High concept is one of the most understood concepts in storytelling. So what does high concept mean?
High concept means that a novel/movie/TV show’s plot can be described very succinctly in appealing fashion.
- Kid wins a golden ticket to a mysterious candy factory? High concept.
- Wizard school? High concept.
- There’s this guy who walks around Dublin for a day and thinks about a lot of things in chapters written in different styles and he goes to a funeral and does some other stuff but otherwise not much happens? Not high concept.
High concept is very often misunderstood because what it sounds like it means and what it actually means are basically completely opposite. It doesn’t mean sophisticated (opposite), it doesn’t mean cerebral (opposite), it doesn’t mean difficult to describe (opposite). And it’s very important to know what it means because although high concept is often a term used derogatorily, I am hearing from more and more editors that they want high concept novels, even for literary fiction.
Why? Well, my hunch is that the more media, the more Tweets, the more links we’re constantly besieged with, the more readers are drawn to hooks that we can easily understand and digest.
So not only do you need to know what high concept means, you might also want to consider embracing it if you’re thinking of a new project. But only if it’s true to the story you want to tell.
UPDATED 12/10/19
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D.G. Hudson says
High concept means you don't need a degree to understand what's happening in the story? It's usually there right in your face. This could translate into what appeals to the LCD (aka the masses), therefore making it profitable in the publishers' eyes. (Harry Potter & Da Vinci Code, two examples)
Writing seems to get its definition more and more from the marketing angle. Perhaps, sadly, this is a side effect of the growing pains affecting the publishing industry.
How about some literary examples of high concept? Does the reader even notice such a lofty concept as high concept?
Laurel says
@ Melanie: Start writing the Vampire vs. Zombie novel NOW. That is a great concept. Awesome. Dramatical, even!
And: as long as there is The Sound and the Fury I have no doubt that there is a real novel apart from Ulysses. It takes a Southern Gothic to match an Irishman, but there you have it.
Elizabeth says
Aha moment! Thanks for defining "high concept." I never quite knew what it was.
Bane of Anubis says
High concept = LeBron James joins forces w/ DW and CB to become the new most hated team in the league.
anti-high concept = Mugsy Bogues and Spudd Webb go on a cross-country odyssey to see if anybody still recognizes them (w/ a cameo from Earl Boykins).
Steppe says
An ancient ghost invades a military simulator starting the Apocalypse.
elizajane says
Reading through (some of) the "1001 Books to Read before You Die" I came to Ishguro's *Never Let Me Go,* which surprised me by being a High Concept novel, coming from a generally non-high-concept author. Is it a good book? Yes. Is it enduring like some of his other books? I don't think so. I think it's hard to write a high-concept book that endures. But a marketable one? I can see that.
BTW, Ulysses is one of the 1001 books that I was thinking of skipping. But perhaps not.
Biggest surprise so far: Christa Wolf, *Patterns of Childhood.* That was a book I needed to read before I died.
Anonymous says
Nathan,
I would really enjoy seeing your version of a good query letter for ULYSSES.
Laura Martone says
I get it. I do. Now… how to do it – ah, there's the rub.
Laura Martone says
Oh, and one more thing… Uh, Mira, good luck reading ULYSSES in a single night. And I mean that with the utmost sincerity.
gsfields says
Tea Party Zombies in Washington
…can non-fiction be High Concept?
Mira says
Marilyn, I'll defer to your friend (and Laurel). I've met my literary waterloo.
Laura, I read five pages and I'm going back to my nice novels that are easy to understand and always have happy endings. Nice to see you here, btw. š
Terin Tashi Miller says
Nathan: thanks so much. For a number of things.
1) for defining the industry's view of "high concept." Which, to me, sounds like a simple, x plus y = tons of money, movie rights, serial rights, foreign rights, rights, rights, rights, sales, sales, sales.
2) for adding that Ulysses is NOT "high concept," yet one of your favorite books of all time.
It is, indeed, a work of literature as art, or I guess I should say writing as art, which to me is the definition of literature.
Seems to me several of your blogs have actually reinforced my opinion of the current publishing/book selling industry–there is no more compelling reason to buy or accept a book proposal than "high concept." "High art," not so much.
