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Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
~Colette
Building a Better Novel Premise
Last week while I was writing my list of
Forty Questions for a Stronger Manuscript, I mentioned that I had written my elevator pitch and logline before I even started plotting my new novel. That may seem strange, but I wish I'd caught onto that process sooner. I would have saved myself, and my critique partners, soooooo much grief. It's a lot easier to tweak a pitch than it is to change an 80,000 word novel. Seriously.
And there are reasons to tweak the premise. However well we write, however creatively we move our characters across the storyboard, if the basic idea we want to convey isn't worth reading about, we're facing too much competition from other authors and entertainment options to hold a reader's attention.
Before I started my current manuscript, I wanted to be absolutely sure I'd made the premise as strong as possible. I've read dozens of posts and books on that elusive "high concept" beast we've all heard so much about lately, and I started thinking through how what the experts said related to my favorite books. Basically, what I've gleaned is that for me, there's a difference between gimmick and high concept. And there's a BIG difference between high concept and well-executed concept.
A gimmick is something with a WOW factor, but once I've heard the WOW, I'm done. It loses its appeal because after I unwrap the shiny packaging, there's nothing much inside. It's like the wizard standing behind the screen in Oz. Once he's visible, all the magic fades.
With a great concept, there's a great wrapper, a WOW factor, but there's layer after layer of solid goodness underneath. And isn't that the key to any great piece of literature? Layers? Depth? Great characters? Beautiful writing? Universal appeal? Connection?
Yes, a great concept has to contain a "hook," but that's just the ending point. To make the hook resonate, the premise also has to have:
- At least one fascinating character: Someone bigger than life, who cares very deeply about someone or something and is willing to fight for it.
- An interesting setting: A location or world where readers have never been but want to visit either in our dreams or in our nightmares.
- An inherent conflict: The situation that pits the fascinating character against someone or something that is going to keep her from getting what she wants--while keeping readers at the edge of our seats unable to guess the outcome.
- An emotional appeal: The reason readers understand the stakes, care about them, and connect to the events and characters on a personal, heart-deep level.
- A universal or familiar idea: The connection to something we already know something about or have previously wondered about.
- An original twist: The aspect of the story that makes it different from any other story--the way ordinary things are combined, slanted, spun, and stacked to take the universal or familiar idea and warp it into something unique and unexpected.
- A piece of coolness: A tool, ability, artifact, or something in the character, setting, or situation that makes our jaws drop.
- A high-impact inciting incident: The situation that catapults us all into the story with no way back.
- High stakes: The reason it matters if the fascinating character loses, not just to her but to other people. The actual consequences of failure that the reader can't bear to contemplate.
- A great title: A word or two or three that intrigue and sum up the book.
Notice, there's no "hook" in that list. For me, the hook is the innate simplicity of the premise--something that lets us take all those things I've just listed and sum them up in one or two easily-understood sentences.
Beyond that, if the premise hits at least one or two of the following "it" factors, so much the better:
- A topical or current subject or event.
- A controversial, sensational, or heretical topic or subject.
- An alternate view or explanation for a known person, event or potential event.
- A mythological connection.
- A primal fear.
Simple, right? Let's all jump get on it and come up with some best-selling ideas.
But one more thing--and this one's critical: I think the best-selling idea,
your best-selling idea, has to make
you care. It has to have elements
you want to explore, characters
you absolutely love. Otherwise, the heart will be missing from your writing. For me, that's just as important as concept, and a lot harder to define.
So what do you think? Is high concept or a hot premise important to you? Can you think of any other way to beef yours up? What do you ask yourself before you sit down to write a new idea?
Are your favorite books high concept? What "high concept" books do you want to read over and over again?
Happy writing,
Martina
by Jo Wyton
Over the weekend, I wrote and posted a piece on my own blog about High Concept books from a reader’s perspective.
But I’m not just a reader, I’m also a writer, so of course I spent the rest of the weekend tormented, sleepless and getting through an enormous amount of cake as a result.
Lunch on Saturday...
As a writer, one of the phrases you hear knocking around an awful lot
By: Adventures in YA and Children's Publishing,
on 10/11/2011
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Adventures in YA Publishing
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"You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it."
~ Neil Gaiman
Character or plot? That's the writer's equivalent of the philosopher's chicken/egg dilemma, and it evokes the same questions about the beginning of life and the nature of the universe. Only instead of our--real--universe, we are pondering the universe of a story.
