What is Your Premise?

 The Write Practice declares before writing the writer must work out its premise. Reading the article made me think this is another bit of technique which I understood without knowing the name. I rewrote "One Dead Blonde" once I figured its premise as the politics of crime. I knew the premise of "No Clean Slates" was the story os marriage between people should not be together. How can one outline a plot without a premise?

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