Honestly, this is the first pitch in these comments that actually interested me to hear more. Getting the “twist” of a story right is much harder than people assume, and they wrench the plot with their bare hands and insert cyborg zombies and samurai and whatever they can to make their twist SEEM interesting, but without actually piquing any interest. This one makes me ask questions, like “how is beyond the grave handled?” Or “what will her storytelling look like?” I’m reminded of Ambrose Bierce’s “The Moonlit Road,” where a woman’s murder is talked about between three different perspectives, including the murdered woman’s own perspective. She lives in a moonlit world and her interactions with her son and husband only cause them grief and horror, but she can’t understand why. She’s dead, but she still misses them.
@@TheLyricalCleric Thank you so much for the wonderfully thought through comment, and for the potential comp title! I've had this idea for a few years now, and have slowly been building out the characters and plot while I write other, less serious stuff to practice my prose. It means a lot to me that this sounded interesting to you!
You are a treasure to be found by writers who understand that it takes hard work, to write a good novel. But having your advice, expertise and encouragement is a Godsend!
I had no idea what high concept was before today, but apparently my novel is high concept? After it's revisions, I'm marketing it as X-Men meets The Hidden Legacy, tackling themes of intolerance toward witches and warlocks, while said witches and warlocks are foretold to save humanity from a Demon Apocalypse. Also, thanks again for an informative video about the industry, Alyssa. When I think I know everything, I still end up learning something new.
You know, not much has been done with angels that I have seen... certainly not like vampires and demons. Sounds like a possibility if it is done right.
Oh, seems like you're working on a novel too, how's that coming up? I can see that her video helps a lot. Is that your first book? And, are you an indie author too?
I'm reading through "How to Write A Damn Good Thriller" By James N. Frey and he just talked about this very thing. He also kind of touched on it in "How to Write A Damn Good Mystery" too. But thrillers are a bit broader in scope. So it applies more there.
What if someone died but woke up in a stranger’s body immediately after? I’ve got a few novels I’ve started and stopped over the past year. This video helped me realize why this idea has stood out the most to me among them all. I think it’s the most high concept pitch among my current projects. Maybe that’s the book I really need to work hard on finishing right now. Glad the YT algorithm sent me here!
Thanks for your helpful videos! I am currently finishing my 2nd self published novel, about Ancient Rome. I’m now rereading & editing the manuscript as my graphic designer finishes the covers. Your videos always give insightful info about the publishing industry.
So this is where I'm at for my story "Crossfire" - A hardboiled but flunking lady cop, with the help of a street samurai, seeks to bring her mentor's killer to justice, uncovering an entire network of corruption all the way to the highest offices in the city. It's meant to be a gritty cyberpunk mystery and/or thriller, with a buddylove thread running through it. Cop and criminal working together, but also kind of against each other. Themes that come up for it are about justice vs revenge, loyalty, honor, trust. I had the idea last year and it's just never gone away. So now I'm working on the pre-writing. I really hope I can get what I want out of it, and make something people really want to read, or find compelling.
I hope you don't mind me saying, ... I think it needs something else. Keep working on the "What if..." possibilities. Your mix of genres is interesting.
Hmm. That Alyssa's idea was great. It helps me, too. Seems like you're also working on a novel at the moment. How's that coming up? Is it your first and are you an indie author also?
I feel like the "highest" concept narratives, worlds, stakes, characters ect. Are essentially found in anime/manga at this point. "an infinite tower that people climb to grant wishes at the top, but who all forget what they wished for before they get there..." or "a group of genius kids learn their orphanage is a human farm for world ruling demons, and try to escape and survive in an Alice in Wonderland-like setting". But the best of them essentially can become too "complex" to be defined by their high concept setting anymore. They become something a person can't even describe in words altogether. Often its a "feeling" they carry or "theme" they explore that overrides the meaning of their narrarive. ... I do think they can be inspirational. Especially on the complexity department.
Sure, I'll sub. This is the first vid I'm seeing from you and I feel like I learned something. I'm hoping I've got something at least APPROACHING high concept...I hope.
Last Flight of Pegasus is a high concept novel. By accident, six professionals find Noah’s Ark, were a creature that failed to disembark, collects five of them for future meals, but the one that escaped its hell remained in a torment for days to come.
Great video! I didn't realize that most of my story ideas are developed through this "high concept" method, which is really cool! Two books I'm working on could be described as "the Handmaid's Tale meets the Walking Dead" and "if Stephen King wrote Twilight."
