne Prize, and the Nautilus Award for Fiction. Her fourth novel, Roll the Sun Across the Sky, launches in May 2025 and has received stellar advance praise. Barbara has also published more than 80 articles on the craft of writing and the writing life. She has a PhD in Clinical Social Work and has been a therapist, teacher, researcher, and advocate for out-of-the-box kids and their families. When not writing, she’s a serious amateur pianist and a traveler to spots from Iceland to the Himalayas. Learn more on her website .
[coffee]
Wonderful post, Barbara. These questions tend to get asked around the Holiday table by folks one hasn’t seen in a while, sometimes beginning with “are you still writing that book?” I was going to print this out anyway and add it to my Brilliant Craft Lessons from WU notebook, but I just might bring a copy with me to my sister’s. Ultimately, asking myself these questions is a way to understand my stories better. We writers often do start from the abstract and work our way out. What the reader sees is the end result. Reader also filter our stories through their own experiences. There’s much to unpack here. Thank you! Wishing you a peaceful Holiday Season.
You’ve made my day! No greater honor than to have one’s post added to someone’s “Brilliant Craft Lessons from WU notebook!”
And I’m intrigued by your comment that “writers start from the abstract” and work our way to the specific, the embodied. Sometimes. But maybe not always IMHO. Stephen King, for example, has said that he visualizes the characters and puts them in a situation together, then sits back to see what they do :-)
Hmmm … I feel another WU post a-brewing! Thanks for the inspiration!
Good distinctions. My current MC doesn’t have a goal, as such. She’s a runaway bride, not hiding from her husband of one night but from a terrible mistake which she failed to disclose to him.
So what is the premise? What is the plot? What is the point? The premise is that her past finds her, both parts: the French war criminal from whom she stole and who is ready to blackmail and torture her, and the ditched husband who is now not on her trail, but his.
The plot is that she must keep from the war criminal what she stole from him: an extremely rare copy of the most evil book ever written, a book which, if read, removes all moral restraints and makes one free to do anything.
Complication: Her abandoned husband, formerly an MP in occupied Berlin, now an FBI agent, now believes that she must be a crook too.
The point: You can recover from your mistakes, but to do so you must do the right thing, which in this case, in the end, means burning a whole library to the ground.
So yes, you’re right. Premise, goal and theme may not exactly line up, as in being all one and the same, but they don’t have to. A tale can be one thing to the MC, another to the reader, and something else to the writer.
Good post, Barbara!
Thanks, Benjamin! In fact, your plot and premise sound closely aligned. And, of course, she does have a goal (to prevent the bad guy from gaining possession of an evil book and thereby to prevent the dire consequences that would result).
So you are bringing up an important point: a goal can be to prevent bad stuff from happening. If the protagonist achieves her goal, no one will know, because life will continue unchanged … Thus, goal attainment can be invisible to all but the attainer.
BTW your story sounds great!
Hi Barbara. I’m printing this one out. Although you have written as cogently as anyone could on this issue, and given great illustrations, it remains a mental tease for me. I can’t provide a source, but at some point I wrote down someone’s definition of premise, and stuck in on the wall: “A statement of what happens to the characters as a result of the core conflict in the story.” If I apply this definition to my WIP, I still haven’t expressed what the essence of the story is. For me the essence is the “big idea,” the theme. The journey is actually mental, not physical. The POV character remains in the same physical place, but moves from one state of consciousness to another. This results from the “inciting event” that serves to make the journey possible. That event comes by way of The Stranger. But the stranger isn’t a person. I especially thank you for defending stories that have no on-the-nose “goal” for the protagonist. Goals are sometimes only realized through experience. They don’t dangle in front of a character like a brass ring.
Thank you again.
Thanks, Barry! And yes, I agree: whether we call it premise, essence, or theme, those “Big Ideas” matter (even though they need to be embodied, not shouted at the reader). Maybe we could say that the real goal is for the protagonist to demonstrate the author’s premise! My point, like yours, is that goals don’t have to be so concrete or personal. Thanks again!
