What is High Concept?

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors

Craig and I have just gotten back from the last event of a very full book festival season, US and UK, including Harrogate, Bouchercon, Bloody Scotland, Bute Noir, and Chiltern Kills, along with other bookstore appearances.

Chiltern Kills is a new festival, 2^nd year, just outside of London, and a wonderful way to close out the year. These smaller festivals can be incredibly productive professionally because there are fewer big distractions. For example, when your agent and publisher are at a festival like Bouchercon or Harrogate, you’re going to be focused on business with them. But at festivals where you don’t have the agent meetings and publisher dinners, you have more time to talk business with other authors, and people are less on-guard, more forthcoming.

So as usual at these festivals there was a lot of author moaning - I mean shop talk. And one of the topics that came up over and over and over was that right now editors only want HIGH CONCEPT books.

As always, when this topic came up, there were authors fretting, “I don’t really get what high concept is.”

Well, I would suggest that this is hugely important when it comes to brainstorming ideas and elevating whatever story you’re currently working on. Important enough that you might want to stop everything you’re currently doing until you have a firm grasp on this idea.

I’ve written on it at length, and I try to use these newsletters to discuss new material, so I’ll refer you to these posts and chapters:

I’ve compiled a list of well-known High Concept books, movies and TV series:

I also go into High Concept in the workbooks:

• Stealing Hollywood

  - Chapter 22: What is "High Concept"?

  - Chapter 30: Meta Structure

• Writing Love

  - Chapter 24: Meta Structure

  - Chapter 25: “High Concept” and “The Big Book”

I suggest taking a good look at those lists of examples, and brainstorming more film and book examples of your own.

Make a Master List for yourself. If you’re not sure if a book, series, or movie is high concept — ask! I’m happy to discuss.

Then if you’re brainstorming on a new idea, for Nanowrimo or not, why not —

Take a step back and spend some time musing about how you can find the BIGGEST idea in your random ideas—one that has real bestseller potential.

(Think about that word for a minute: Musing. It literally means consulting your muse!)

And even if you are going gangbusters on your book and you love your story idea, it’s good to ask yourself this question:

Can I take the story idea I’m already working with and layer in a HIgh Concept ELEMENT?

Opening your mind to high concept elements might help you hit on an element or elements that will work for your own book or script to entice a much larger readership or audience, and bring you that bigger sale.

Putting some time into this is a career game-changer!

I also strongly suggest testing your story idea by asking other writers! High Concept can be somewhat subjective - I hear a lot of agents and editors call a book idea high concept when what they really mean is they think they can sell it (And that’s always good!). But if you get several people in the business saying, “I love that idea” or “Ooh, I want to read that!” then you know you’re on the right track. Don’t be afraid to ASK.

While I strongly encourage everyone to get clear about High Concept sooner rather than later, I also want to say this:

If this is your very first book or script, the most important thing is to find an idea that you can FINISH.

• An idea and characters and world that you can fall in love with, enough to keep you writing every day, at least for 15 minutes a day, for nine months or a year.

• An idea that you can test from the beginning to see if there’s enough plot to finish the book: which I recommend you do with Index Cards. Even if you’re a pantser!

• You need to find a writing community, online and in person, with experienced writers in it, that you can run your idea by to make sure other people will get excited about it, too.

• And then you must write and FINISH the book.

No dual projects. No chasing after shiny new ideas.

In all the years I’ve been writing and teaching, I have never seen a beginning writer turn into a pro writer by writing on multiple projects. It’s not completely impossible, but the chances are abysmal. Suck it up and finish one.

And if this is your first book — never give up something you’re passionate about for commercial considerations. With your first book or script, you are essentially teaching yourself how to write. The only real requirement is that you love it.

Also remember that a book doesn’t have to be high concept to sell, to editors or to TV or the movies. Last week we were talking about the book and TV adaptation of The Perfect Couple, which I personally wouldn’t call a high concept idea. There are dozens (probably hundreds) of books, movies, and shows out there about a murder at a wedding or a resort or reunion party — I’d almost call it a subgenre of mystery or crime. The Perfect Couple doesn’t even have any particular twists on the genre, but it had enough commercial elements (castable characters, a glamorous location, an engaging enough mystery) to get it sold as both book and TV series.

You don’t have to write high concept, either. But understanding what it is - is gold!

Any examples you want to run by us?

—Alex

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