Great advice as always. My go at a concept - 'Where did Count Dracula come from?' - I have already written around 50% of it and it has turned into 3 books.
For my book Omniscient, I don’t know whether I should make it: “Amidst a dystopian society, a girl must escape a government experiment, both in the real world and the realm beyond dreams.” or “Sharkboy and Lavagirl if it was a teen dystopian fantasy.” Or neither? I am going to be querying next week and some agents ask me to summarize it in one sentence.
Thank you so much, Alyssa! My High Concept Pitch: Three generations of Eastern-Europen women living through communism and how their lives change when the Berlin Wall falls and their corner of the world finally joins democracy and capitalism. Would that type of a historical fiction be of interest to anyone in the USA to read?
Currently working on: In a world where advanced technology has blurred the lines between human and machine, a man from Earth's past must unravel the secrets of an ancient AI and confront a twisted enemy to save a planet on the brink of destruction, all while grappling with his own grief and the question of what it truly means to be human.
This makes sense. I have always wonder what makes it high concept. Thanks for explaining. My high concept pitch: SHOW ME A SIGN X THE LOST YEAR. After the death of her caregiver, a deaf Ukrainian immigrant finds herself alone in America, where her survival depends on finding her last surviving relative - her father.
What if getting your dream job meant surviving excruciating torture while preventing someone you love from getting killed? What if this journey allowed you to discover you had powers you didn’t know you had? What if your initial goal to support your family shattered when you realized you need to save the whole city? That’s my WIP.
My High Concept Pitch: In the mists of humanity’s collapse, Filio, a social service robot has to choose between reuniting with his father figure or to choose his new found family.
My problem is that my series have high concept premises … but I’m an epic fantasy nerd so I want the whole buildup so it actually means something and end up having a non-high premise first book 😅 but you can’t sell the first book on the series premise 😢 For instance, I have a forbidden romance series, but it doesn’t hurt unless the ‘forbidden’ part is established first.
Brotherhood of the Stranded: (The Last of Us meets Leave the World Behind.) The lights go out, electric cars stop working, the military is defunct, and a young man crosses an America filled with three hundred million starving people to reunite with his younger brother.
I didn't know my little vampire romance was High Concept. I just wanted to write a happy ending for a simple Dracula/Barnabas Collins type story without all the convoluted plots the majority of vampire romances have. The endings of Bram Stoker's Dracula, House of Dark Shadows and other such movies where the poor vampire gets killed depress me. I am tired of 'vegetarian' vampires, and want him to actually be a danger. "A 500 year old vampire finds the reincarnation of his lost love and sets out to seduce and turn her." The idea of him loving her too much to use her for a meal, and having to struggle against his primal instinct to kill is so tantalizing.
I attempted dropping Medieval Britain (knights, royalty, stuck-up nobles, etc) into a sci-fi world. Toss in a bit of the old college try (first 1\4 to 1\3) of the book and "aliens".
Mixing and matching familiar tropes and dressing it up as “high concept” is why there are so many disposable flavor-of-the-month books out there these days. I remember one writer telling me that her publisher requested a “vampire chef romance” at the height of the vampire craze years ago. Does anyone remember it? Garbage ideas make for garbage fiction.
In this sci-fi crime procedural, a defense attorney for an extraterrestrial species-colloquially referred to as "The Greys"-has to advocate for three clients guilty of unauthorized and excessively grisly human mutilations.
The crazy thing about asking "What ifs..." is that's literally 100% of Kings success lol. That's all the man does while wrapping in blue collar work characters and dialogue.
"A man spends two years looking for his girlfriend's killer, before coming to the shocking realisation he's gonna have to do it himself... and zombies..."
im getting drafted into the idf soon, and were on the brink of just duking it out with iran and of theyre proxies... so obviously i started writing a book about a tank crew that gets stuck behind enemy lines in lebanon😂! im just in the second chapter but i planned my plot out and i'm thinking of the book having a bunch of nice survival chapters just rucking through lebanon, mixed with some action like in encounters with hasbulla patrols for example.. the main character is the tank commander and i know its kinda basic.. but im thinking of having him develop in terms of leadership etc and have him go from not realy getting his crew members, to being realy close to them etc.. i have plans to add some major things into the plot but i want to get a little further in before i do. putting my writing skills aside (i think im a solid writer but that's up to the respective publisher to decide) i think the book idea is very relevant, and i belive it would do great in an israeli bookstore. but im not sure about how that would look in an american bookstore.. anyway, do you have any experience with authors from other countries trying to get their book published by an american publisher? (i do have a us citizenship if that helps..?) in my place, would you consider doing that or should i just get some israeli publisher? EDIT* anyway thanks for all the writing advice its very helpful and ill try to implement as much of it as i can!
