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The Role of Concept in a Real-World Story

Quick story to encapsulate the mindset – complete with barriers and old tapes and other priorities – of the writer who struggles with the notion of concept.

Concept, of course, is the presence of something conceptual within a story. 

It’s not the story itself, but rather, the landscape for one.  A framework.  A compelling notion or proposition.  It can be thematic (as it was in “The Help), it can be an issue of character (as is the case in any successful series).  It can even simply be a fascinating moment in history, provided you don’t settle for that and launch a dramatic question within it.

Concept is one of the Six Core Competencies that I write about . Because it’s always there, yet not always something that is leveraged in the story… particularly in rejected stories.

Make a note of that.  One of the things that gets stories published is the presence of something compellingly conceptual at its heart.

In all cases, in all genres…

… the presence of something conceptual that becomes the context for the story… is something that fuels the story with interest even before, and always in context to, plot and character.

Thing is, concept has a different role, and a different nature, from genre to genre.

If you write in one genre only, then you need to understand the nature and role of concept in  your genre.

If you write in multiple genres, then you are a like a general practitioner in medicine, you need to become the master of several conceptual disciplines, each of them unique.

This is the thing missing from the conversation about concept…

… and why it confuses so many.  (Click HERE for a previous Storyfix post on this).  I experienced this first-hand this fall when I was teaching a full-weekend workshop to three dozen very passionate and accomplished romance authors.

I realized that I was the source of one writer’s confusion.  As a guy who makes his living writing and teaching this stuff, that was an alarming feeling.

Romance is one of the genres in which concept is always challenging and often confusing.  Because the genre itself is a concept, and from that writers make the mistake of not seeking a deeper level of conceptual framework for their stories.

Also, many writers use the work of their favorite romance authors as a model.  And those may not rely on concept as heavily as this implies they should.  Don’t be fooled, though.   They can get by on premise alone.  Their name IS the concept.

For us, though, we need to break in with something stronger than just another day in the love business.

Here’s how it went down.

I was doing my thing about concept, using it as the stage upon which the rest of craft shows itself.  A story doesn’t solely depend on skill and structure to work, the raw material of the story itself – the inherent conceptual grist of it – is a huge factor.

A boring, normal, slice of life story, well told,  will still be boring. Unless that life is interesting… which by definition makes it conceptual.  But a meaty conceptual framework… now that’s something to work with.

So there I was, doing  my whole concept dance, giving examples, defining and comparing and contrasting, asking for their concepts and analyzing as a group, and I’d used my favorite case study for concept, which is all the stories about Superman.

Ten films, hundreds of comic books, a major television franchise.  Each one of them, every single movie and comic and episode, with its own premise.  But each of them was framed by – arising from a landscape defined by – the CONCEPT itself.  The conceptual notion was was and is Superman.

That seemed to work.

(Quick note here: if you’re not aware that concept and premise are different things, then I hope you’ll dive deeper on this site for that; the difference is huge, and the very thing that might be hindering your progress, or better, empowering your success.)

On the second day, though, as we were diving into their own stories across all of the elements and criteria, one woman’s hand went up.  I’d noticed her body language over the course of the workshop – squirming is telling, and facial ticks speak volumes – so I sort of knew that was coming.

Her voice was shaky, her tone challenging.  “I write romances.  They’re love stories about real people in the real world.  I don’t write about superheroes or murders or conspiracies or paranormal powers or schemes or whatever the hell you mean by something “conceptual.”

She held up both hands to show sarcastic quotation marks with her fingers.

“So I don’t really know what this has to do with me.  Or with any of us.”

If you’ve ever been in that moment, when someone calls you out in front of a group, when they have a legit point (one that illustrates some combination of my own failure to clarify and her resistance because she was stuck in the limiting belief of a narrow paradigm), you know what that was like for me.

Could have heard a dangling participle drop in that room.

You see, romance is a great playing field for concept. 

Concept within a romance, or a mystery (perhaps the second most challenging genre within which to leverage concept… in both cases as differentiated from premise) is one of best ways to elevate a story from a very crowded field.

But you have to dig for it.

One of the writers in the room was having huge success – as in, hundreds of thousands of copies sold in the past few months – with her latest romance, and I used that story as an example.  (Click HERE to have a look.)

Her story had a killer concept. Killer, in the sense that it fit perfectly within the romance genre.  It didn’t rely on paranormal powers or superheroes at all, and yet it was the very thing that made the novel work.

