Query Friday: What is High Concept?

 

 High Concept

You're scrolling through twitter and an agent you're following tweets that their looking for High Concept ideas.

What does that even mean? Are they looking for stories set in the Alps?

Only interested if the writer has entered an altered state of consciousness?

Well maybe? But unlike the phase "I was unable to connect with the character," High Concept can be defined a bit more easily.

At it's core a high concept idea is one that can be pitched and understood in one to two sentences.

In my opinion one of the best examples of this is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

You don't even need a sentence to understand what this is about, it's all in the title.

Or looking at television, Smallville is a great example.

 

Concept: What if Superman spent his teen years in small town America?

 

Both these examples lean on very well established bases- Pride and Prejudice and Superman- and that can be part of a high concept pitch, but you can still have a high concept pitch without an established character as long as something is familiar and relatable to the audience.

The Hunger Games could be pitched as a dystopian society where children are forced to fight to the death as part of a reality TV show.

High concept is about commercial appeal and ultimately a marketing term, so a high concept idea will immediately tell your audience what they are in for and hopefully pull them along.

Happy Writing!

~B