This doesn’t mean that there is only one designing principle per idea or that it’s fixed or predetermined. There are many possible designing principles or forms that you can glean from your premise and by which you can develop your story. Each gives you different possibilities of what to say, and each brings inherent problems that you must solve. A

You find the designing principle by teasing it out of the simple one-line premise you have before you. Like a detective, you “induce” the form of the story from the premise.

KEY POINT: Find the designing principle, and stick to it. Be diligent in discovering this principle, and never take your eye off it during the long writing process.

Designing principle = story process + original execution

The premise is concrete; it’s what actually happens. The designing principle is abstract; it is the deeper process going on in the story, told in an original way.

the designing principle is the seed of the story. And it is the single most important factor in making your story original and effective. Sometimes this principle is a symbol or a metaphor (known as the central symbol, the grand metaphor, or the root metaphor). But it is often larger than that. The designing principle tracks the fundamental process

The designing principle is what organizes the story as a whole. It is the internal logic of the story, what makes the parts hang together organically so that the story becomes greater than the sum of its parts. It is what makes the story original.

Step 4: Find the Designing Principle

The main challenge facing the writer of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is huge: How do you show the moral—or more precisely, immoral—fabric of an entire nation in fictional terms? This brilliant story idea carries with it some major problems: using a boy to drive the action; maintaining story momentum and strong opposition in a traveling, episodic