In her story a recently single woman buys an old house, concurrent with meeting a handsome stranger in town.  As she begins to remodel, she finds an old journal hidden beneath the floorboards, telling a story – a love story – from half a century ago.  It had war and tragedy in it, too.

Boom.  There’s a concept.  No capes or ghosts in sight.

The hero (heroine, in the context of the romance trade, where they still differentiate gender in this regard) became fascinated by this.  As a means of her own healing, she wanted to track down the author and return the journals to him, and in doing so her path crosses not only with that of the handsome stranger, but with an entire family dynamic that links to the journals themselves.

That is conceptual.  It is a compelling notion, standing alone before we meet anyone (because the house and the journals were there), and it fuels the plot itself.  It is a catalyst for the story.

I hit them this simple example, too:

You have a love story.  Do you have a concept yet, simply by being a love story?  Yes… and it is as vanilla and pedestrian and less-than-compelling as can be, because so far it is exactly like every other incoming romance manuscript in this regard.  Two people, falling in love… somehow.

So what would make this conceptual, yet keep it within the mainstream romance genre?  Many answers raise their hand here.

A love story in a nunnery.  A love story among White House staffers.  A love story in the military.  A love story told in flashback in the presence of present-day dementia (one Nicholas Sparks used that one to great effect). A love story with amnesia.  With a violent ex lover lurking.  With a criminal past in play.  A love story in a real world in the presence of conceptual pressures… like office politics, legal issues, racial issues, sexual preference issues… the field is wide and long.

It could be as easy as giving your players conceptual careers — jobs that are interesting and vicarious, work that is fascinating and meaningful.  Or hobbies… maybe one is a skydiver and the other is terrified of heights.

A love story among brain surgeons, for example.  Or lawyers.  Or teachers.  Or bank robbers.  Anything that creates a compelling arena for your otherwise “real world” love story.

Nobody is suggesting you cast your romance with superheroes or spin them around conspiracies (ironically, there are sub-genres of romance that do just that, and each of them has its own expectations, limits and opportunities where concept is concerned).  The opportunity, rather, is to infuse your setting, your story ambiance, and your characters with something that is conceptual in nature, as defined by imbuing it with something that is compelling as a stage upon which your otherwise “real and normal” love story will unfold.

All effective fiction requires conflict. 

Romances are not a diary of “what happened” as the sole narrative spine.   By definition, there are problems that must be conquered, perhaps villains to defeat, and things to overcome… all of it presenting conflict and obstacles to the two lovers ending up together.

The source of conflict is your opportunity to become conceptual.

Really, in romance this should be obvious.  Because if the HEA (Happily Ever After) is a non-negotiable trope of the genre, then we already know how it will end – there’s no suspense on that count – they’ll be together somehow.  It is the “somehow” of that where the conflict resides, and is the opportunity for the writer to bring something conceptual to the exposition.

Later that day this writer cornered me in the courtyard outside the meeting room.  I couldn’t read her, but her face wasn’t as red, so I was encouraged.

She got it.  Said she really thought about it, and realized that there wasn’t a gap in the conversation after all, nor was there an exception where romance novels are concerned.

Conflict is universal to fiction (literary writers, shelve your exception to this and go with me here, for the rest of us this in always true).  When the source or genealogy of that conflict is conceptual, the story is already elevated to a place where your characters and your plot will be richer, more emotionally resonance, and perhaps most of all, more vicarious for the reader.

And romance is, if nothing else, a genre that totally depends on the vicarious ride it provides to the reader.

What is conceptual about your story?

Can you describe your concept without having to introduce a hero or a plot?  Is your concept a framework or a landscape for a story, standing alone as something compelling?

The acid test is when you pitch your concept just this way.

No premise.  No heroine, hero of plot.

If the listener says, “Wow, that’s really interesting, I’d like to hear a story told from that idea,” then you have something conceptual in play.

That’s what everyone, for decades now, has said in response to the concept that underpins every Superman story.  Without that cape and those super powers, there is no franchise.

That’s what we said when presented with the concept of Harry Potter: what if there was a school for paranormally gifted children, to teach them how to become better and more powerful witches and wizards?

Yeah, that worked.  All of the Potter books had their own separate premise, but all of them sprang from this one single concept.