So, those who plan to write "literary fiction" had best put away their dreams of sudden success and instant wealth. Until, as one commentor suggested, they're dead (and someone else sells their idea to a movie producer as "high concept"–a journalist winds up investigating a murder…)
And those who want only to "publish," to be accepted as a writer and perhaps get rich off of the least amount of words–a "treatment" that's declared "high concept," after a one-sentence "high concept" pitch, should instantly take heart: there is hope, and possibility, as apparently some agents (not you, obviously), and publishers, prefer not to read.
Mira: you can get Ulysses without a guide. You just have to read with your ears,without any distracton–read it out loud to yourself, in a closet if you need the isolation from other distractons, stumbling over the accent and some unusual words etc. And picture who's speaking and where they are and why and what they're doing and what they're saying. As if you're walking just a few steps behind, overhearing a conversation you've only stumbled into, in which you have, in the beginning, nothing invested nor any opinion.
But don't try to absorb it in a day, or a night, or a week. Or on the first reading. It's a thick book, filled with lots and lots of words. And, other than the feeling of the words, and some odd goings-on, it doesn't appear to be filled with excitement. Unless the concept of something never before (that time) done, or even attempted, with language excites you.
It is an amazing novel. I wouldn't say there's never been a better one written. But I will suggest it was so new, and so unusual, and so originally considered unsaleable and profane, it took a friend of Joyce's to publish it because no one else would risk it.
And now, look. Nathan Bransford, a literary agent in 2010, confesses it's one of his most favorite books.
But we're far more likely to someday see a movie about James Joyce than we will a movie version of his most famous novel.
Because reading actually can make your brain work. It can make you envision places and people and things, perhaps differently than what Sir Richard Attenborough or Steven Spielberg decide something should look like.
Here's a high concept: some kids playing in a tree house near their home discover books in it that take them to adventures–and time barely passes back at their house.
When will Hollywood get hip to Mary Pope Osborne's "The Magic Treehouse" series for kids?
This, I think, gets back to the basic problem: the publishing industry requires profits, naturally, and gets far more with a "marketing concept" for an idea than with a piece of art.
Too bad. There was a time, actually, when publishers profited from art. Scribner's would never have done as well without Max Perkins' "stable" of writers. Nor, arguably, would American literature.
Nathan Bransford says
terin-
I don't know – on the one hand, yeah, debut literary fiction is pretty hard to sell, especially when it's not high concept. On the other hand, Jonathan Franzen's FREEDOM is coming out, non-high-concept, and it's one of the most hyped books in years.
I think what's happening in the publishing business is what's happening with culture at large. The things that are popular are really really popular, and then everything else is appealing to a niche audience.
Nancy says
Nathan, it sounds like you're describing a log line, that one-liner you read to know what the movie is about: "Woman receives a treasure map and goes to Columbia to rescue her sister." (Romancing the Stone) This works for screenplays, why not for novels? It breaks your story down to a simple, compelling nugget. And if it's not compelling or simple, you don't have a strong plot into which you can build a sub-plot or characters.
Deb says
I'm getting the sense from the comments that people think high concept never equates to high art. I don't think that's true. Lord of the Flies is pretty high concept, despite being classic literary fiction.
I'm in agreement with Nancy based on your post, Nathan. Aren't we talking about the log line here? I don't think I can get Franzen's Freedom down to a log line, but he probably could.
Deb says
Okay, maybe not. Just read Jacqueline's comment on Save the Cat, and now I think I see the difference between the logline and the high concept (very nice, Jacqueline):
Take two elements generated by the same THEME that have a natural conflict or stark contrast between them, and look at them from far, far away so you can see the entire statement at once without shifting your focus.
Pan in just close enough that you can recognize what youāre looking at, and you have the 4-word High Concept statement.
Get a little closer, and you can see the volcano thatās going to erupt among those mountains in the distance ā and you have your 1 snappy sentence description.
Nina says
@Melanie: Great concept! If you don't write it, I will ;-p
Kristin: Chop, chop! You know you have at least one fan already =D
Myrna Foster says
Mira,
Joyce also wrote short stories. My favorite is THE DEAD, and you wouldn't need to read a book or take a class to understand it, though it wouldn't hurt to look up a brief biography; you might find his life more fascinating than his writing. If you can't find the story on its own, it's at the end of his DUBLINERS collection.