Hmm, Barbara, so much meat in this bun of yours. LOL. I’ll have to share your post with my author clients. Premise and theme can be slippery buggers.
Thanks for the great post!
Hugs,
Dee
I love it when people say that I have meat on my buns :-)
As I noted to Barry (above), theme-premise-essence-point (or, in Yiddish, the tsimmis) are what make our stories matter! And you are very welcome!
Great post, Barbara. You have presented what underlies the creative work of writers. Often, we go to the page with an image, a line of dialogue, an idea for a traumatic event. And hopefully it all comes to the page in the first draft. But as we read and rewrite, the inner workings appear. Like a sculptor stepping back, we being to see THE WHOLE STORY. Your post presents great questions that we should be asking as we rewrite and edit. The creative brain often answers the questions, and if not, it is the editing brain that hopefully will. Beth
So interesting to read your comment, Beth! While Susan Settaducato (above) notes that she starts from a premise and “works her way out,” I think you are saying, in contrast, that you start from a specific image or event and then watch as the premise makes itself known.
I’m like you (I think). For me, I think that Big Idea is there in my subconscious but I haven’t connected with it during my first draft. And then, as you say, that Big Idea starts to appear (I would say: enter my conscious mind) to inform the revisions and show me how to deepen and connect the specific story bits.
Thanks so much for adding to our exploration!
Well written, as always, and I like the last part especially where you posit that it isn’t always about a goal or even an inciting incident per se. I’d like to see more time spent digging deeper into this, looking at alternative ways to structure a story. In my opinion, so many books are skimming the surface and dependent solely on plot, thus avoiding some of the trickier aspects of life that we, as readers, are grappling with in real life.
Ah, yes: alternative ways to structure a story! Not a lack of structure, but a more inclusive definition of structure (I’m thinking, for example, of Dani Shapiro’s “Signal Fires” or Jodi Picoult’s “The Book of Two Ways” that play with time and POV in amazing ways). Real life isn’t linear. So here’s the big question that you are pointing us to: does the structure of a story have to reflect the “structure of life” (if there even is one)? Thanks for this provocative comment!
Thanks for this master class in a thimble, Barbara. I appreciate your very helpful examples from various genres, structures and distinguishing aspects of how to frame an answer to the question. It’s a question I’m more likely to ask myself, and now you’ve inspired me to ask it from different POV and characters. That’s a great tip, an early seasonal gift. Wishing you a happy holiday, a wonderful 2024, and I look forward to reading your next novel.
Thanks so much, Deborah! “Master class in a thimble”—I love it! I started this post with a bit of a bone to pick about The Almighty Protagonist’s Goal, but ended up really pondering all these questions and feeling that we (as readers and writers) need to give ourselves permission to be much more open about what constitutes a legitimate “aboutness.” Perhaps stories about goal-attainment appeal to contemporary readers because that’s how we’re pushed to think about our lives. However, there’s so much more to life than goal attainment! So,, too, for our stories?
All the best back at ya!
This is timely. I’m filing this one in my “How to Write Good” folder, under “What is This Mess About?”
Now I am dying to know what else is in your “How to Write Good” folder!!?!
I’ll bet each of us would put different items in there, and that’s one of the many things I love about this community!
Goodness gracious, Barbara, exactly the post I need to read to prepare for a book club! What is my book BOUND about? And you’re right, the answer varies depending on who’s answering. The central dramatic question isn’t the same as the premise. My MC wants to be able to focus on her studies. Her sister wants love. Their father, fill the void his wife left. I had to write this story to figure out the answer to the question: Am I my brother’s keeper? But the MC was talking in my head years before… and she was eager to explore the question with me. She was righteously indignant about the situation with her sister. And I was all ears. I love when characters come to life like this. But my readers have the most interesting thoughts and have taught me even more–to be an advocate for forgiveness, for disabled children, for medical miracles. I didn’t know all these things before.