In romance and in mysteries, you need to bring something conceptual to the setting or the character.  It’s harder, because there are boundaries.  But reality is full of conceptual hooks, and the enlightened writer will benefit from brainstorming your story basis in this regard.

That’s why Concept is one of the Six Core Competencies.  

And why you are missing a huge opportunity if you take the conceptual level of your story for granted.

*****

Would you like another set of eyes – professional eyes – to evaluate your concept?  Be among the first to experience my newest story coaching service:

The Quick-Check Concept Analysis, priced at $49. 

All I need is your genre, your statement of concept, and a brief look at where you want to go with this relative to premise.  By keeping it all under 50 words (the concept alone should be one sentence), we can see how conceptual your story landscape will be.

Well over half of the writers I work with get this wrong, either by skipping concept altogether or making it totally redundant with premise.  My evaluation will tell you what’s strong, and what’s missing, relative to your conceptual intentions.

A list of criteria to evaluate your concept is included, along with links to tutorials on the subject. 

Pay via Paypal, or ask me to bill you.  Turnaround within 72 hours.

(Note: this is a more focused, abbreviated program than the one I’ve been doing, with target criteria shown to assess your answer.  It’s new, and will be rolled out officially in January.  But it’s available now, in this new format.)

 

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17 Responses

  1. Back to the subject of romance….

    I’ve watched a few holiday movies of late. After all, ’tis the season. And in many cases, there’s a holiday romance that becomes the core story. Keeping this post in mind, I’ve noticed that meeting that person who will become the “significant other” can often become the first plot point. So long as that person significantly changes the main character’s life, comes in out of the blue unexpectedly–and everything thereafter is certainly a reaction to that all important meeting. However, it is rarely the concept.

    The concept is really shown as the stage upon which the romance takes place in these films because it’s so blatant. There’s some sort of Christmas wish, magic, myth about Santa Claus, etc…. But some a just about the hardships and calamity involving some very normal people’s problems that really have nothing to do with the holiday but seems more defined by the emotional quality that impacts the season.

    So, if you still have questions about this topic, want to see some clearly defined examples of how plot (romance) is not a concept, just watch some Christmas movies and you’ll discover it soon enough.

  2. @Mike–Yup, no magic formula. And putting all those techniques of craft to one side for a moment, what you said about sculpting David and “being able to see everything that isn’t part of the form” is probably the biggest difference between writing and most other arts. Words are sometimes harder to sculpt than granite. And whether you’re working with a granite block or a drawing on a sheet of paper, you can take it in as a whole just by looking at it. A novel doesn’t have the luxury of being taken in at a glance–or even by walking around it. There’s no line of sight beyond the page, or at most the scene, you’re working on. It’s a larger undertaking than the statue of David on many levels.

    And that’s one very good reason why story structure is so helpful. It divides the process into four smaller chunks. And if you look at each of the major milestones as high points, almost a cliff-hanger, or point of suspense that ends four intersecting parts or mini-stories, the sculpting becomes much easier. Think about how many eighteenth century novels were published in several volumes, each ending at a high point where the reader needed to get the next book to find out what happens. Now those novels are printed in one volume as a complete story. But if you were to think of your own story as being four shorter novels, allowing structure to guide what would go onto each part as the plot builds, how it would end on an important point that inspired questions that demanded answers in the next part, the task is not as gigantic as sculpting the entire story as a whole.

    It still needs refining, but this might be a way for folks to think about their stories that might be of help. I’m writing each part as a different file. I can stitch them together later. But I think it will be much easier to edit if I focus on the demands of each of the four parts separately and make sure they do the job they’re supposed to do first.

    Each aspect of a story also has quite a bit in common as you move the those concentric circles from larger to smaller. Each scene has certain criteria and a mission to focus on as well. And the best a writer can do is his/her best on one piece at a time.

    My analogy of using different forms of art (drawing) is to try to gain distance. In accumulating craft knowledge from a variety of sources, you eventually begin putting it to use in your own way. Art’s last post mentioned looking at screen writers, for example. Non-fiction writers borrow techniques from fiction to make their writing more dramatic. It can be a bit like walking through a maze and picking up a little scrap of knowledge here, another there, filling in the blank areas. Because all arts have their biases. Many literary writers snub their noses at genre or popular fiction–and vice versa in some cases. Yet one has knowledge the other may not. Are they willing to admit that? Not usually. So it’s up to us to pick the brains of everyone we can. That’s been my motto. And eventually, the David that is you’re own craft knowledge begins to take shape and the extraneous parts begin to fall away. It’s a process. One that takes a bit of a different path for each of us because we all come at it from a different angle. Sooner or later we all intersect at some point if we keep moving forward.

