Continuing with our discussion of the SETUP of our story, let’s move on to the WHAT.
The WHAT is particularly important, because in most cases it directly relates to the story’s PREMISE. The premise of the story is its reason for happening. For instance, in Frank Miller’s Daredevil story arc entitled Born Again, the premise is: Kingpin finds out that Matt Murdock is DD’s secret identity, and sets out to ruin him.
This is the fulcrum that levers us into the story, and catches our interest to read further. In Born Again Frank Miller achieves this in the first four pages of the story arc. Alfred Hitchcock sometimes called this part of the story the McGuffin. In Hitch’sThe Man Who Knew Too Much, The protagonist gets information about an assassination plot planned by a secret organization. The assassins kidnap his daughter, (son in the remake) to keep the man quiet. That’s the McGuffin or PREMISE around which the story revolves. In North By Northwest the PREMISE is one of mistaken identity. An ad-man is mistaken as a double agent and is chased by both Russian and American spies.
Watch lots of Hitchcock, he’s a master storyteller!
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