by Larry Brooks
“Snakes on a plane” (a proposition)
“The world will end in three days.” (a situation)
“Two morticians fall in love.” (an arena)
“What if you could go back in time and reinvent your life?” (a proposition)
“What if the world’s largest spiritual belief system is based on a lie, one that its largest church has been protecting for two thousand years?” (a speculative proposition)
“What if a child is sent to Earth from another planet, is raised by human parents, and grows up with extraordinary superpowers?” (a proposition)
“What if a jealous lover returned from the dead to prevent his surviving lover from moving on with her life?” (a situation)
“What if a fourteen-year-old murder victim narrates the story of her killing and the ensuing investigation from heaven?” (a narrative proposition)
“What if a paranormally gifted child is sent to a secret school for children just like him?” (a paranormal proposition)
“A story set in Germany as the wall falls” (a historical landscape)
“A story set in the deep South in the sixties, focusing on racial tensions and norms” (a cultural arena)
In general, if you can add “hijinks ensue” to the end of your concept, you may be on to something good. If the hijinks themselves lend a conceptual essence to the idea, then include them in your statement of concept.
Keep these examples front and center as you engage with the definition of, and criteria for, the form and function of concept, which is the delivery of a conceptual layer to a story idea. When in doubt, return to these examples as models of concepts that work, not only because they meet all the criteria (which you are about to be given) but because they are simply rich and fertile soil from which to plant and grow a killer story.
Concept Defined
The best definition of concept, because it is a multifaceted proposition, resides in melding all of the following perspectives, resulting in one conceptual identity:
Concept is the central idea from which a story emerges.
Concept is an arena, a landscape, a stage upon which a story will unfold.
Concept can be a proposition, a notion, a situation, or a condition.
Concept can create an alternate universe or setting with its own physics, dangers, and challenges.
Concept can be a time or a place, a culture or a speculative imagining.
What makes an idea a concept is the presence of something conceptual.
The Criteria for Concept
The definition for concept has the criteria itself embedded within it. To help you wrap your head around this, here are those criteria lifted and listed as actionable, gradable benchmarks and relational elements.
As a consistent measure, a good concept is inherently interesting, fascinating, provocative, challenging, intriguing, disturbing, engaging, even terrifying, before adding character or plot. When this is a majority opinion, especially within a defined genre readership, then you have the basis of a successful story.
High Concepts vs. Real-World Concepts
High concepts depart from the norm. They exist at the extreme edge of imagination and possibility. High concepts are simply more conceptual than more common, real-world concepts. (Real-world concepts, too, can be rendered conceptual at their core through expansion via premise.This means that, if you’re pitching and you don't include that conceptual layer in your pitch, you're leaving ammunition on the table.) Examples of high concepts would be Superman and Harry Potter and the Avengers, which bring in fantastical and supernatural elements. Examples of reality-constrained concepts that are equally compelling would be James Bond or Alex Cross or The Help or Gone Girl.
Stories about real people in real situations also benefit from something that creates a compelling context for the story. Something about a hero can be conceptual, or something a character does or believes or must deal with can be conceptual. For example, one of the main characters in Gone Girl conspires to kill herself while framing her husband for her death; this becomes the concept itself.
Concepts, high or otherwise …
can be character-centric, like the above examples.
can be a speculative proposition, like The Da Vinci Code or Star Wars.
can be thematically conceptual, like The Help or The Cider House Rules.
can be lifted from perspectives and drama in the real world, like a story about the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team or Apollo 11.
offer a setting, time, or place rendered conceptual by virtue of the promise it makes: The forthcoming story will play out there. Historical novels live and breathe by this conceptual potential.
could be about stories set within a given culture, such as Fifty Shades of Grey or a story about The Blue Angels or even The Hells Angels.
Notice how all of these examples are different than—more conceptual than—a “story about a guy living alone in a big city.” Nothing about that particular concept is unique or fresh. It doesn’t push buttons; it doesn’t appeal to a given demographic, interest, or fascination; it doesn’t pose an intriguing (at least, intriguing enough) speculative question or proposition; and it doesn’t unfold within a setting, time, or culture that would allow the reader to take an appealing, vicarious trip into such a place.
Great concepts always promise a vicarious ride for the reader. They can take readers somewhere or place them into situations that are not possible, realistic, or even something they would choose in real life. A strong concept takes readers on a ride of a lifetime, one they will never know in their personal reality.
A concept can define the story world itself, creating its rules and boundaries and physics, thus becoming a story landscape. (Example: A story set on the moon is conceptual in its own right.)
A concept can inject speculative, surreal possibilities, such as time travel, ghosts, paranormal abilities, cloning, etc., into an otherwise normal reality.