  3. Yes, @Robert, I know your sense of humor by now. 😀

    I’ve seen that first-hand, literally, because … “I can’t DRAW.” I can glance at a drawing like anyone else can, but I cannot do what my nephew does (damn him … 😉 …) effortlessly. He’s got the gift; I’ve got the eraser, which is the only end of the pencil that I seem to be able to successfully use. (“Bah. Humbug.™”)

    When you =read= a book, you don’t see any decisions. You only see the choices that were actually made. You can’t see what was NOT chosen. You don’t see the proofreader or the editor. (Unless, uhh, you have bought a “self-pub” Kindle-book that didn’t use one. Ick.) You only see “the tale.”

    It looks so EASY.

    And this (“hey, this is commerce, too …”) is part of what sells so many Writer’s Digest books, writing retreats, seminars, you name it: the commonly-held, comfortable idea that “writing is just like reading.” It isn’t. Isn’t. Isn’t.

    You CAN talk in general terms about commercial fiction. You can talk about strategies that are known to produce better results more efficiently. But you can never turn the creation of a [decent …] book into just a formula. YOU have to CREATE the thing, and then, you have to REFINE it. Time and time again, “two roads stretched ahead in the woods, and you took the one …” Well: “You took the one. Good luck.”

    The creation of anything will always consist of taking a block of stone and carving away everything that doesn’t look like David. (And then polishing it, square-inch by miserable square-inch, into a seamless shine.) The more you do it, and the smarter you go about it, the better your results will be or become, but it will never cease to be the creative process. “Being creative,” that is to say “with a specific $$goal$$ in mind,” will never cease to be “a process.” And, “a process” will never cease to involve choice. Your choice.

  4. Mike,

    Hopefully you know that last part was a joke…but I totally agree with what you’re saying. A lot of people looking at writing do see those lines as being too straight. Especially for those just starting out. It becomes a lot of books and notions and “Let’s see whose teaching work best for me,” or, “It’s all just a lot of rules that confuse and inhibit me. I just do whatever I want and the rules be damned!”

    I believe the main thing that makes writing difficult for a lot of folks is that they come at it from the outside and try to find the best way in–based on the easiest or most desirable road. If we were to look at writing craft from the same POV as learning to draw, we could line up hundreds of artists all with a different style, different techniques…and looking them over, we would all make choices about which artists we liked best, who is the most realistic, the least conventional, or original. But behind every skilled artist is a lot of years learning and exploring the various techniques available Some of them boringly conventional.

    You may call this process a sort of apprenticeship because they’ve worked with established artists who though they had potential and took them under their wing. Others went off to school and were just bombarded with an array of different methods and theories. All of which becomes an exploratory phase for learning and practice. Out of that comes a moment where all the techniques blend and the artist discovers themselves from a combination of all they’ve learned, fuses this together to form their own vision. It’s called exposure. Not to be confused with showing your work to others, but in exposing yourself to as many other works as possible.

    In writing, the tools are all in our heads, but the techniques are no less important. The exploratory phase still happens based on all we’ve assimilated on craft, fused with bits of style from the various authors we’ve enjoyed. You may have heard the piece of advice that says, “Read as widely as possible.” Same thing. You’re getting exposure as an artist, craftsperson, writer. No one can shut themselves up the “No Rules” zone and get to a high level of proficiency any faster. It’s trial and error and may take those folks even longer before they produce anything that clicks in anyone’s mind but their own.

    Every creative person I’ve ever met (and there have been more than a few) has had one piece of advice they all shared:

    “Learn the rules before you break them. Otherwise you won’t break them effectively.”

    Learning to write is a long-term commitment. How long may depend on the individual. But there isn’t any part of the craft that isn’t an art-form all its own. Just like a drawing may involve knowledge of anatomy perspective, shading…a story involves structure, characterization, dialogue, and a whole lot more. It’s a lot of work, but it’s also an infinitely expansible universe of things to explore and may even keep your interest for a lifetime, if you so choose. If you take it on as a boatload of rules you’ll exhaust yourself just thinking about it. If you think there’s a book with a title like, “Learn to write a best-seller in ten minutes,” you may as well play the lottery because your chances of striking it big is about the same. If, however, you look at it as an adventure, that this is something you genuinely love, it should also be a joy, possibly even the romance of a lifetime.

