One Dead Vocab, Pt. 1 - Premise Bunnies

[kalloway]

(Pretty much copied from last year because hey, it still works~)

So you may have noticed a few new 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' and lack of a general narrative. 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'.

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.

Comments

[kalloway]

Another relatively important thing I've learned over the last few weeks is that if I'm staring at a kink challenge and going 'oh I want to write Bob/Martha fic' but can't get it going and then decide to try Ron/Johnny with the same crap luck and a few hundred words of awkward and days keep passing...

Guess what, self! Those weren't the right characters to be putting into those situations! Your kink is not their kink and that's okay! Good on you for finally realizing it and coming around to writing a decent Kiddy Grade fic for partners who lend themselves to all sorts of kinky mischief.

*facepalms* Yeaaah.

*looks at mini-herd of premise bunnies gnawing on bingo cards* Sorry, little fuzzy dudes - back under the sofa with you til I get this take-home test done.

[ldybastet]

Oh my god, I have been there too! LOL Trying to write a specific kink or kink set and the characters in my head just sit on the couch calmly, very unaroused, and when I try to push them, they turn to look at me with disbelief written all over their imaginary faces, and that's all that is written until I go back and either change the kink to something they like, or give up and change characters.

I realized when reading this about premise bunnies again, that this is why I stopped even trying in fic_promptly. They set a theme for the day, and people are supposed to come up with prompts on that theme. And I just can't. It's too premise-y to start with that I can't think of any prompts whatsoever. I feel like my brain just isn't wired that way. In the beginning, I was really frustrated by this, but now I have pretty much accepted it, and it's not like I'm lacking bunnies anyway! ;)

[kalloway]

That was totally it. Like, them staring at me going 'you want us to do what with what? no, i'm not into that'. *laughs*

[leidmotief]

In addition to this, whenever I think of a new scenario, I usually want to use it with my favorite characters. It works better with them anyway, but sometimes it's hard to come up with ideas for other characters I want to try my hand at. ^^

[wendelah1]

This makes so much sense. I have a huge, time-sucking premise bunny which is set during the Civil War in East Tennessee. I have an ending--because it's canon--and vague outlines for characters--also canon--but no real plot and no idea who these characters are, let alone how they arrive at the (canon) conclusion. I keep reading books about the Army of Tennessee and hoping the ideas will come. It could end up a novella or a three volume trilogy. I'm stymied. I've put in two years of research and I still have no plot outline.

[kalloway]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations - perhaps a look at the The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations might give you a direction to go in? Just deciding what sort of plot you want might help the details flow.