One Dead Vocab, Pt. 1 - Premise Bunnies
Feb. 11th, 2014 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kalloway posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
onedeadplotbunnySo you may have noticed a few strange terms popping up...
Now we all know what a plotbunny is - it's that story idea that chomps onto your brain and bothers you while driving, at school, at work, before sleep, in the shower, etc. It is brilliant and if you could just hook a USB cable straight into your brain, you'd be all set.
Less ferocious are Premise Bunnies. Premise Bunnies often pretend to be plotbunnies and on first glance, they can be impossible to tell apart! Sometimes, Premise Bunnies actually turn into plotbunnies through magic.
But what is a Premise Bunny?
A Premise Bunny is a true curse. Premise Bunnies are often distinguished by their vague characteristics, such as 'Bob/Wendy have an adventure' (A plotbunny would be closer to 'Bob/Wendy having grand adventures in space fighting giant robot pirates and helping Emperor von Alphabet reclaim his throne while slowly mending their broken relationship after the events of Episode 43'.) and lack of a general narrative.
The worst thing that can happen with a Premise Bunny is that it turns into a WiP that goes nowhere, because there was never a plot behind it, only a premise.
Premise Bunnies are best fed time and ideas until they magically become proper plotbunnies, though often, unfortunately, many also have to be released back to the wild as well.
I sometimes think premise bunnies breed under my bed, considering how many I seem to have, but those are actually dust bunnies and I should vacuum.
Now we all know what a plotbunny is - it's that story idea that chomps onto your brain and bothers you while driving, at school, at work, before sleep, in the shower, etc. It is brilliant and if you could just hook a USB cable straight into your brain, you'd be all set.
Less ferocious are Premise Bunnies. Premise Bunnies often pretend to be plotbunnies and on first glance, they can be impossible to tell apart! Sometimes, Premise Bunnies actually turn into plotbunnies through magic.
But what is a Premise Bunny?
A Premise Bunny is a true curse. Premise Bunnies are often distinguished by their vague characteristics, such as 'Bob/Wendy have an adventure' (A plotbunny would be closer to 'Bob/Wendy having grand adventures in space fighting giant robot pirates and helping Emperor von Alphabet reclaim his throne while slowly mending their broken relationship after the events of Episode 43'.) and lack of a general narrative.
The worst thing that can happen with a Premise Bunny is that it turns into a WiP that goes nowhere, because there was never a plot behind it, only a premise.
Premise Bunnies are best fed time and ideas until they magically become proper plotbunnies, though often, unfortunately, many also have to be released back to the wild as well.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-12 09:05 am (UTC)I have loads of these. Every time my "characters" (I write JRock RPS) do anything: a photo shoot, release a single, a concert, tweet (and one of them tweets an awful lot!), breathe... up pops a premise bunny. I could play Whack-a-Bunny, and I'd lose so hard! *le sigh*
Best, in my experience, is if you can bounce the premise bunny with someone else, someone who asks the relevant questions like "why do they do that?", "where is it coming from?", "where are they?", "is there someone else there?", "why are *they* there too?", etc etc... like a beta-reader. :) At least that helps me a lot. If the answers are "I don't know", then that particular premise bunny will never become anything, never get a haircut and get a job. That's when I release it back into the wild.
I think even if the answers one comes up with at first are wrong and might change in the course of the plotting, they're still good, because they helped form that premise into something more. "So, they have this adventure. Where? Errr... on a train! They meet this dude... who does evil action x, and then they hijack the ... maybe it's a plane? Oooh, it could be in space! Maybe the evil dude is a robot! That's why they can't defeat him!" It's all good as long as something sets the wheels rolling in your plotpart of the brain. :) But if the bunny just stares back at you when you try to examine it, it's not going to reveal its secrets.
As a side note, I really really REALLY want to be able to hook up to the USB and just download my stories! Because it's the actual writing that trips me. I managed 64 words yesterday before the incredible itching to be somewhere else and do something not-writing hit me. Grrr!
no subject
Date: 2014-02-12 01:43 pm (UTC)I have a very bad habit of stalling on stories I've thought about too much. One WiP has the next chapter contain a set of scenes that spurred the whole story in the beginning. So I've thought about this part for like three years already - writing it out seems redundant!
no subject
Date: 2014-02-12 02:54 pm (UTC)... Now we just need to figure out ow to fix this! LOL
no subject
Date: 2014-02-12 07:26 pm (UTC)I completly feel you, I'm like that with One Direction and the worst is lately I can't even write anything in that fandom, imagine in my other 300 fandoms.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-12 07:31 pm (UTC)