    That’s another thing most creative people will tell you. If you don’t love it, you’ll never make it to the finish line. Not to say you may not complete a draft, or even several. They just won’t be very effective. And you won’t understand why before frustration overshadows the joy and you grow cold on your manuscript.

  5. Well, we ALL hope (*koff, koff*) that @Larry is working on a third book in the series. But, while “the foot-bone is connected” has a certain ring to it, I’m not sure that it’s a good analogy in this case. The key problem with such analogs is that they encourage you to look at only one part of the whole, individually and at the exclusion of all else.

    When people read “how-to write” books, and especially when they read that stories are “structured,” that they are “engineered” and obey “physics” and so on, it’s easy for them to suppose that creativity follows some kind of formula. Well, from a “cart-first” point of view, it sort-of does. But you don’t write a story “cart-first,” unless you work for Harlequin Romance -or- you are writing any sort of story (please, don’t …) about teenage vampires. 😀

    You can look at any commercially-successful story or screenplay and observe that it does follow a pattern, at many levels-of-detail, but this doesn’t mean that the pattern comes first. (Stories that “follow a formula” are “formulaic.” No one wants to read a story and feel like they needn’t have bothered to [buy and] read “it,” yet I daresay that all of us have done so.) No, we want to be interested and to be made to feel engaged with the story at all levels. We all want to find the story … to read, let alone to write … that we want to read twice, three times.

    And there’s no point, during the creation of such a thing, where “the formula,” “the structure,” is actually -driving- the creative process. It’s guiding it, shaping it, checking it, but “still, you really are making all this stuff up.” There’s no pre-determined bright-line stretching in front of you such that the only (yawn) thing that you have to do is to follow it and keep turning the crank. There’s no decision that you’ll make that isn’t a decision; that has only one “right” answer. (And yet, when you look back over your shoulder, the path being taken will be familiar.) Rules are the straightedge rulers, the try-squares, the levels, that you hold your work-in-progress up against from time to time, but they don’t dictate to you what absolutely must go where. Thank goodness.

  6. I may not teach writing, but I do know teaching: physics, all different levels of math, chemistry, and biology. So, I relate to the story about the romance author who can’t see the connection. I get that in my line of work as well: teenagers wondering what math and science have to do with the real world.

    There is a lot of power in relating things to the world of the audience (which I was pleased to read that Mr. Brooks did). However, there is also a lot of power in learning from what does not at first seem to apply. A lot of the case studies on this website (and even the author’s own “Deadly Faux”) are not books I would normally choose to read. Not because they’re bad books, just not my type. However, I can learn from each of them.

    The romance author missed the universality of story structure and the whole illustration of concept and premise using a well-known example. It reminds me of my students when I show exactly where they would use something I teach and they say, “I’ll just pay someone else to do that.” They’re not trying to make the connection.

  7. Mike,

    This right here nails it to the wall:

    “I personally think, though, that terms like “concept,” “plot,” and “premise” are befuddled in writer’s minds because it is supposed that they somehow are different. “Mutually exclusive,” even. Whereas I think that a truer statement might be that they are “a wheel within a wheel.” They’re “different levels of detail.” A macroscopic view, a microscopic one. First (concept) you must interest me in the realm of your story. Then, having done that, (premise) you must interest me in the specific story that you have to tell. Having done THAT, you must (plot) keep my pages turning – or my fingers flipping – all the way from Long Island to L.A.”

    Two thumbs for tossing that one, mister 🙂

    It’s a much better way to look at the popular writing phrase about a good story unfolding like the layers of an onion. But that’s usually used to describe only the plot when really it’s everything. A universe within a universe within a universe…ad infinitum. Or at least as many ads as makes up your story universe.

    We often talk about every part of the story serving the whole, but how many think about all those rings extending out from the nucleus of concept, right on outward to characters and even dialogue being a whole different level to master accordingly? Yet it makes up one body. The heart pumps the blood which carries the nutrients that feed everything else.