For me, building a novel's universe--the physical and magical laws that make it work, the landscapes within it, and the people who walk those landscapes--usually begins with an image from a dream, a moment, or a photograph. I may remember only that one visual. Nothing else. We all do that. Every person in America, in the world, has a story idea, or a script idea, or a sit com idea. Of course, some are better than others:
- Stephanie Meyer's dreamed of sparkly vampires.
- Mary Shelly dreamed of a "pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together," the thing that became Frankenstein.
- Robert Louis Stephenson dreamed up the situation for his "schilling-shocker," Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by seeing Hyde take the powder and undergo the transformation in front of witnesses.
- Sue Monk Kidd, began her SECRET LIFE OF BEES based on a single image of "bees that lived inside a bedroom wall and flew out at night."
- Jacquelyn Mitchard, Stephen King, Anne Rice, and many other writers have all described images or dreams that sparked either a first or subsequent novel.
It's what happens after that first idea that separates the writer from the hack.
"The Ideas aren't the hard bit. They're a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you're trying to build: making it interesting, making it new."
~ Neil Gaiman
The image, dream, or idea is only the beginning. Even full dream sequences make no real sense. We have to craft stories around them, populate them with living, breathing, fascinating,
real characters who have unique problems that, at the same time they are fresh and different, lead with seeming, unputdownable inevitability, one misstep at a time, to an astonishing conclusion.
As Gaiman further puts it, "dream logic isn't story logic. Transcribe a dream, and you'll see. Or better yet, tell someone an important dream -'Well, I was in this house that was also my old school, and there was this nurse and she was really an old witch and then she went away but there was a leaf and I couldn't look at it and I knew if I touched it then something dreadful would happen...' - and watch their eyes glaze over." (Sort of, you know, the same look your family gets when they ask you what your story is about and you tell them.)
The magic of the writing process isn't in the first idea. It's in the sweat-making, hair-pulling, mind-bending stage where you take that single image or idea and twist it, shape it, add to it until you have a complete
concept and a universe in which that concept breathes.
So what's the difference between a concept and an idea?
According to many different experts, the concept gives you the whole story recipe. Depending on who you listen to, it contains a mix of the following:
- The fascinating character
- The interesting setting
- The inherent conflict
- The inciting incident
- The high stakes
- The twist
- The coolness factor
- The hook the reader can relate to or think about
- The great title that draws the reader
Write Nonfiction for Kids? Break out with a High-Concept Idea
A high concept book is one that takes a universal theme and puts a fresh, original creative twist on it. It can be explained in two or three sentences, and will leave you wanting to read the book or in the case of writers it may leave you wondering, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
When the idea of high-concepts is applied to nonfiction for kids, it can create breakout titles for an author. Carla McClafferty, author of three such high-concept books, tells us how she does it.
Question: Carla, your first book,
Forgiving God, was an inspirational book dealing with the emotional crisis of the death of your child. Instead of following that with another inspirational book, you turned to trade nonfiction for kids, especially young adults. What drew you to this genre and this audience?
Carla: My path into publishing is different from most. Many writers I know wanted to be a writer since they were children. They wrote short stories and kept their musings in a journal. While I never considered the possibility of becoming a writer—and my diary was mostly empty! So I really don’t have any background that prepared me to become a writer—except for the fact that I’ve always been a voracious reader and loved books in general. My first profession is as a Radiologic Technologist.
Then my life changed forever. My fourteen-month-old son, Corey, died from a head injury after a minor fall. Losing him plunged me into such grief and despair that I had a serious crisis of Faith. I questioned everything I had ever believed. Gradually, God brought me through this dark period of my life, and restored my Faith. Then I knew I had to write about my journey through “the valley.”
I began writing the book even though I didn’t know what I was doing or what would happen to it when I was finished. Because it was emotionally difficult to write, the book took three years to write. During that time, I learned as much as possible about how book publishing works. I read writer’s magazines and books, and began attending an adult writer’s group meetings to learn as much about the way it works. I also attended local SCBWI conferences and meetings. I found so much information and help from children’s writers that it seemed to be a good fit for me.
At some point during the writing that first book, I knew I wanted to continue writing when it was finished. I realized that by reading books of all sorts throughout my life, I’d been in training to be a writer without knowing it.
By the time Forgiving God was published, I was already working on my first nonfiction book for young readers. Listening to the old adage of “write what you know,” I wrote about X-rays, my area of expertise. Farrar, Straus and Giroux published The Head Bone’s Connected to the Neck Bone: The Weird, Wacky and Wonderful X-ray in 2001. It was a great place for me to start.
