If you want to sell books today—if you want to sell more than one or two, especially—you need to understand high concept.
Jane Yolen, at the SCBWI Springmingle conference in Atlanta this past weekend talked about how after publishing 300 books she still gets rejections and the one reason for the rejections that she made mention of was that the books were too quiet. I wonder if we can have quiet books that are high concept. I think maybe what editors mean when they say “quiet” or “slight” is “this story has no high concept”
I suspect that high concept can work for any author—even the quiet ones or the lyrical ones. I think Sarah Plain and Tall is a high concept book, in other words. I don’t think high concept means car chases, dinosaurs, or pirates. I want to look at this more in coming weeks, but for right now you should read what others, who know so much more than I know, have to say about high concept.
If you haven’t yet been to Alexandra Sokoloff’s blog, you are missing out. Start with her “What is High Concept?” post and then be sure to link over to Terry Rossio’s “Mental Real Estate” article. These two articles are really, really worth your time.
Other articles on high concept that I’ve Googled but not yet read:
- High Concept Defined Once and For All by Steve Kaire
- Conquering The High Concept by James Bonnet
- The Low-Down on High Concept by Alexis Niki
- Recipe for success? High concept. at the Waxman Agency Blog
tags: alexandra sokoloff, high concept, how to write novels, jane yolen, mental real estate, pitching novels, SCBWI, springmingle, terry rossio, Writing for Children
