High Concept

It seems the trick to writing a publishable book is to write one that is "high concept." I keep encountering that idea in articles on writing and information about how to land an agent. That's what sells. It's what people want to read. Sure, you might write a character-driven literary novel (that may be redundant; I once heard "literary fiction" defined as fiction that is character-driven rather than plot-driven), but unless you have a high concept, nobody cares.

I don't mean to sound bitter. Honestly, I'm way too young to be bitter yet. Give me another ten or fifteen years, and then maybe I'll be bitter. But I don't care for this whole high concept thing. You have to put a twist onto your idea or combine genres or whatever to make it something new. What's wrong with simply having interesting characters and engaging writing? Not to suggest that my writing is the best out there or anything. It's possible my book is still nothing but crap, but in general, does anybody even publish anything that isn't high concept anymore?

I was working today on getting some new agent queries together. I haven't sent out any for a while because I'm not very happy with my query letter. I just don't know how to express what my novel is about in a few sentences so an agent might actually want to read it. When I think about what my book is about, I'm forced to acknowledge that it's simply not high concept at all.

So I was looking through this blog where an agent goes through queries and offers critiques. I hoped maybe I'd learn something valuable about how to put together a solid synopsis that would hook an agent's interest. Many of the queries were so bad as to be comical, and it was fun to read the agent's sardonic criticism of those. But then there were the queries that the agent liked and suggested she would request the manuscript if she received that query. And those successful queries all struck me as dumb. They described the kinds of books that certainly get published--I work at a bookstore and see books that I wouldn't want to read come in all the time--but they didn't actually sound interesting or like they would be very good. They seemed like soap operas because they all had such crazy high stakes or big twists.

Now maybe this is simply an issue of that agent's taste differing from mine. It's harsh and judgmental for me to say that those are dumb or bad books when all I mean is that they don't appeal to me. But it strikes me that it is more than simply a taste issue, that the trend in publishing is so much in favor of high concept that something else doesn't even stand a chance. Unless a book is written by an already established author, it can't break in without that something extra. And my problem is that sometimes books that I like suffer (at least in my opinion) from their high concepts. I'd rather read low concept stuff, but it's not even out there.

For instance, I read Tom Perrotta's Joe College last year. I liked it. I thought it was about eighty-five percent great. But then it had this high concept plot diversion that seemed like a complete distraction to me. The story is primarily about a young man from a working-class background in his junior year (maybe senior year) at Yale. There's a bunch of stuff going on that make it an interesting story. The character is drawn to two different women, one unattainable, the other not so desirable once she's attained. He's stuck between two worlds--that of Yale and the townies--as he's pulled between the two women. And then he goes home for spring break and drives his dad's lunch truck. I'm totally engaged up to this point. But then there's this whole side plot involving pseudo-mafioso characters fighting over lunch truck territory. That part of the plot makes it (in my mind anyway) veer into the territory of high concept, and I think the book would have been better off if all of that were cut out.

Another one that comes to mind is Michael Chabon's Mysteries of Pittsburgh. It's a similar story in that it features young characters struggling with romance and identity. But again there's a mafia side plot as well as a character suddenly discovering he's gay even though he's lived for twenty-two years without ever noticing that about himself before (I'll admit I might not be remembering the details quite accurately since it's been a number of years since I read the book, but the way I remember it is that the gay subplot felt tacked on and artificial, but maybe it's a difference in the way homosexuality is understood today compared to twenty years ago). Anyway, if the story was simply about a character struggling to figure out what to do with himself after college, I'd be completely with it. Add in those high concept plot elements, and I get turned off.

Hell, even those new Pirates of the Caribbean movies go off track by getting too high concept. What's wrong with a good ol' fashioned pirate movie? Why do they also have to be ghosts?

So as I kept looking over sample query letters I felt less and less confident that my book will ever be able to attract any agent interest. I think my only hope will be to enter it into contests or send it to small presses that publish literary rather than commercial fiction because my book isn't high concept, I don't think I can disguise it as high concept, and I don't want it to be high concept.

Maybe my only course of action is to continue moving forward with my next books and let this novel gather dust for awhile. I'm revising my children's book, and it's closer to high concept since it's a fantasy story. Then my next literary book that I'm in the early stages of generating material for is also more high concept than what I've previously done. I think I'll stand a better chance of coming up with a one sentence hook, anyway. Then maybe if I land an agent or publishing deal with those I could pull out the old low concept novel and sneak it onto the agent's desk.