Question: What do you
Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
~Colette
Building a Better Novel Premise
Last week while I was writing my list of Forty Questions for a Stronger Manuscript, I mentioned that I had written my elevator pitch and logline before I even started plotting my new novel. That may seem strange, but I wish I'd caught onto that process sooner. I would have saved myself, and my critique partners, soooooo much grief. It's a lot easier to tweak a pitch than it is to change an 80,000 word novel. Seriously.
And there are reasons to tweak the premise. However well we write, however creatively we move our characters across the storyboard, if the basic idea we want to convey isn't worth reading about, we're facing too much competition from other authors and entertainment options to hold a reader's attention.
Before I started my current manuscript, I wanted to be absolutely sure I'd made the premise as strong as possible. I've read dozens of posts and books on that elusive "high concept" beast we've all heard so much about lately, and I started thinking through how what the experts said related to my favorite books. Basically, what I've gleaned is that for me, there's a difference between gimmick and high concept. And there's a BIG difference between high concept and well-executed concept.
A gimmick is something with a WOW factor, but once I've heard the WOW, I'm done. It loses its appeal because after I unwrap the shiny packaging, there's nothing much inside. It's like the wizard standing behind the screen in Oz. Once he's visible, all the magic fades.
With a great concept, there's a great wrapper, a WOW factor, but there's layer after layer of solid goodness underneath. And isn't that the key to any great piece of literature? Layers? Depth? Great characters? Beautiful writing? Universal appeal? Connection?
Yes, a great concept has to contain a "hook," but that's just the ending point. To make the hook resonate, the premise also has to have:
- At least one fascinating character: Someone bigger than life, who cares very deeply about someone or something and is willing to fight for it.
- An interesting setting: A location or world where readers have never been but want to visit either in our dreams or in our nightmares.
- An inherent conflict: The situation that pits the fascinating character against someone or something that is going to keep her from getting what she wants--while keeping readers at the edge of our seats unable to guess the outcome.
- An emotional appeal: The reason readers understand the stakes, care about them, and connect to the events and characters on a personal, heart-deep level.
- A universal or familiar idea: The connection to something we already know something about or have previously wondered about.
- An original twist: The aspect of the story that makes it different from any other story--the way ordinary things are combined, slanted, spun, and stacked to take the universal or familiar idea and warp it into something unique and unexpected.
- A piece of coolness
by Peter Brown
Little, Brown & Co. 2010
A bear finds a boy and brings him home, only to discover the truth in the book's title.
In the storytelling industry (publishing, theatre, film) there is an undue amount of emphasis placed in promoting the idea of the "high concept" story. The high concept is easily grasped in under 25 words (under 10 if you're really good) that is open to quite a
In this special installment of Conference Round-Up, we'll head back to the event the Maryland/Deleware/West Virginia Chapter of SCBWI held recently. The Leaps of Imagination: Fact, Fiction, & Fantasy conference was filled with useful information. Many big names were in attendance, such as agent Stephen Fraser, Michelle Poploff (Executive Editor at Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers), agent Elana Roth, Louise May (Vice President/Editorial Director of Lee & Low), and Debra Hess senior Editor at Highlights for Children). Several other industry professionals, as well as authors and illustrators were on hand for the 2-day event. Read on, as Marissa shares tips and information coming out of this conference.
A few weeks ago, we presented
part one in our series of tips coming out of this SCBWI event. This week, we'll share tips on the elusive topic of high concept, courtesy of literary agent
Elana Roth.
Elana's presentation sought to demistify the term "high concept," which seems to be everywhere these days. Not only was her talk structured and clear, it provided many examples that helped clarify how a book may find itself with this label.
When you think high concept, think about a book that would be akin to a big Hollywood blockbuster movie. It has wide appeal and can be pitched easily within one sentence (thoug
I confess I felt a tinge of jealousy when I first read about Sarah Mlynowski's deal for Gimme a Call
. Talk about an inviting high concept. An 18 yo accidentally drops her cell phone into a fountain, and when she fishes it out again she finds the only person she can call is her 14 yo self.
I've been a fan of Mlynowski's since I read Milkrun, her first novel. She seems to have switched to YA full time.
In an article in Publishers Weekly, she says:
===
"Since Gimme a Call comes out next week, I thought it would be fun to ask a few fellow YA authors what they would tell their high school selves if, say, they had magic cells of their own. So on Monday I tweeted "Ever wonder what YA authors would tell their high school selves? (If they had magic cell phones that could call the past?) #gimmeacall." What started as a question to fellow authors has spread to their followers and their followers' followers. Search #gimmeacall for the full list of responses (over 1000 now), but here are some of my favorites (mostly written by YA writers. What, me, biased?):
@sarazarr: You are NOT FAT. You will be, but you're not now, so enjoy it.
