by Peggy Bechko
A writer writes, but let’s face it that writer also wants to and needs to sell. So the ideas he or she puts out there have to be good ones. Gripping, engaging, exciting, maybe funny. Every writer I know has more new story ideas tucked away in files on computers than can be counted. And most of them are good ideas. But are they GREAT ideas, because that’s what a writer needs to get that work sold whether a screen script or a novel or an article pitch.
So that leads us to the question. How to take one of those good ideas and make it great, a gripper if a novel, a high concept if a script? One that’ll hook the reader whether editor or script reader or your fans.
I’m going to focus mainly on the screenwriter here since we are on TV Writer, but really the principles apply broadly. The truth of the matter is a new twist on that old, yet good, idea is needed. Something that will make the story more compelling and fill seats in the theater or glue eyes to the novel’s page. The “high concept” in the movie biz. And a ‘high concept’ is: A story the writer can pitch in one good sentence that will allow a film exec or an editor to instantly visualize the story.