The Five Ways of Pulling Premise from an Opening
James Mastraieni (Twitter, ImprovCoaches) did a little workshop with a team I’m on talking about the Five Ways of Pulling Premise from an Opening.
I don’t know that this list is exhaustive of all the ways to pull from an opening, but so far I think it is.
Some of these ways to pull premise work better for one type of opening than another, I will try to note that as I go along.
Some of these will be easier for you to do some of them not.
Some of them are easier for the audience to get, some are not.
Like all improv writing, this isn’t meant to be a definitive answer, more a tool to try and use, test, and see if it works for you.
If you like it or have thoughts on it, tell James and I.
In this way of pulling premise, we take the exact same thing from the opening and use it. For example if the idea of a zombie grandpa comes up in the opening, we’ll use exactly that, one to one, zombie grandpa. We’re not changing anything about it or figuring out what’s sort of like that, it’s an exact use of the idea.
This way of pulling premise does not work as well for story based openings like monologues, living rooms, or interviews. The reason being doing a one to one off a story that’s already been told is sort of like re-playing the story we already heard. So, it’s a more suitable way of pulling premise in more abstract or character openings like the pattern game , sound and movement, documentary, and rants.
In this way of pulling premise, we take the idea from the opening, and we change it to an analogous situation and premise. For example, a story in an opening was pushing a kid to catch a baseball at a game, maybe our full analogous idea could be cutting in line to see santa at the mall. We’ve changed both our context and our unusual thing, instead of baseball game it’s the line at the mall. Instead of pushing a kid to catch a ball, it’s cutting in line to see santa.
This works better in story based openings. It’s harder in more abstract opening like pattern games, because the audience has to do a lot of mental math to understand where the ideas are coming from. This way of pulling premise can also be tricky because it’s easy to go too far with the analogy, making it difficult for your audience to quickly get on board.
In this way of pulling premise we keep one thing, change the other thing. Let’s say you have a story about being a kid and entering a pinewood derby race with a car you’ve named “Dancing with the Devil.” In pseudo analogous we’d take one of those things, either the context or the specific, and keep it, and change the other. So, I could keep the context the same, Entering the pinewood derby race, but change the specific, maybe something like “That’s right, I’d like to enter my car into the race, her name is Hail Satan.”
OR, I could keep the specific the same, but change the context. So we’ll keep the “Dancing with the Devil” part, but change the context. Maybe it’s: “I’m here to renew my drivers license, my name is Dancing with the Devil.”
Pseudo Analogous can work pretty well with most openings, but is probably best in story based openings. Pseudo analogous makes it easy for the audience to identify where the idea came from, while keeping it fresh and not rehashing an idea or story we already heard.
Character specific means taking the way or the words someone said and using that as a way to start a scene. This can be something like a commentary on how someone in a monologue said something unique, striking, or silly. Or it could be something from a documentary opening that really defined a character for you.
So, if in a monologue says, “You know, I’ve been thinking really hard about it, and you really should pay attention to your health.” You could initiate with that sentence. Or if in a character matching opening, someone said something that made the audience laugh or struck you as a funny character, you could start with that sentence.
Character Specific is a great way of getting the audience on board with a character quickly and they tend to like it. However, this way of initiating scenes also requires more work to be done in scenes later as you still need to set up context, and all the other nitty gritty of getting a scene going.
Sort of the, if this is true what else is true of starting a scene. We wanna see what would happen as a consequence to the story. James used two great examples based on the pushing the kid out of the way to catch a baseball at a game. One consequential scene could be that person who pushed the kid out of way showing his wife he’s on Sports Center for pushing the kid out of the way.
Or another consequential premise could be a 20 year old man who’s taking Muay Thai lessons because he was pushed at a baseball game when he was a kid.
Consequential is a suitable way of pulling premise from all openings. I’ve heard Matt Besser say something of the effect of, it’s ok to start a scene right where the monologue left off, what would happen after that story?
There ya go, there the 5 ways to pull premise as taught by James Mastraieni, filtered through my memory and text. If you like them or don’t get them or disagree let me know, I’d love to refine this a little for people.
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If you like the ways of pulling premise, or have thoughts on it, tell James and I.