@neilhimself: Dear 15-year-old-self, those comics you feel guilty for spending your barmitzvah money on each week will save your life one day.
@LaurenMyracle: Don't go on a pot run with Steve Campo. You will get arrested, and he will still take Leslie Prat to prom.
@nickearls: Dear HS Self: Do not try to impress girls by writing them sonnets. This tactic last succeeded in the 1620s.
====
Read the whole article here - and then check out all the Tweets yourself.
This was reported in the “General/other” category, but I wonder why it’s not a YA: Jennifer Archer's CLICK, the story of a sixteen-year-old girl who, after a brutal beating by classmates and subsequent stint in a psychiatric ward, escapes into her photography and the dark, seductive poems she finds hidden in a cellar, both of which lure her into the mind and world of a mysterious, troubled young man who died sixty years earlier, to Sarah Sevier at Harper, in a two-book deal, by Jenny Bent at Trident Media Group.
This sounds fun: Author of the upcoming FIRE ME Libby Malin's FINDING MR. WRITE, in which a head writer for a floundering soap opera uses the show as her personal message board to the world, working out her problems through the show's characters and story arcs, again to Deb Werksman at Sourcebooks, by Holly Root at Waxman Literary Agency (world).
Can you say “high concept”? (complete with not one, but two allusions to high-profile real people): Author of CINDY ELLA and the upcoming GEEK CHARMING Robin Palmer's YOURS TRULY, LUCY B. PARKER, about a 12-year-old girl whose new stepsister isn't just pretty and popular, she's a Hannah Montana-type superstar, so Lucy emails a Dr. Phil-like celebrity therapist for advice, to Jennifer Bonnell and Eileen Kreit at Puffin, in a five-book deal, for publication in Fall 2010, by Kate Lee at ICM (World English).
She’s on LJ at ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
watchmebe: Jackson Pearce's SISTERS RED, a modern Little Red Riding Hood meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to Jill Dembowski and Andrea Spooner at Little, Brown Children's, in a pre-empt, in two-book deal, for publication in Spring 2010, by Jenoyne Adams at Bliss Literary Agency (World).
Thanks for the mention, Jo. Naive as I was, I'd never even heard of 'high concept' before my publisher explained it to me. (And yes, he was rubbing his hands and dancing a little gleeful jig at the time.) To be honest, I've had my fair share of reviews saying, 'Nice concept, shame about the book' but having a concept like seeing death dates makes it so damn easy to tell
Great and very honest post Jo. I know too many who get hooked up on finding a 'High Concept' idea but forget totally that the story has to match.
I loved your Numbers books and yes it had a fantastic concept but it also had a strong story which carried the concept. Don't know what books those reviewers are reading but hey each to their own. But I think it is vital as you both say, you can't force a concept into a book. The story has to be there first. Good luck with the new book Rachel
My current WIP is high concept and it's *very* hard to write - I might even give up. At every turn I find I'm thinking 'is this up to the concept?' and usually the answer is 'no'. It's tricky. People don't behave in a high concept way - people act and speak as they do all the time and that's why we lose sight of the concept as soon as the book gets going. But
Excellent discussion, and 'aaargh' is exactly how I feel when this phrase is used by agents or editors. And good point, Jo, about there always being a reason why we are writing the particular story we are. I do wonder, where does this leave those of us who are probably competent writers who have good books inside of us, which may not be 'high concept' enough to ring the right
I think 'Numbers' is a perfect example of High Concept, because the characters and writing are so captivating that you forget that it isn't real. I LOVE those books, and can't wait to see what you come up with next!
Thanks! It can be a struggle to stick to your guns I think, especially when you're watching High Concept stuff sweep the bestseller lists.
I know exactly what you mean! I have also tried to write High Concept books, and I find I run out of steam very quickly, because it isn't the characters or the writing that is exciting me, it's the idea, and I find I just can't write books that way. I don't think sticking to the idea is a failure, though. I guess you just have to be careful that the idea doesn't rule the roost.
Thanks, Donna! Thing is, books that aren't 'High Concept' are published all the time, so if it's well written and a good story, I hold out hope that it will ring *somebody's* bell!