That might actually work, but it needs another element to set it off. A fallen empire? Ancient discoveries? An alien invasion, or maybe it's a human invasion? Or maybe a simple old "destroy the one thing the bad guys are after" quest? Maybe in an Avatar-like twist, your main character is a billionaire who turns coat? Or, maybe it's the countries who are the baddies and the billionaires are actually trying to save humanity with a new technology (and it's actually an old technology that the countries have either lost or given up in favour of a destructive ideology --- like giving up farming in favour of socialism.) I hope you don't mind me just brainstorming for you???
More brainstorming ideas: maybe the planets resources are depleted severely and so the search is out of necessity. Or planet is about to explode/stop spinning for some reason. Maybe aliens interfere which speeds up or slows down the process.
I was watching Gilda (the movie from 1946) and asked myself, what if we saw film noir movies from the point of view of the femme fatale instead of the tortured man who always tells the story? I wrote the book and now I'm soon to be on submission.
Pardon me, but I hope you don't mind me asking: Is she a guide? From another world? Showing your hero the way to his destiny? You'll need more, I think.
@@adamhenrysears3288 I don't mind you asking at all. And I agree. I'm still working on it. The broad strokes are there though... She's not a guide, just a girl living on the frontier of two warring kingdoms. He's been injured, and he'd be traveling through enemy territory, but to her, it's just the same forest, just different branding. Now, I just need to condence that to a single pithy sentence. :)
@@michaelburke4048 I think you need at least one more broad stroke to get to high concept. How about actual apocalyptic zombies? Or the "Captain America" actually being a superhero who crash landed, but he never reveals his identity (since that could be infringement)? Or the two kingdoms are at war because they are Russia and Ukraine, or Israel and Palestine? Or you could take a page from Kass Morgan's The 100, and one of those kingdoms has just returned, or maybe the superhero was thrust forward into the future after an apocalypse. Just brain-farting here. I don't know if my own can be considered high concept, but I think it has enough originality to it to at least earn its keep.
"An accidental bond between a magical society diplomat and a tormented drifter unearths dangerous truths about their precariously allied nations... and secrets about themselves."
For now, I think my story is Percy Jackson meets Wheel of Time in a coming-of-age homage to classic fantasy, but with a modernized tone and intricate lore.
I'm writing a Django meets Now You See Me meets social commentary, Can four immigrants into the US shift the whole nation away from racism during the reconstruction era? It's revenge goes system shock. Is it possible individuals pull something like that off?
I have two high concepts, which is better? When a cop uncovers his father’s secret role in a nefarious company, he must forge an uneasy alliance with a notorious syndicate member, risking his career and confronting his own principles to unravel the corporation’s dark scheme and bring justice to light. Two men are forced to confront the dark legacies of their families and the shadowy company that binds them. As their paths diverge, they must decide between loyalty and justice, risking everything for the truth.
I think these are good starts. But to me these are more like broad plot summaries. To make the pitch, I’d hone in on the concepts that would make your book stand out. For example option one: “If you found out your own father was a criminal, would you turn him in?” Maybe this isn’t what you’re going for, but that seems like the concept here. Nail it down to one tight sentence - the absolute core of the idea - and I think option one is leaning toward a good high concept pitch.
A Queen steals the divinity of a God out of revenge, but destroys her planet to do so. Now she struggles with what to do with it, and if she is fit to take the gods place.
A word of warning, not all high concept stories can have their high concept content presented in a pitch or advert. For instance, you can absolute pitch - “Vampires go to Alaska for 30 days of night.” However, you can NOT pitch, “A boy who sees dead people gets counseling from a child therapist who’s died and doesn’t know he’s dead.” So…just know that. A high concept piece STILL (despite her claim) needs a competent story (writing) penned by a competent author in a lot of cases. 30 Days of Night is an incredibly mid comic book that resulted in a mediocre film. But that didn’t stop it from selling an insane amount of copies, spin offs and the film turning a profit. So….a high concept is usually enough. But if you can’t pitch the high concept to the public on its own, then execution matters that much more.
This was an excellent video. Thanks so much. Do you have any special advices for writers of pre-young adult novels? I'm writing a character driven fantasy novel for the age-group (11?)12-15. I have so many questions about writing for this age group, but find it difficult to formulate them all as I'm not fluent in english. I have worked many years with children so I know how to speak with them and (more or less) how their brains work. This is however my first novel so I struggle to get it right. I've spent almost as much time on reading about writing and watching videos on the subject as actually writing, lol. Most advice I've seen is about writing for adults.