    Hey, maybe there’s a future SE/SP sequel called “Story Biology.” A.K.A., how concept is connected to the foot-bone, and the foot-bone connects to the leg-bone…

  8. It could very well be that “the moment when we first get into Real Trouble” is the moment when we suppose that, say, “A Love Story™” is the sort of thing that actually deserves to have the “™” mark attached to it. That is to say, “it (AND, therefore, the players that are in it …) is merely ‘a Thing.™'”

    People are never like that. And, “stories (thank God …) are,” in the end, “about people.” Lose sight of that at your story’s peril.

    To take your post’s example as an example … there must be “an engaging moment,” occurring BEFORE your story actually begins, during which I, as a reader, “choose(!) to come on-board” with your character. Your character needs to be in some situation that I can both relate to, and that interests me … such as a woman who decides to step away from her present life and to become interested in an old house in an interesting place. (Make ME interested in that place, by showing me why she is … and, why she is like me.) From that point, the discovery of an old pile of letters opens up an entirely new set of options: an entirely new set of characters from a different time, all of whom, I am now quite sure, your character can relate to. “Tell me a story …”

    I personally think, though, that terms like “concept,” “plot,” and “premise” are befuddled in writer’s minds because it is supposed that they somehow are different. “Mutually exclusive,” even. Whereas I think that a truer statement might be that they are “a wheel within a wheel.” They’re “different levels of detail.” A macroscopic view, a microscopic one. First (concept) you must interest me in the realm of your story. Then, having done that, (premise) you must interest me in the specific story that you have to tell. Having done THAT, you must (plot) keep my pages turning – or my fingers flipping – all the way from Long Island to L.A.

    “Tell me a story” comes last, really. It’s the final step that starts with “driving past restaurants, deciding whether you want seafood or chicken,” and then goes to a glance at the menus posted outside the door. As they say: “if you want to persuade someone to come and eat your dinner, first you’ve got to stop traffic. Then, you’ve got to stop traffic AT your door. Finally, you’ve got to persuade them to come inside. (And, lately, to enjoy the meal so much that they “check in” and post “selfies” of themselves with your delectable concoctions . . . ) “Concept,” then, is the thing that causes them to push the brake pedal. All the rest then follows.

  9. The following got me thinking

    > “The source of conflict is your opportunity to become conceptual.
    > …
    > Really, in romance this should be obvious. Because if the HEA (Happily Ever After) is a non-negotiable trope of the genre, then we already know how it will end – there’s no suspense on that count – they’ll be together somehow. It is the “somehow” of that where the conflict resides, and is the opportunity for the writer to bring something conceptual to the exposition.
    > …
    > Conflict is universal to fiction… When the source or genealogy of that conflict is conceptual, the story is already elevated to a place where your characters and your plot will be richer, more emotionally resonance, and perhaps most of all, more vicarious for the reader.
    >
    > …being different is critical in romance and mystery, because those genres are so tightly troped. X meets Y, they fall for each other, something challenges that, they end up together. If the “thing that challenges” the love affair isn’t conceptual, if it’s “life gets in the way,” then there’s nothing about the story that really sets it apart. The entire bet is left with the writing and the emotional resonance of the characters… which can work, but why not imbue the thing with something fresh and more vicarious?”

    So would it be right to say that concept is tightly tied to conflict. Which would also mean a concept is most evident in the first plot point once the story is executed?

    In that case, if one is having trouble coming up with a concept, would it be good for one to look at the conflict in an idea and see how one can make it more interesting? (As a shortcut/tool to find the concept)

    For example, the story idea: what if a guy has trouble finding work.

    To imbue (I never use such words ^_^) this idea with conceptual powers, look at the point where the guy might first encounter the major pain and see how to make it more interesting. In this case, it’s graduation.

    Like: What if a guy has the looks, smarts, and GPA and graduates from college but can’t find work afterwards because his past shyness and timidness gets in the way?

    This is just something that I keep seeing from your posts. Since all stories have conflicts, and concepts seem to revolve around conflict, I figure just look at the point of conflict in an idea to uncover a concept. Am I somewhere in the ballpark?

  10. Great post, Larry and a fabulous reinforcer of the valuable analysis you taught all of us that weekend.

    I’m putting it to work on my latest story.

    Thanks again for sharing all your knowledge.

  11. Thanks so much for using One Lavender Ribbon as an example of concept. I always love hearing your thoughts on conceptual literary ideas. I truly believe unpublished authors need to find a high concept idea to sell in this difficult market. Great writing and great concept are an unstoppable duo!