Fascinating, Jo, and also the earlier piece. I think the point about High Concept is that it makes it so much easier to market - both for an agent to market to a publisher, then for a publisher's sales force to market to shops etc. But if it's Concept alone, without an emotional core to the story plus characters you care about, it's not going to be a satisfying read.<br /><br />As a
Having been through high concept and out the other side, I agree that it can be a case of the tail wagging the dog as the concept takes centre-stage to the expense of the story. But it can also be kind-of cool to write and to read.<br /><br />Alternatively, I'd argue that you can boil down any story to a pitch AFTER you've written it and come up with a concept that marketing can latch
'What Kate said': pretty much exactly what I was thinking.<br /><br />And I'll add.... as a reader, as soon as I heard 'Die Hard with fairies' I HAD to read Artemis Fowl. And no doubt if I'd written it (in my dreams...!) and someone had asked me what it was about, I'd have rambled on and on - it needed Die Hard with Fairies for me to want to read it.<br /><br />I
Aw, thanks, Vanessa and Jo. I wish I could tell you what the next one's about, but I haven't got a sufficiently pithy pitch yet. I love Teri Terry's reference to 'Die Hard with Fairies' for Artemis Fowl (see comment below). That's priceless.
I think I'm yet to have one of these! LOL! Oh dear! Take care<br />x
It took me ages to understand 'High Concept'. Probably because my ideas weren't! But now it's such a fundamental component in my ideas antenna I find that my new projects are naturally high concept. Haven't sold any of them yet though.
I loved Numbers! To be honest, I think you should write your book, then think of the high concept - along with a great one line pitch. Anything that'll get it noticed really! Then, as Jo says, it's down to the writing.
I have to say that I've found that high concept is great for pitching and getting agents to ask for a submission, but then you're down to whether they like the writing. So you only really jump one hurdle, although I guess it would make life easier if you finally get to the acquisitions stage.
I agree with you both, but I think there's a difference between a USP and a High Concept idea. You're right, Teri - all books can have a USP, because it can be anything from writing style to characters to plot to setting to anything else you can think of. But High Concept is different - a High Concept idea is capable of selling on the idea alone, because it's plot-driven, and not
Yes, most of your ideas are High Concept, Nick! And I love them all! <br /><br />But that's different to the pitch I guess. For example, "girl with cancer falls in love with boy who also has cancer" is nothing in itself, and yet The Fault In Our Stars is a perfect book, and sold big worldwide. It could never have been sold on concept alone - the brilliance is in the writing.
...though I would say what is 'high concept' is subjective.
Well that's certainly very true!! I think everyone has a slightly different definition. "Slated" could be the definition all by itself! Should have put that in the blog really, shouldn't I? I blame early morning blogging...
I loved 'Flip' but bought it because I thought the character sounded really interesting. The concept didn't really filter through to me as something separate and astonishing, just a part of the brilliantly told story. This trumps everything.<br /><br />Thanks, Jo! <br />
Plus, it has an awesome cover. Not that I'm superficial or anything. Nope. *pretty*
Doesn't high concept just mean the protagonist might die a dreadful death?<br />Girl falls in love with a vampire - oh no she might die!<br />Boy wizard faces 'he who shall not be named' - oh no he might die!<br />Mouse fools Gruffalo - oh no, he might die!<br /><br />I attended a screenwriting course a few years ago and it was suggested that you think about the actor who would play
Interesting post Jo, I still have very little knowledge on what all the publishing booky jargon actually means or what it implies. But I think your right concept on not its the strength of the characters and the writing that keeps you reading.
I love that tip about Will Smith / David Jason, Maureen, :-). I'm writing a High Concept commission at the moment, aimed at 6-8s. It's a terrific idea and I'm sure the shops will swoop. All I can do is hope that my writing has enough about it to keep the ball rolling as the excitement of publication day fades. It must make commercial sense or the publishers wouldn't do it. Would
I take your point there, that a high concept idea is able to exist entirely separately to the story that's written around it. I'd also argue that a high concept has to be (relatively) unique to grab attention. This is much like conceptual art - the first person to execute an idea wins, almost regardless of how well they execute it.
That's a really good way of thinking about it! Conceptual art - like it.
I have been musing over your post for days Jo! I agree with SO MUCH (actually everything) of what you have to say. I think the difficulty is that in an extremely crowded market a debut author with a lovely/heart-warming/bitter-sweet/thoughtful/whatever book stands little chance of being a) picked up by an agent b) book being picked up by a publisher c) published book receiving any marketing/
Yeah, it starts to hurt if you spend too long thinking about it...!