I often feel like a failure when I look at how much others write. I’m a slow writer. I’m a slow learner. I started my first novel ten years ago and finished it a couple of years later. I thought it was decent, but I sent it to two agents and three editors and realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t very good.

I got a couple of requests for full manuscripts on it, but as I submitted, I realized that I didn’t have a good plot, for one thing. I had started with the first four chapters firmly in mind and a very vague idea of how the story would end. And when I wrote my synopsis I saw that I hadn’t set up a conflict in the beginning of the story that paid off in the end.

After that I took a couple of years off from writing, so I could read and study. I read old books, and new books, award winners and obscure books. I read good books, mostly, but a few bad books. And I read a lot of writing “how to” books and blogs. I read about plot, about conflict, about characterization. After all that reading, I came to realize that a great concept is imperative if I want to break in and be published.

Why? Because we have to snag easily distracted readers quickly and while voice will do the snagging once the reader gets to the first page, premise is what causes the reader to flip the book over, open it up, and read the first page to begin with.

Most of us read the back-cover copy before we read the book. I think that most of us should write the back-cover copy before we write the book.

If we can deliver our story in fifty words and then again in 250 words and finally in 750 words, and if in those synopses we can sell the premise, the reader will flip to the first page and there, if you have voice, you will close the sale.

I can’t start a novel now until I have my synopses written. It’s my way of testing a concept to see if it can sustain a whole book’s worth of words. Do I have characters in conflict? Will the characters grow? What is my theme and what symbols can I put in to highlight that theme? How can the secondary characters interact with the theme?

And, most importantly, can I boil the whole thing down to fifty words that are intriguing enough to make an agent/editor/reader want to continue to the two-paragraph blurb, the first page, the first chapter, and on?

Jay Asher had a high concept when he looked at suicide after the fact, through a series of tapes left by the victim. Veronica Roth has a high concept with her dystopian novel about a city where people camp on one virtue and blow it up until it become a vice. Those are high concepts, I think, because they deal with issues we are familiar with and interested in, but they are presented to us in a fresh way.

The rest of us may not be on the cutting edge. I can’t necessarily come up with high-concept plots. What I can do is come up with a solid plot where a character is in conflict and there seems to be no way out of her predicament. In the end she will find a way out because of something she learned or some strength she gained through her trials. I can take her story and express it in fifty words, and then expand that fifty words into 250 and 750-word synopses.

So here I am, eight years after I completed my fist novel, and I don’t have a drawer full of manuscripts. But I do have a better understanding about why some stories work and others don’t. And an added benefit to writing short synopses first is that they enable me to write faster, once I sit down to work on the novel. Once I have a synopsis hammered out, I know my character a little. I know why she does the things she does. I know where she’s headed and what she has to learn. Knowing these things makes it easier to write her story.

What about you? Do you write your synopses first or last? Do you have a fifty-word synopsis that gives a compelling concept before you start your novel?

I’m not sure how to add to the high concept discussion. I thought Alexandra Sokoloff’s blog post on the topic was great.

Book Chook asked if I thought high concept was necessary for picture books and another friend told me she didn’t find Sokoloff’s stuff helpful. So let’s try to figure out high concept together. Because I don’t really know what it is. If I did I might be able to pull down a fifty thousand dollar advance…or…maybe, with luck, I’d be able to snag an agent, anyway.

Let’s see if we can take Sokoloff’s understanding of high concept and see what it might mean for YA and MG novels or even picture books.

I’m going to paraphrase Sokoloff and interpret her, so you should go over and read her list, first. She says high concept is:

• universally thought about—AIDS, cloning, sexual harassment
  • for YA and MG novels that list might be…sex, homosexuality, suicide, sex, terrorist attack, video games, sex…umm, OK moving on…
  • for toddlers…food, diapers, learning new words, family, love, bedtime, reading with mommy or daddy, playing with brothers and sisters
• universally feared
  • for YA and MG novels again…suicide, 911, terrorist attack, shark attack, the dark, being unloved, being the object of ridicule, being vulnerable, gym class
  • for toddlers…being left behind (no, not in a Jerry Jenkin’s kind of way. The toddlers I know have given no thought to the rapture or Armageddon. Oh, yikes! Could you just see it? There is a Left Behind series for teens, I wonder if anyone has ever pitched Left Behind for toddlers…oh, wait. The toddlers weren’t left behind, they were raptured. heh heh),  OK sorry. Back on track here. What else are toddlers afraid of? They are afraid of having their favorite toys stolen and of giving up their security blankets.
• universally experienced (by us or by someone close to us)
  • for YA and MG novels that would be…first kiss, school, success, failure, embarrassment, divorced parents, learning to drive, moving away from home, blamed for something you didn’t do (HOLES)
  • for toddlers…eating, sleeping, pooping…heh heh…loving mommy and daddy and siblings, loving puppy, getting spanked (or time outs…discipline of some sort–being told “no”)
• universally held with passion (loved or hated—controversy sells)
  • for YA and MG novels…homosexuality, environmentalism, religion, spirituality, suicide, pregnancy, abortion
  • for toddlers…spanking (okay, toddlers are not up on controversial topics, but their parents, the ones reading to books, are) single-parent homes, homosexuality
• universally intriguing—what would you do? Do you know anyone who would do that? Why would anyone do that?
  • for YA and MG novels…what would you do if you got a tape laying the responsibility for someone’s suicide on you? What would you do if a vampire fell in love with you? What would you do if the world, as we know it, ended tomorrow?
  • for toddlers…where does the sun go at night? Where does the snow come from? Why do I have to go to bed before everyone else does?
• universally unexpected—they offer the twist
  • for YA and MG novels…TH1RTEEN R3ASONS WHY was a twist on suicide, TWILIGHT was a twist on Eve and the forbidden fruit (no it isn’t a twist on Romeo and Juliet—the book’s cover artist got it right. It’s about forbidden fruit, not forbidden love.) ARTEMIS FOWL offers the twist on the fairy story with his L.E.P. Recon force and with the child criminal mastermind who really loves his parents and with the human getting the better of the fairies (Let’s face it, Eoin Colfer’s books are full of twists—he has a twisted mind, I guess. I adore his books), HOLES twists the story by having the great, great. great, great, grandsons fulfill their ancestors obligations.
  • for toddlers…WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE twists the naughty child into a king. Dr. Seuss twisted words first but situations also, often making the weak person the hero. I’LL LOVE YOU FOREVER (that book people love or hate—it would fit in the controversial category) twists the son’s and the mother’s roles.
• universally known (a person or event)
  • for YA and MG novels…the end of the world as we know it, Jack the Ripper, Atlantis, the president’s daughter, princesses
  • for toddlers…mommy, daddy, sister, brother, Barney, Micky Mouse (etc.), babysitter, preschool teacher, friend, stuffed animal
• universally cool
  • for YA and MG novels…super powers
  • for toddlers…funny sounds and funny adults doing stupid things

I want to add one of my own. Maybe this isn’t high-concept. Maybe it belongs in another post about longevity and literature, whereas high-concept is about commercial fiction that flashes hot and burns out quickly. But I want to add to all this universal appeal that we have going on here. What makes Narnia and Anne of Green Gables so appealing? What makes me think Harry Potter will still be on the shelf long after some of the others I’ve mentioned will be gone? These books have twists and they are about universal fears and experiences but I think they have one more universal element :

• universally longed for
  • for YA and MG novels…love, acceptance, a happy ending, security, success, a cause greater than ourselves, the hope of a creator who loves us and will take care of us, the desire to be worthy of love, the desire to live with integrity, the desire to save the world
  • for toddlers…love, acceptance, a happy ending, security, success, the hope of a creator who loves us and will take care of us, the desire to be worthy of love, the desire to live with integrity

That’s it for today. But studying this list has made me excited to plot out some novels. What fun! Of course, actually writing the things is somewhat less fun. The rough draft anyway. Oh, me oh my, it makes me cry. And then I sit and pout. But when I’m done with draft number one, “Hurray!” I stand and shout.

OK enough nonsense, already. I’m trying to get off the caffeine this week and I’m apparently getting loopy.  Please note that it is a truth universally acknowledged that bad rhymes are not universally loved. Please don’t add stupid ditties to your query letters when you send off you high concept ideas to the agents and editors who are anxiously waiting on your brilliant proposals.