Nathan, thank you for this post.
lac582 says
I don't think it's so much about the pitch, the one-sentence distillation itself, and more just that 'high concept' is where the concept, the idea, is the instant strength of the story. It's the kind of thing that when you hear it you go "man, that's a great idea, wish I had thought of that!"
Or even if that hook is not your particular cup of tea, you instantly recognize that it has mass appeal. That the execution would have to really blow it for it not to be a commercial success.
Agents (or movie studios) like it because it's a lower-effort sell, people will want to read it/watch it as long as the execution fulfills the expectations set by the premise.
Anonymous says
Yep, I've got one . . . and I ain't tellin' no one.
The secret is a simple, wildly popular and widely understood concept, with a twist that has not been seen before.
lora96 says
Very informative, since I clearly did not know what that meant.
Also, current project is not high concept. It doesn't lend itself to a concise soundbite. Nor is it so erudite and brilliant that it wouldn't have to. Maaaaybe tighten up that plot a little.
lora96 says
@Karen: I love that! I always knew David Morrell was my kinda guy.
Nik says
If 'high concept' helps get readers (or audiences) then it works. Tagline, slugline or whatever. 'No one in space can hear you scream' – you know it's a horror film set in space. Mine is 'When she was a cop, she made their life hell; now she's a nun, God help them!' Well, I like it, anyway!
Lydia Sharp says
Great post! I love this topic. Here's another link that explains it in more detail.
Recipe For Success? High Concept
John Jack says
The term high-concept premise originated as a movie thing, and was co-opted by writers, probably as a consequence of publishers wrangling movie rights. Cultural diffusion.
It's not so much about the hook, a term I don't care for because of the hook, line, sinker, and bait fishing expedition analogy, it's about the complication, the dramatic complication.
Snakes on a plane. Dual complication pitting humanity against nature gone awry in precarious flight. Creepy crawlies in the air, oh, my. Revealed as a MacGuffin by comparing with Alfred Hitchcock's seminal The Birds, and coiner of the term MacGuffin. Hollywood comes out with a new nature gone awry about every few years. Bees, ants, worms, spiders, foliage, it was about time someone looked upward again.
High-concept premises translate easily to visual media. Low-concept doesn't. Subtext complications. Nuance that isn't so easily relevant to universal experience.
Take Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons compared to Cold Mountain. An orphan must make his way alone in the alienating world versus a soldier must make his own way home from the war. The orphan cannot find a sense of belonging, truely orphaned. The soldier is returning to his sense of belonging place. Not a few parallels in the latter with Homer's Odyssey which Joyce's Ulysses emulates. One of the better movie treatments of Ulysses is O Brother,
Where Art Thou, 2000, staring George Clooney in the reprise role of Odysseus.
John Jack says
My absent-minded intent was O Brother, Where Art Thou reprises Odysse but also Ulysses. Oh, well.
Daisy Harris says
I'm a HUGE fan of the one sentence synopsis. Which is pretty much a high concept line.
I liken the one line synopsis to " knowing what your book is about." I mean, if I don't know what my book is about, how will someone else?
Also, the one line synopsis can be helpful when writing subplots hay go astray. Yesterday I couldn't figure out why a scene I planned seemed off. Then I went back to my concept line, which is basically, newborn zombie girl's joie de vivre revives battle-hardened zombie soldier's will to live, but in process girl learns that knowledge comes with a price.
The scene I was writing had nothing to do with knowledge v innocence, depression v hope or any kind of depeninnng of main characters. So I dropped it and adjusted the subplot to re-enforce the main one.
Hence the value of high concept. For me at least.
Cool topic, thanks. D
The subplot scene
Dara says
Thanks for posting this! I'm not sure if my current WiP is high concept or not…and I may have to re-think it a bit. But my new project is, so that's a good thing.
Shell says
You just made my brain hurt. But thanks. I'm sure I needed it.
Julia Rachel Barrett says
Nathan – this is actually the most practical post I've read in a long time – great!
If you read these comments, I invite you to stop by my site and read my 'high concept' – no…not really – I'm serial blogging about our disastrous canoe trip in the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota and our struggle to survive.
Just got back home Saturday night.
š
Terin Tashi Miller says
Nathan: thanks.
You're no doubt right on target.
I'm just glad there are (still) agents like yourself out there not only willing to admit you have an interest in some niches, but also noting some niches still deserve attention even if they aren't REALLY popular.
ee hershey says
I think once you distill many books down to their one-line movie promo sentence, they'll seem to become high-concept. I'm still sort of confused by how high-concept differs from simply having a strong hook.