In short, a concept is simply the compelling contextual heart of the premise and story built from it. It imbues the story atmosphere with a given presence. It elicits that sought-after response: “Wow, I’ve never seen that before, at least treated in that way. I really want to read the story that deals with these things.”
It does not include a hero … unless the hero is, by definition, a conceptual creation, which is the case in several of the examples just given. A story is built around a protagonist leveraging her conceptual nature. The character isn’t the concept—because every story has a protagonist or hero. What makes her fascinating, and therefore conceptual, is the proposition that renders her unique and appealingly different (think Nancy Drew, Stephanie Plum, or Wonder Woman). When that difference screams for a story to be told, you have a great concept on your hands.
It might be helpful to consider what another story without a vivid concept would sound like in a pitch: Two people fall in love after their divorce. It’s not a bad story if you can pull it off. But divorce is all too familiar and therefore not a strong concept by itself. An agent wouldn’t quickly invite you to send him a draft; he’d want more from the concept, leading into a premise that picks up the conceptual power it offers. If you could bring something contextually fresh to it—for instance, Two people who both want to murder their ex-spouses fall in love—then the story is already strengthened from its conceptual promise alone.
Agents and editors are looking for something fresh and new—in other words, they are looking for the conceptual. When a concept is familiar and proven—which is often the case in romance and mystery genres especially—then fresh and new becomes the job of premise and character, as well as voice and narrative strategy. Imagine, for instance, that you are an agent and this pitch crosses your desk: “My story is about a detective who is assigned to find the killer of a girl.” This common concept crosses my desk regularly, and my feedback is easy: “There’s nothing here that sets your story apart. You’ve defined the genre itself without adding anything inherently appealing." You might as w
ell have said, “My story is a by-the-book detective mystery.”
No sale.
Also, here’s a cautionary tip for self-published writers. When I say, “Agents and editors are looking for something fresh and new,” it may be tempting to say, “Well, I’m not dealing with them. I’m going directly to readers, so I don’t have to worry about all this fresh concept stuff.” That’s risky thinking. Readers screen titles online, looking for pitches—concepts and premises—that draw them in. It’s the exact same dynamic, with the exact same risks (concepts that are too flat and familiar) and opportunities (concepts that make readers think, Now that sounds interesting). As a self-published writer, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you have different story criteria, that the bar is somehow lower for you. If you want to succeed and build a readership, the exact opposite is true. You are still competing with the biggest names in the business, and frankly you are at a disadvantage in pursuing self-publishing, so your story needs to be exceptionally strong at both the conceptual and premise levels.
Concept is genre driven.
Literary fiction and some romance novels and mysteries aren’t necessarily driven by concept. However, the subgenres of romance—paranormal, historical, time travel, erotica, etc.—are totally concept dependent. Other genres, such as fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction, are entirely driven by and dependent on concept.
If your concept is weak or too familiar within these genres, you have already substantially handicapped your story.
The purpose—the only purpose—of concept is to give your premise something to work with, something that fuels that story world, the characters, and the situational dynamics with conceptual givens, suppositions, truths, and constraints that drive and color everything that happens. When those aspects are as appealing as the concept itself, concept and premise as a team become a whole that exceeds the sum of each part. They become the stuff of bestsellers, the ignition of careers.
Given that dynamic and the dependent relationship between concept and premise, it behooves us to understand the highest definition of premise, which is almost always less intuitively obvious and accessible to newer writers based on instinct alone. Too often they are writing about an idea or a theme rather than a dramatic arc driven by a fleshed-out protagonist’s quest.
While concept serves as the framework for the story, the premise is the substance of what happens in the story, and to whom, for inherently interesting reasons. When you break that definition down into its parts, you find another set of purpose-driven goals and criteria for premise that help clarify how it is indeed different than the concept from which it was culled.
We further define premise and explore its criteria in chapters five and six. We’re pounding on concept here, because concept is the prerequisite for a premise that holds promise. Make sure you have internalized concept before moving on, and that you dive into the next two chapters with an informed context for the discovery of the amazing potential of a well-executed premise.
For now, let’s go back to your story’s concept and rebuild it … the right way.
What Is Your Concept?
Having just been exposed to the highest definition and criteria for excellence in concept, write down the concept for your story now. Make sure you don’t go into the realm of premise to do it. Focus on the core idea, cull its conceptual essence, and state it in context to the story arena, proposition, landscape, or framework you are putting into play as the basis for your premise.
Is this a new take for you? Perhaps you’ve already discovered a lack of conceptual essence in your story, or, even better, you’re already working on enhancing your concept.