How does a utopian society that exists in intergalactic space(their star system and home planet are rogues in the vast, empty expanse of space between galaxies) deal with the knowledge that their planet is doomed by an eminent supernova? When you're that far from other stars and planets, where could you even go? The idea came to me while listening to the Audiobook of Neil Degrasse Tyson's brief novel "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry."
Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment lives with Newman in Jerry Seinfeld's apartment building. Jerry's uncle, the shoplifter, is mysteriously murdered. Kramer comes through the door at an inopportune time.
the story im writing is this: a teenager who desperately wants to be normal finds out he has a superpower and now has to fight for his life while covering up his past. its honestly weird how simple it is lol. especially considering the story is a big mess, like, a whirlwind of emotions.
My WIP as high concept: "A school bully messes with the wrong kid, but that kid is trying to learn how to solve his problems without beating them up.""
Just my opinion, but I think you might need to be more specific about the kid. 'A dinosaur theme park island goes wrong' is the kind of thing we need to pique interest, I think.
Southern gothic horror novel based on a true story set in the early 1980s about a 12 year old girl assaulted by a stranger and blackmailed by a 14 year old psychopath, her revenge - and it's aftermath,
Hi, Alyssa; I don't know if you read the comments. (I hope you read mine.) Can you please do a video on book signings? How do we do one? Do we email the bookstore and ask them? How do we make it interesting, and do we ask our publisher for extra things like bookmarks or free treats? Please make a video on this. Also, do you have any friends who are agents in non-fiction? Plz make some videos on non-fiction too. :) Have a good weekend !
Mortal Tether: Teenagers inherit the earth after an alien virus twists all adults over age 20 into immortal monsters. Lord of the Flies meets Stranger Things.
ma'am please make a video on- how to change the pov from one to another when I wanna switch and add new story of the running protagonist from the first pov. for example- I am writing a couple story but the story belong to the boy pov and they spent the time together and after the half of the story I wanna switch to girl pov with revealing her secrets with the day spend with him. how I can write that. And is it ok, If I am adding new pov after half of the story? please reply.
Go and read Trust by Hernan Diaz. He did multiple POVs, more like a book within a book within a book, and pulling the pieces perfectly together at the end. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2022 with Trust, and I have a feeling that the structure of the book contributed to the prize.
Goblin Princess is the story of a homeless orphan girl who has to stop a goblin uprising to save the goblins. The big battle scene happens in the third book, Warrior Princess, where she leads the goblins to war to save the kingdom. Dark Lady is the story of a lone swordsman who confronts a dark sorceress and finds that she's his long lost sister. That one has wizards, demons and a corrupt politician.
No one writes better than me. Allow me to prove it with a poem. Be inspired. Battle The Beast The night came quicker than usual, as it caught me by surprise Before I found some shelter, the darkness dimmed my eyes My panicked heart was racing, my legs instinctively took flight I aimlessly ran in circles, in the horror of blackest night In the distance I could hear it, the sound of a terrible beast I could hear its claws scratching, I could see the flash of its teeth There was no way to outrun it, for it traveled on all fours So, faced with just one prospect, I turned and faced the noise The blade I held, had a faint sparkle illumined by distant stars The beast knew I would use it, as it stalked me from afar My wait drug on for an eternity, as I firmly stood my ground But soon it would be over, for I heard approaching sounds Throughout my life, I purposely planned, to never travel at night It was the only way to miss the beast and avoid a deadly fight Yet, life has a sense of justice, not willing to let me cheat those plans From facing the beast who stalks me, from facing what haunts a man A silhouette sprang out of the blackness, striking hard the first blow I vollied back with the tip of my blade, causing the beast to moan Collapsing together, mortally wounded, the dawn began to break I saw the beast that had attacked me, it was myself, in whom I faced Battle The Beast By William Cooper From the book, Coop's Corner Collection Inspirational Stories and Poems Check out the first poem, (Lisa Moo Moo Marie) turned into a country song.
What if a young girl with a healing gift finds out she is the daughter of the God of Death. Percy Jackson inspired, but I created my own world with my own pantheon of gods and deities.
Set in an age of sword and sorcery, a lost spirit employs a group of misfits on a mission that will bring their lives purpose: to prevent a malevolent force from resurrecting and taking over the world.
When a man joins a superhero team to uncover the truth about his daughters death, he discovers that she is still alive, and he must save his world from her.
