Which comes first: Premise or Story?

I’m so jealous of people like J.R. Ward and our own Stephanie Doyle who say that their stories and worlds and characters just land on them all in one lump, fully formed. While some of my books have been easier to write than others, I’m not sure I’ve ever had a book that came quite that clearly, where I didn’t seriously rethink some key element of the story while writing the first draft (never mind while revising).

And my latest book is proving to be one of the hardest I’ve ever tried to write. (I know, I know… I said that about the last one, too. And the one before. And the several I’ve abandoned midway. This one's the hardest, okay??? Leave me alone.)

But I had a possible epiphany last week and it got me thinking: which comes first -- the premise/high concept or the story?

I know it’s a chicken and egg thing and there’s no one right answer… and it’s much like the plot vs. character question -- and that's one I fully believe you can approach from either direction, as long as they’re integrated. That is, you can either think in terms of which characters would work best with a plot you've concocted, or what plot would best torture the characters you've imagined… And the end result can be a character motivated plot either way. In fact, if your brain works even remotely like mine, chances are you think about character and plot at once.

So, yes, I came to grips with the character vs. plot issue ages ago – probably while working on my very first novel, but I’m realizing with these slightly bigger, more complicated, world building books I’ve been writing recently, that in both cases (two different series ideas) the first thing I came up with was the world – the overall premise. Then, based on that premise, I developed a complicated world with lots of rules and lots of backstory (for one series, going back thousands of years), and finally, only once I had all that together, did I start to think of characters and plots to fit in with my premise and world.

And my possible epiphany, while agonizing about the story for my latest book and whether it really works and/or is the best story I can write at this point in my career, is that maybe I’m too wedded to the rules of my world and my overall premise. Maybe I spent too much time on the world upfront. Maybe I did it all ass backwards!

And regardless of how I should have started, (kind of moot, now), if I’m struggling to fit my story and characters into the world I’ve created, why not make the world bend instead of the forcing the story and characters into it? Seems like a “well d’uh” moment, now that I type it, but it felt like a serious lightbulb and/or slap my head moment an hour ago. That is: You idiot, Maureen, you’ve spent all this time trying to force a character and story into a set of rules and a backstory you chose for your world/premise… but if this is the first book in a series, even if that set of rules was cool, even if you already told your agent about it and she loved it, even if you liked it a lot yourself -- if it’s not working, um, change it.

Basically the problem is that now my characters have started to take shape, I no longer think the story I had mapped out for them is the best story for those characters (who are starting to seem real to me). So I’m thinking of changing some pretty major elements of my world. And I mean major. Maybe to the point where humans know that my otherworldly characters exist, whereas before the hero’s entire conflict, and the conflict between the hero and heroine, arose out of keeping his identity a secret… Hmm…

So, those of you who write "other world" stuff… paranormals, urban fantasy, fantasy, or sci-fi… which do you come up with first? Premise? World? Story? Characters? Or does it all come to you at once (and if so, I may have to kill you.)

Then, once you’ve set down the rules for your world, do you allow yourself to change those rules? I mean at some point it needs to be cast in relative stone, or the whole thing’s too fluid, (and I've been thinking about another post on this topic, related to world building...), but at what point do things need to freeze? I thought I was past the point of no return… but maybe not…

Why do I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a very high cliff with no railing????