Using what you learned in the lesson, we'll generate five premise ideas to be potentially used for future short story or novel projects. You can work in the genre you’re most comfortable in, or leave yourself open to ideas in new or different genres if you’d like to try combining premises or writing something new.

Feel free to work either with physical media like a pen and paper, or in a document on your computer. If you have a place to store story ideas, add any premises you like to it, for future use. Post your premises in the Class Projects gallery as well!

As an aside, I know some people can be worried about other writers stealing their ideas--I know I used to, when I was first getting started!--but that’s the nice thing about premises. They’re just starting out points. Give five people the same premise and you’ll get five completely different stories. So even if you and fifteen other people in this class come up with the same idea, your story is still yours. That’s what the plot is for.

Happy imagining!

Francisco Maya

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