OK, today we stretch those cranial muscles a bit. You’ve had it too easy here for a while, and now it’s time to put some work in. Read this extract from the set text:

She’s hidden the money in the bushes back of that deli, the one with the Polish brothers, the tall one she flirts with, knowing it pisses off the one with the ear thing. After she’s had her pierogi or whatever, she’ll come back for it, and then it’s on to Reno, where Frank is waiting with chilled champagne and a 38, like she doesn’t know that already. She almost feels sorry for Frank. Why Reno? Her sister knows this plastic surgeon there, and then there’s Max. Everything starts and finishes with Max. Pretty big responsibility for a guy looks like he does. Those loafers.

Never mind the dubious noir stylings of the above, we’re more interested in something else: the presuppositions it contains. If you take five minutes, you could list a dozen or more things about that story nugget that are there implicitly but never stated. Like, the fact that hiding money points to some kind of shenanigans. The nature of the one Polish brother’s ear thing, and what it says about our protagonist that she’s playing them like she is. The necessity of the plastic surgeon, and the unassuming appearance of Max.

As a writer, presuppositions are your friend. They help you stack information without ever having to bother writing it out, and given the necessary economy of a screenplay, that’s in your favour. And in doing so, they immerse your reader in the world of your story before they know it. Already, your mind has built up some picture of the scenario that the above text refers to, which you could expand on for a few pages if necessary. All from a few sentences of dodgy thrillerese.

Some songwriters are masters of this stuff. Check out this extract from Steely Dan’s With A Gun:

You were the founders of the clinic on the hill

Until he caught you with your fingers in the till

He slapped your hand so you settled up the bill

With a gun

With a gun

You will be who you are just the same

Did you pay the other man with the piece in your hand

And leave him lying in the rain?

Thank you Becker & Fagen. Hmm. Almost builds on the piece I chucked in at the start. For the simple reason that, again thanks to the wonders of presupposition, it’s easy to connect the criminal world in the song to the one depicted earlier, especially with ambiguous references to ‘you’ and ‘the other man’. And who else has figured the clinic on the hill offers plastic surgery?

The more you can play with presuppositions, the richer the effect will be for the reader – and ultimately, viewer. In a treatment, they can help you sketch out a world of detail with just a few lines. In a script, presuppositions in dialogue, and the skilful depiction of action, get you quickly to the heart of a story without the need for the usual setting up yadda yadda that novice writers cling to. And thinking ahead to the world of meetings, a few well-judged presuppositions are helpful for building relationships quickly. After all, when you’ve got a sense of how presuppositions work, and look back at how you use them in daily life, it’s easy to see how they’re part of the way we do things, and that you can learn to construct them with ease on the hoof, or in the proverbial lift with that exec you’ve been wanting to meet, right?