It’s also possible that you’re underwhelmed. Concept can seem so obvious, so preliminary, that some writers—newer ones in particular—discount it in their eagerness to dive into the premise itself. But that’s like stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime, because your premise may only be worth ten cents if you fail to infuse it with compelling energy via a glow-in-the-dark concept.
Concept is the most undervalued, most underserved, and potentially most powerful of all the available story elements. It trumps character and your narrative skill in virtually every commercial genre, with the possible exception of literary fiction (where it is nonetheless valuable, just not the reader’s highest priority, and thus not the writer’s focus). As stated in the last chapter, when a new writer pens a bestseller, or even when a new writer breaks into the business, the story almost always possesses a compelling concept that creates context for that author’s stellar execution.
The flip side can be true as well, and perhaps it’s true for you: As I’ve said—actually, as I’ve warned—a huge percentage of rejection is connected to a weak or too-familiar conceptual context for the story.
How did you do?
Is your new concept better already? If so, celebrate, because what happens next—a new and higher execution of premise—may be the most joyous writing experience of your life. An explosion of potential may dawn before your eyes. If your concept meets the criteria and is, from your most advanced and enlightened story sensibility, something that will draw in readers, then perhaps your story-fixing issues reside elsewhere. Keep your strong concept in mind as we delve into those deep waters in the ensuing chapters, because sometimes a great concept gets lost in the complexities of story execution.
Remember that the issue isn’t whether your story has a concept or not (if it has characters in it, it does) but rather how compelling, fresh, edgy, provocative, and flat-out interesting that concept is. Again, it is a qualitative proposition, one in which you are looking for greatness rather than a placeholder.
Concepts are to stories as people are to personalities: Every person has a personality, for better or worse, but some individuals are so flat-lined that we say they don’t have a personality. Ironically, people with toxic personalities (you know who they are) are conceptual because you can spin stories about them, so this isn’t a question of positive or negative. Big, bad, dark concepts are often rich and promising. Rather—for both this analogy and for your stories—it’s a matter of presence versus absence.
Here’s an analogy. You always supply a résumé when you apply for a job. If the page is blank, then you still have a résumé … but it’s one that won’t work. The lack of a résumé is, indeed, still a résumé—it says a lot about you—but it will fail to get you the job 100 percent of the time. The same is true for your story’s concept. Maybe you haven’t given it a single thought. Maybe you don’t think you have one, or worse, you don’t think you need one. In that case, your concept is simply this: The story is about someone or something, without any complications or opportunities that create intrigue and interest. Period. This isn’t good enough.
Does a romance novel have a concept? Does a mystery have a concept? Does a historical novel have a concept?
Within these genres, the respective genre tropes become part of the concept. They are integral to the concept, and they speak volumes about the context of the story. Your job is to take that generic concept higher, with something specific and conceptual layered onto it.
Genre tropes are nothing short of reader expectations. Two people meet, they fall in love, it isn’t easy, they deal with it, they end up together … yeah, that’s a concept. That’s a romance. Someone commits a murder, an investigator gets involved, clues and complications pop up, and the perp is finally identified. That’s a concept. That’s a mystery. A tale unfolds amidst a specific historical time and place we are familiar with. That’s a concept. That’s a historical novel.
And yet, standout genre stories bring something more conceptual that extends beyond those genre expectations (tropes), something unique that frames the story within those expectations, all inside the parameters of the definition and criteria for concept. Thus those concepts, and the stories built from them, stand head and shoulders above the hoards of rejected manuscripts that didn’t take it to the next level.
Im
agine 2001: A Space Odyssey without HAL, the ambitious computer with human qualities. HAL was the concept: What if a computer took control of a mission based on its own agenda? The story wouldn’t be an iconic classic without that concept. It would be just another lost-in-space story, undistinguished and forgotten. The genre itself—science fiction, a spaceship lost in space—is fine, but it was made so much stronger by the addition of a rogue artificial intelligence computer taking over. From there the premise was already on steroids, ready to give readers something they’d never seen before.
The story—the plot and the character’s quest—emerges via the premise. (We dive deeper into premise in chapters five and six.)
Examples from Stories You Know
For the most part, the iconic and celebrated series novels of our times are born of a killer concept. A series is defined by its concept, even when each installment has a unique premise. In fact, each installment does have a different premise—a unique plot dynamic, with its own obstacles, stakes, and resolution—that arises from a singular concept, the one that defines the series itself.
Harry Potter is a character, but he is conceptual: He has wizardly powers, and he attends a school for emerging witches and wizards. That’s the concept, right there: “Harry is a young wizard, and he attends a prep school for fledgling wizards and witches.” There are no stories yet, no murdered parents, no bullies and villains … just this concept. Everything that happens springs from it.