  12. Along with Martha, I believe I have an understanding of this. But I want to put it to the test. I like a good mystery and have seen concept become a bit amorphous in this genre. My understanding of how concept works in other genres didn’t always seem to apply in the same way. So I’m glad you tossed that into the current post as well, Larry.

    In fact, it helped me to further decode what is conceptual in a mystery by readying your previous post on romance novels. Often we need to get distance to be able to see what we are looking at too directly. I believe these two genres have come to rely on exterior play rather than those internal underpinnings. For example, both rely heavily on the main characters dilemma. In a romance, we often focus on the heartbreaking tragedy that brought the hero to the moment of meeting the stranger who will challenge them to love again. In a mystery it is often the battered and crusty detective who has to get out of their own way in order to put together the clues before the killer strikes again.

    So we often come at the notion of concept through the main character. Which can work if the hero is the first of his kind in their genre like Superman, or utterly unique within their time and classifications like Sherlock Holmes. Meaning, if you’ve got a character that is so unique in their abilities, so fresh in their field of genre that they could become the underpinnings of a great many stories themselves, then that could work as a basis for concept. But what about the writers who have a good, or even great character–quirky, flawed, tragic, eccentric–but isn’t exactly going to turn their genre on its ear?

    For mystery/detective stories, it’s usually going to be based on whatever those underpinnings are beneath the crime. Not just because someone was murdered in a brutal fashion, or was killed by some unconventional weapon. It’s the broader undercurrent of the how, what, and why of it all. “What if” a person felt a deep connection with astrology and uses the the zodiac to decide who their victims will be? Or: What if a charismatic professor had the ability to trigger angst-ridden, influential young people all over the country into “Following” his example and killing for him?

    Characters, premise, setting, are all just layers that get spread on top of that conceptual notion. Characters (hero and villain) need to have a unique connection that grows out of concept. Possibly even one another. “The Following” is a great example of those parallels between the hero and villain. But that connection is no more a concept than the love story between two people in a romance. Concept is the soil of circumstance that sprouts the seeds of character–and everything else within the confines of the story. It doesn’t mean your characters have to come across as second rate. They shouldn’t. I prefer stories when character is so deeply rooted in concept you have a hard time distinguishing between the two. However, as I have come to understand this notion of concept and see it taking shape within my current work, it really helps keep everything else in balance. Like understanding the confines of the chess board where each of the pieces need to move, separate and distinct, yet serving one universal story strategy.

    Or, if I might use a food analogy…as Larry often does: concept might’ve been the turkey stock I achieved after boiling the carcass left over from Thanksgiving dinner. It became the foundation for everything else I added to the soup and held it all together with its flavor throughout. Discovering the conceptual foundation gives the writer a better idea of how to guide their story across the playing field of structure.

  13. Awesome post, Larry. I love it when you pick out a competency/tool/principle and apply it to specific work. It always brings it into clearer focus and expands the possibilities for using it. Thanks!

  14. @Martha — great question. There are a number of things that a good concept does to a story, and one of them is “makes it unique/different.” But that isn’t all, and it isn’t critical (because, for example, at the conceptual level every Superman story and every Harry Potter story and every other series story is the same, but with unique “premises.”

    Where you’ve nailed it here is this: being different is critical in romance and mystery, because those genres are so tightly troped. X meets Y, they fall for each other, something challenges that, they end up together. If the “thing that challenges” the love affair isn’t conceptual, if it’s “life gets in the way,” then there’s nothing about the story that really sets it apart. The entire bet is left with the writing and the emotional resonance of the characters… which can work, but why not imbue the thing with something fresh and more vicarious?

    Same with mysteries. Investigator tracks clues, hunts down the guilty party. Most mysteries overcome this with the injection of a “thriller” element (a different genre: mysteries look back at a crime and ask “whodunit?”, and thrillers look forward and ask “what will happen and how do we avoid it?).

    Something unique and fresh and different is the secret sauce of romance and mystery, while the other genres, by definition, already depend on a conceptual proposition of some kind (like, what if the spirit of Joan of Arc was reincarnated in an unsuspecting woman who is asked to save us all?).

    You get it, Martha. You always do. Thanks for contributing. L.

  15. Larry, would you say that concept is the thing that makes a story ‘different’?
    Which makes ‘this’ love story different from all the other love stories? A slight twist in the trope that gives it freshness?
    I think I get it, but am curious if I’ve really got it . . .

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