Thank you for a wonderful post and the discussion it’s generating. I need to print it out too. Btw, you’re a very good writing teacher. It’d be so nice to have all this, the process, in a book. Hint, hint. Merry Christmas!
So happy to know that the post spoke to you! And yes, the “central dramatic question” (which resides in the plot) isn’t the same as the underlying premise. The question is the vehicle that will ultimately reveal or demonstrate the premise—and the same premise might underlie different plots!
And happy holidays to all in the WU community!!
Barbara:
What does my protagonist say this story is about? That’s a question I’ve never asked. It gives me a new perspective helps me hone my focus when the story is drifting. Thanks!
You are very welcome! Best of luck to you!
This is the first time I’ve seen this idea, and you’ve done such a clear job of it I’m going to drag your questions off and answer them for the concluding volume in my mainstream trilogy – just before I finish the plot’s structure. Because the end is very important to me – I need to get it exactly right.
I promised, glibly, the resolution to ‘a huge train wreck’ that I set up and developed in the first two volumes, each of which ended up at a critical step in the whole, complete and satisfying – to that point.
Meanwhile, the quick answer to your three questions.
What is the premise? What is the author trying to illustrate?
That disabled people have just as much right to happiness, to aspirations, to satisfying lives and conclusions – as everyone else – in a society of the able-bodied who are terrified of their lives changing in an instant to one of the disabled or chronically ill whose fate is considered the worst possible thing that can happen to you (worse than death).
What is the story question that makes the reader keep reading, because she absolutely has to find out the answer?
As illustrated by a tiny snippet from the first volume:
…If I weren’t sick.
“A cat is allowed to look at the Queen, Kary.”
“A cat is not allowed to want to be Queen.”
“Better not to want?”
“Better not to want.” It hurt…
Does the protagonist have a clear goal? If not, is that okay?
To be left alone, a reclusive author writing best-selling novels under a pseudonym, her previous life destroyed. Happy – enough.
She will discover whether that is okay, or her only option.
Thank you for your questions.
Glad this has sparked all this reflection! A suggestion now: see if you can condense each of the three responses (to premise, story question, and goal) into a single sentence! A big challenge but so worthwhile :-)
Barbara, I printed out your post. Your question, “So what’s your book about,” will help me narrow down the answers to the questions in the post. Here’s what I came up with, so far. The protagonist’s goal, her role in nursing, changes, when she is forced to care for a patient, in another country, who becomes a catalyst. It further changes when her best friend, a nurse, dies. She wants to leave nursing and devote her time to become a rock star in a band. She is already a professional musician in a band. But changing her journey is a rough go. Some success and many conflicts to overcome. It all dramatically changes when the protagonist thinks it’s clear sailing into her new music career. She gets an agent and and a tour schedule. And her husband, a volunteer physician, has a near tragedy in a war ridden country. She gives up her dream to be a rock star to be by his side and care for him. Her goal now to not be a rock star, but to be with her husband where they can stay together in a medical career. She decides they should move to another country in order to do that. A surprise, it’s the same country whee she encounters the catalysts. Those are the top of my head ideas, what the book is about. Thank you for making me think more about it. I need to be more specific and certain of the premise, story question and goal. And how they line up. I’m a plotter and work with Snyder’s Beat Sheet. Your post will be invaluable to help me with the story flow. 📚Christine
Sounds as if her goal keeps changing, which is totally fine! Now what is the Big Idea About Life that underpins and connects all these goals? That would be worth excavating, I think! :-)
I am currently trying to identify comps for my novel, and it is wicked. I don’t seem to know what the story is about or what are important features to compare. When I read it, I find meaning, but comparing it to others is hard. This post is helpful. Thank you. Btw, I am considering one of your novels as a comp.
Jocelyn