Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Broken Story? Throw it out

We were talking about High Concept this last week. Essentially, what was it that made your story truly unique. As we all know, it is crucial to have a story that stands out in the crowd and rising above all the other submissions out there. As we were doing this activity, I had several writers that suddenly realized that their story was lacking that high concept. Now what?

The simple, but unfortunate answer is - start with a new story.

The deal is that if your story has nothing special in it, you simply can not make something up. You have to work with the material you have. If it isn't there, then you are stuck.

This issue brings us back to another reason for plotting your story far in advance. You have to know, before you put pen to paper (or fingers to the keyboard) what it is that will make this story of yours unique. What makes the story different from all the others out there and will make the editor or agent really stand up and take notice. Those of you that just have two characters and you follow what they do and see how they react when you throw a plot twist at them really are missing the point. Now, you may stumble across something in the writing, but my guess is that, in the end, you will still be missing that high concept.

I should remind you that high concept deals with the over-all story. It is not just a re-telling of the plot. It is not placing your story in a country or time that has not been dealt with. And it is not simply coming up with a new character. This deals with your twist and turn on a premise that has not been done before.

I remind you again of Michele Young's NO REGRETS. This is a standard Regency romance. The twist however, revolves around the heroine being untraditional and the hero falling for her for who she is and not what she looks like.

So, before writing any more on the current project you have, tell me what is so important about your story. What truly makes it unique? What will make me want to buy it? If you have no answer, you just figured something out today about your writing.

Scott

6 comments:

  1. I have had to do this a number of times. Some times I write three or four chapters madly and then go now what? So I agree. Plotting is the way to go.:)

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  2. I don't recommend throwing it out. Save everything in a file. You may wish to use it at a later date.

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  3. um...umm....great & valuable comments, guys. Let me ponder all of these thoughts. Meanwhile, I have two words in response to Scott's comments today- Michael Crichton. The absolute genius of the man was to take fragments of futurethink from magazines like Popular Science, and turn them into exciting stories, over and over. Stories no one else had thought of, or could compete with, with a well-written tenth version of a well-used storyline. I always admired that about the man, and never forgot that he said he took the concept of "Jurassic Park" from a reader's idle question to an editor in that same magazine. "Would it be possible to clone a dinosaur today, from DNA, if such could be found?"
    Maybe, maybe not, but it certainly did spawn one hell of a writer. Gone way too soon, and missed.

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  4. um...umm....great & valuable comments, guys. Let me ponder all of these thoughts. Meanwhile, I have two words in response to Scott's comments today- Michael Crichton. The absolute genius of the man was to take fragments of futurethink from magazines like Popular Science, and turn them into exciting stories, over and over. Stories no one else had thought of, or could compete with, with a well-written tenth version of a well-used storyline. I always admired that about the man, and never forgot that he said he took the concept of "Jurassic Park" from a reader's idle question to an editor in that same magazine. "Would it be possible to clone a dinosaur today, from DNA, if such could be found?"
    Maybe, maybe not, but it certainly did spawn one hell of a writer. Gone way too soon, and missed.

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  5. I was prowling through my office closet the other day and found about a dozen manuscripts I'd written over the years. They weren't "right" at the time. Sometimes, you just have to move on.

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