thoughts on high concepts?

Sage said:

High concept means it is very easy to understand what the book is about in a simple description (such as a single sentence).

Click to expand...

I agree with this. Something that can be encapsulated in a short, catchy, very exciting pitch (Star Wars meets Alice in Wonderland! Game of Thrones meets The Office! Santa Claus is Coming to Town meets Les Miserables!).

High concept is Pithy meets Marketing.

I can understand what high concept is, though I'm still confused by what they mean by say ... high concept contemporary. Stories easy to pitch in a single sentence that take place in the present?

I guess you could pitch about a person getting a cab and then getting an ice cream cone into a single sentence. Sure doesn't sound very exciting though.

Or do they mean the ordinary meets strange?

JustSarah said:

I can understand what high concept is, though I'm still confused by what they mean by say ... high concept contemporary. Stories easy to pitch in a single sentence that take place in the present?

I guess you could pitch about a person getting a cab and then getting an ice cream cone into a single sentence. Sure doesn't sound very exciting though.

Or do they mean the ordinary meets strange?

Click to expand...

Snakes on a plane.

I figured that would be taken that way, I apologies. Not what I meant. I just meant its hard to cover all the nuances of contemporary in a sentence.

Interesting concept. Though, I'd think that pretty much anything can be summarized in a sentence like that. . . My WIP for instance ... Glee meets Gayle Forman. Don't know if I'd be able to market it, or present it as that. Might make for a good elevator pitch, though.

An example is when you're trying to decide what movie to watch based on the TV guide descriptions. If there's one that's like "an electric eel apprentices to a glass blowing elf and together they must light up Santa's Village in time for Christmas" you're probably going to choose to watch/not watch it based on the conceptual elements at play, whereas with a description like "a college student smokes a lot of marijuana and has feelings about girls and his dad" your decision to watch it is more likely to be based on something other than the premise, like the title or the actors/other creators involved or the fact that it won an award or your best friend is always quoting it and you would like to know what she is talking about.

And they would want the former, or the latter? So basically the general concept needs to be able to stand out.

Sage said:

The former is high concept, the latter is not. That doesn't mean that either of them is going to be a better story or is going to appeal more to a given person.

High concept means that the story is high in concept. You hear the concept and have a good idea what the story is about. It tells you nothing about the writing or the characters or the world-building or anything else that people judge stories on. Queries are easier to write because the idea of the novel is easy to define. A rejection may say, "This was a great concept but..." They are great for pitching and marketing. Ultimately the writing and characters and overall plot will be what snags you an agent and publisher, but if you have a high-concept plot, it is that much easier to hook them.

Click to expand...

Right, and high-concept doesn't always translate into "good". In fact, some high concept books can be so focused on the concept that the characters, plot, & worldbuilding are completely lost and thus it winds up being forgettable.

One thing I'm noticing: a lot of times, high concept in contemporary means it's an adaptation or twist on a familiar story (ex-10 Things I Hate About You, Shut Out...), because that gives you an easy shorthand to explain it.

The other thing I'm seeing is a lot of books that engage some jarring issue -- and take it to the next level. BREAK is a self-harm book, but the kid doesn't just sit around cutting himself, he stages elaborate accidents with a very clear goal of breaking all of his bones. THE FAULT IN OUR STARS is about kids with cancer, but they don't just sit around having cancer, they traipse off to Amsterdam to get mad at their favourite writer.

With such jarring stories, I wonder they wouldn't get grating fairly quickly. The former largely feeling like shock value.

The latter can be good with the right writer. (I assume its John Green?)

Is there a specific length for high-concept? Blake Snyder tried his hardest to explain the reasons for an eight word slug line, but I personally just found his voice way to grating to read through.

At least in my experience X meets X would work rather badly particularly if I haven't read the books in question.

Emmet Cameron said:

One thing I'm noticing: a lot of times, high concept in contemporary means it's an adaptation or twist on a familiar story (ex-10 Things I Hate About You, Shut Out...), because that gives you an easy shorthand to explain it.

The other thing I'm seeing is a lot of books that engage some jarring issue -- and take it to the next level. BREAK is a self-harm book, but the kid doesn't just sit around cutting himself, he stages elaborate accidents with a very clear goal of breaking all of his bones. THE FAULT IN OUR STARS is about kids with cancer, but they don't just sit around having cancer, they traipse off to Amsterdam to get mad at their favourite writer.

Click to expand...

See, to me, BREAK is high-concept but 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU or THE FAULT IN OUR STARS is not, and I think that exposes, just for me personally, how high-concept is not just the killer one-sentence hook, but - like most things in writing/publishing - needs that extra subjective 'fizz' to qualify as high-concept.

For TFIOS - "Kids with cancer go to Amsterdam in search of their favourite author." In that specific case, the things that Sage mentions as the clear defining points of high-concept ("very easy to understand what the book is about in a simple description") actually work against it in this case. From that simple log-line, I find myself predicting that it will basically be a '10's version of A WALK TO REMEMBER, with a lot of romantic scenery porn, one of them dying tragically and a lot of philosophical musings on love, cancer and dying young. I haven't read it yet - don't tell me if I'm right.

To me, high-concept is when that outside-the-box one-sentence pitch makes you go, "I want to know what HAPPENS!" and, IMO, that word 'happens' is very important. For example, the much-quoted example of I HUNT KILLERS is basically the perfect high-concept contemporary hook: "the son of a notorious serial killer uses his inherited skills to find a copycat." Or BREAK - "a boy goes on a mission to break all his bones." When you hear that, you're probably not thinking, "I want to see if it has pretty writing" or "I want to see what the reviewers say about this", or "I like the author." You're just thinking, "I want to see where this goes." The PLOT is the main urgent factor that gets you wanting to read/see it.

So I don't personally think 10 THINGS is exactly high-concept because, although it does confirm to the traditional high-concept premise of "X means Y", I don't think it's that kind of "wham" in the stomach that makes you think "I need to see what happens" - because, odds are, the log-line has made you guess, because, odds are, Kate and 'Petruchio' (or whatever his movie-expy is named) fight, have conflict, get back together, kiss at the end.

Is it shock value? Maybe. But don't diminish the power of shock value. A true shock will never leave you and is a very strong accomplishment from any author.

Yeah, just because something can be expressed as "X meets Y" doesn't mean it's high concept.

Contemporary high concept is more like...

Assassin academy. A prom queen runs for president. Goths in a nunnery. How to seduce your math teacher for fun and profit in 10 easy steps. When body swapping became a habit. After school fight club. The mental hospital heist, or how I broke my girlfriend out of the psych ward. Becoming the teenage Heisenberg. I was the anon who got vanned last summer. The hive mind school for hackers and crackers. Sext pimp.