Premise -- Foundation of Storytelling

Reviewed By: Terry Ramirez

REVIEW

Premise—Foundation of Storytelling is the website that I have chosen to review. The author defines story premise as: “A story premise sets out a story's core dramatic issue, the movement of that issue toward resolution, and the fulfillment that resolution sets up for the story's audience.” The author, Bill Johnson, defines several elements of the story premise, including dramatic issue, movement and fulfillment. The dramatic issue revolves around human needs and desires such as love, power and a need to understand or control one’s own destiny. The movement of the story is the sequence of events as the dramatic issue moves toward its resolution. The fulfillment is how the dramatic issue is eventually resolved. The website offers several examples of how each of these elements is used in stories. Johnson explains that effective storytellers can be more effective if they establish the story premise because they are better able to use an active voice. He offers advice to storytellers, including to think about the dramatic issues that you enjoy seeing worked out, love, revenge, good vs. evil, etc. He states that it is important that the storyteller is responsible for creatively taking the audience to fulfilling the dramatic issue to resolution. This website meets the evaluation criteria of accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency and coverage. This website, Premise -- Foundation of Storytelling, is written by Bill Johnson. He is also the author of a book entitled A Story is a Promise. His credentials are listed in a Vita link. He is a writer and gives writing and storytelling workshops. The information appears to be error-free, although no editor is listed. There was no apparent spelling or grammatical errors. The site is fairly current with a 2000 copyright date. The website is not biased and there were no advertisements, although the website did offer links to the author’s workshop dates and a picture of his book. The website covered the basic foundations of storytelling. I could not say with certainty that this information is not replicated, given the tremendous number of web sources available.