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One sentence decides whether anyone asks for pages. Paste yours and Don Chuy grades hook, clarity and stakes out of ten, names the single fix, and hands back a rewrite built only from the story you already wrote.
A specific protagonist
Not "a man" — a person with a job, a flaw or a history that shapes the choice.
An active want
Something they pursue, not something that happens to them.
Real resistance
A force with its own case, strong enough to make the outcome uncertain.
A cost of failure
What is lost if they fall short. No cost, no stakes.
Take the four parts above in order and write them as one sentence: when [the situation hits], a [specific protagonist] must [active want] before [the cost of failing]. Draft it plainly first, then cut every word that does not carry one of the four parts. Twenty-five to forty-five words is the working range. Read it aloud to someone who has never heard the story — if their first question is “and then what?” it is working, and if it is “wait, who?” the protagonist is still too vague.
The same premise, before and after, with the grade Don Chuy would give each version. These are teaching examples, not writers’ submitted work.
Before — 2/10
“A man discovers a dangerous secret and must survive.”
No specific protagonist, no named opponent, no cost. Three of the four parts are missing.
After — 9/10
“A night-shift air traffic controller realises the flight she just cleared is carrying the federal witness her own supervisor was paid to bury — and she has eleven minutes of fuel to prove it before the plane lands.”
Named role, active want, a resisting force with power over her, and a hard clock.
Before — 2/10
“A family moves into a haunted house and strange things start happening.”
Passive premise. Things happen to them; nobody wants anything, and the threat has no rule.
After — 9/10
“To keep custody of his deaf son, a widowed carpenter restores a foreclosed farmhouse where every repair he finishes wakes something that only moves when the boy cannot hear it.”
A want with legal stakes, a monster rule tied to the hero's own child, and irony baked in.
Before — 1/10
“A guy has a really bad week at work and hilarity ensues.”
"Hilarity ensues" is a promise, not a premise. No situation, no engine for jokes.
After — 9/10
“A funeral director who has never told a lie is hired to deliver the eulogy for a con man whose entire grieving family believes a different, better version of his life.”
A comic engine that runs itself: the hero's one rule collides with the job.
Before — 1/10
“A woman struggles with her past and tries to find herself.”
Internal state instead of external action. Nothing can be filmed here.
After — 9/10
“Thirty years after testifying against her brother, a hospice nurse is assigned the dying juror whose vote sent him away, and must decide whether to tell him he got it wrong.”
The inner struggle is made visible as a concrete choice with a person on the other side.
Before — 2/10
“In a dystopian future, a rebel fights an evil corporation.”
Generic world, generic villain. Nothing here that a hundred other scripts do not also claim.
After — 10/10
“A memory auditor who erases grief for a living finds her own erased daughter in a client's file, and reconstructing the child means feeding back every hour of pain she sold away.”
Concept, want and cost are the same idea — the price is paid in the story's own currency.
Before — 3/10
“An ex-soldier must save his daughter from criminals.”
Familiar shape with no specific pressure. We have seen this exact sentence many times.
After — 9/10
“A demolition expert one job from retirement learns the building he wired to fall in six hours is where his estranged daughter's squat has thirty people sleeping — and the detonator is now in someone else's hands.”
Occupation drives the plot, the clock is literal, and the hero caused the danger.
Before — 1/10
“Two people meet and fall in love despite their differences.”
No obstacle with teeth. "Differences" is not a force that can keep them apart.
After — 9/10
“A hospital translator who signs for deaf patients falls for the surgeon whose malpractice she is quietly interpreting into evidence, and the trial date is the day he plans to propose.”
The obstacle is structural, not a misunderstanding, and the clock is emotional and legal at once.
Before — 1/10
“A young animal goes on an adventure and learns a valuable lesson.”
Template, not premise. The lesson is stated instead of dramatised.
After — 9/10
“A lighthouse keeper's elderly dog, who has never once left the rock, must lead a lost pod of whales through a fogbound channel using only the beam she was trained her whole life never to touch.”
The rule the hero must break is the same rule that defines her — that is the theme, unstated.
Before — 1/10
“A film about a small town dealing with change.”
Subject without a question. There is no thing we are waiting to find out.
After — 8/10
“When the only factory in a Kansas town of nine hundred announces it will close in ninety days, four families film each other's last shifts to prove to the state that the town is still worth a road.”
A deadline, a stated goal, and a reason the camera exists inside the story.
Before — 2/10
“A detective hunts a serial killer in a big city.”
No angle. Every element is the default version of itself.
After — 10/10
“A forensic accountant on probation for fraud is the only person who can read the killer's ledger, and every page she decodes for the police is also a page proving she once laundered his money.”
The investigator's skill and her guilt are the same asset — pursuit costs her directly.
Before — 1/10
“A chosen one must defeat an ancient evil to save the kingdom.”
Pure archetype. No world rule, no personal price, no reason it is this person.
After — 10/10
“In a city where debts are paid in remembered years, a young collector is ordered to repossess the final decade of the grandmother who raised her — or forfeit her own childhood instead.”
One invented rule generates the want, the opponent and the cost in a single sentence.
Before — 3/10
“A kid tries to keep his parents from getting divorced.”
Clear want, but no plan, no opponent and no cost beyond the obvious.
After — 9/10
“Convinced the sale of the family diner is what is ending his parents' marriage, an eleven-year-old secretly reopens it for one week of breakfasts — with a health inspection already booked for Friday.”
The want becomes an active plan with a deadline and a way it can visibly fail.
Writing a synopsis, not a logline
Three sentences of plot is a summary. One sentence with a want and a cost is a logline.
Calling the hero "a man" or "a woman"
Give the occupation, the flaw or the situation. Specific is memorable; generic is invisible.
Ending on a question
"Will she survive?" tells a reader nothing. State the situation and let them wonder on their own.
Naming characters nobody knows yet
Proper names add no information in one sentence. Roles do.
Promising a tone instead of a story
"A hilarious romp" and "a gripping thriller" are marketing. Show it through the premise.
Leaving out the cost
If nothing is lost when the hero fails, there is no reason to read page one.
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