I loved "Juice in LA's" idea of having everyone describe their own novel with a high-concept description. And it would be a great project to do the same with some classic works as well!
Mira says
Terin and Myrna – thank you for the recommendations about reading Joyce. I'll keep those in mind. Appreciate it. š
John says
I'd like to see a relationship tree that shows how the massive jumble of literary terms are related when it comes to describing what sort of genes a novel has.
"Oh he's quite literary but he inherited the high concept traits from his father's side."
For example it's usually Commercial Fiction vs Literary Fiction, but now you see places wanting literary with commercial appeal, thus a high-concept literary piece. Then there are terms like "upmarket" and "upscale", etc. floating around out there that I stumble upon from time to time.
About that relationship tree: Forget it.
A relationship tree attempting to show all this would look like the hillbilly family tree–lots of incest and inbred novels running around barefoot in stained coveralls.
And nobody wants that.
Scott says
Nicole — steampunk is a recently-born sub-genre of sci-fi/fantasy that basically consists a Victorian-era setting melded with magic. (STEAM-powered society, but with magic or sci-fi elements, and often associated with geek/punk culture). See the wiki article for more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk
John Jack — a lot of people on here are confusing high concept with other things like taglines, pitches, etc. Thanks for clearing it up.
As a film guy I started incorporating the idea of high concept into most of my writing projects from the beginning. I find it helps you steer clear of sticky messes that you have to end up calling "literary" in order to excuse the vagaries and lack of plot.
Call me low-brow, but I say if you can't succinctly describe your plot in an exciting way in less than twenty or thirty words, you're in trouble and you need to rein things in.
Dan says
The best stuff is usually defined by strong characterization or an interesting plot. Almost every story can be described, more or less, in a one-sentence hook or elevator pitch. But "high concept" is a novelty act; a story that can be encapsulated or fully described by its title, "Snakes on a Plane" being a very on-point example. See, also: "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"
The quintessential high concept genre is the horror movie. Characterization in this genre tends to be flat or sterotypical because these people are fodder. The high-concept is the monster; monster-alien, ironic serial-killer, evil puppet, killer-leprechaun. Sometimes, high-concept manages to transcend its simple description; there's more to "Jaws" than just the concept of a killer shark. On the other hand, everything that is going for "Piranha 3D" is stated in the title.
Lots of stories have interesting premises; most of them, even. But they're not "high concept" because the real hook is a compelling voice or character or central conflict. A goofy idea executed with flat, stock characters and a conventional plot is going to run out of steam pretty fast.
In the movies, a very good director can get a lot of mileage out of a concept by stringing together inventive, splashy set-pieces that riff on the premise. But it doesn't necessarily work on the page; that's why "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park" are better movies than books.
I wonder if editors who want "high concept" are looking for novelty titles like "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," or if they're saying that they're looking for something new instead of the millionth urban-fantasy/paranormal romance "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" variation.
Anonymous says
Um, "High Concept"…
Top of the Empire State Building?
Legal Marijuana and a bowl of Rice Cripsies?
Champaigne at 40,000 feet?
"Fear of Heights" meets "Conceptually Challenged"?
Maybe: Roller skates in San Francisco?
(alright, I'll quit now)
(No I won't. Just whispering it to the cat. "Cat Whisperer!!" Cool!)
DiDi says
Sorry–I'm running behind these days. Just reading the blog and loving it. Making me think.
Suggestion re:
"Author Guy said…
Werewolves on the Moon.
My wife wanted that for the title but my publisher preferred St. Martin's Moon, so guess what the book's going to be called?"
How 'bout "Badass Moondoggies"
lol. Just had to…sorry!
Dan says
"Magic Fantasy Kingdom" isn't really high concept; it's a setting. I'd argue that "wizard school" is also the setting for "Harry Potter" rather than a high concept.
However the youth hostel/murder factory of the film "Hostel" is very much the high concept; that's the whole of the movie.
Concepts which were once novel, such as the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" urban-fantasy world or the zombie apocalypse have become sub-genres. The literary/monster mash-up went from a high-concept to a subgenre before people realized that the same joke isn't funny the fiftieth time. In the same way that the central gag of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" was really theadbare by the time they tried to use it to sell "Android Karenina," if there were lots of movies about snakes on planes, you couldn't really differentiate your product by resting on concept.
Of course, there are many genre products that continue to rest on a well-used concept and have nothing else to recommend them; there will always be B movies and pulp fiction.
jjdebenedictis says
So high concept means something that is easy to position?
(Where 'positioning' is a marketing term that means telling your potential audience what the product is so they can decide whether it sounds like something they want. A commercial for a movie positions the audience by telling them what sort of movie to expect.)
elfspirit333@gmail.com says
Re: Ulysses, maybe it would be more "high-concept" if it were described as a modern-day version of The Odyssey, set in Dublin.
It sure has lasted longer than lots of high-concept books.
Anonymous says
Every time I visit this website, and read this blog, I grow more depressed.
With each new niggling rule that's tossed at me I feel that yet another part of my soul has been torn off.
At some point you just have to follow your instincts as a storyteller and do what YOU think is right.
Nathan Bransford says
anon-
I think you must not have read the last line of the post.
Haleyknitz says
@Stu Pitt: even though you'll probably never see this comment for you: LOL
what if you can describe your high concept with only a few words, but those few words would give away the story? is it still a high concept, or is it something else?
E. Martin says
The classic film industry logline might sell to "pros" but it wouldn't sell to the consumer, which begs the question of why the "pros" are so fetishistic about it.
Try to imagine a book cover printed with just a title and a one-sentence summary. Or a movie trailer that's only as long as a logline and contains the same amount of information. Epic fail.
ANY book/screenplay can be reduced to a catchy logline by a clever (read: slithery) marketing mind. Most actual books and screenplays, however, are awful. What this means is that a catchy logline is essentially meaningless in terms of the quality of the work it is supposed to represent.
The loglines for any novel-length book worth reading or feature-length film worth watching will be reductionist to the point of laughability. Even scripts that start as loglines must be expanded to the point that the finished product cannot be honestly represented by the logline.
If it can, then what you have is not a feature film or a novel, but just a painfully long vignette.
It's only by willfully ignoring all the flops with fantastic loglines, and all the successes with terrible ones, that we fool ourselves into believing that the logline is a useful professional selection tool.
It's a fetish, the literary equivalent of a neat (but ultimately useless) gadget, a mere emblem of "coolness," and nothing more.
Maurice Broaddus says
i pitched my novel series as "'the wire' meets 'excalibur'"
Scott says
Remember, a tagline is different than high concept.
High concept is something that your story is or is not, and a statement that expresses the high concept ("Snakes overrun a plane in midflight!") is a sales tool to sell producers/publishers on the movie/book, not a marketing tool to sell consumers on it.
The latter would be the TAGLINE that you see on the movie poster/book cover. The tagline rarely tells you much about the plot. It's purpose is to excite a consumer:
"In space, no one can hear you scream." from Alien, or "The truth is out there." from the X-Files.
You would whip out your high concept line for an agent you run into at a conference and only have his attention for the next ten seconds: "Basically, my book is this: a killer dinosaur hatches out of little Billy's Easter egg!" You are not hiding the surprises from him, you're trying to impress him with the powerfully simple plot device, succinctly.
Then when that book is published, the publisher's marketing department would put something like "He just wanted a tasty Easter treat…" on the cover. This intrigues the potential reader into buying the book, without giving away the surprises.
By the way, this concept is totally copyrighted by me, don't you dare steal it! I KNOW you were going to…
Idem says
Thank you so much for this. I asked about high concept a bit ago in the comments to another post, and I really appreciate your addressing it here. Thanks to you I now know that, for better or worse, my story is probably not high concept.
Idem says
Could I try out an analogy of my own to see if I've got this right? What about in the realm of recipes…something which showcases bold, often contrasting flavors – like watermelon-feta salad – could be high-concept. On the other hand, biryani is a subtle mix of many flavors slow-cooked so as to meld together. In the watermelon-feta salad, you appreciate the conjunction of bright, strong flavors, whereas in biryani, you appreciate how the masalas have infiltrated the vegetables/meat, how the rice is flavored with lime and coriander. There's a place on the table for both dishes, but we enjoy them for different reasons.
Author Guy says
"My husband has his heart set for vampires going out in to outer space.
Maybe he's on to something?
I dunno… "
I've already got one of those half-written.