Mastering Story Concept Development

I love it when ideas smash together. Across my writing, the stories that mean the most to me came from those collisions.

Sometimes things came together with middle-of-the-night moments that led me to grab a pencil and scribble. (I learned to get these miracles on paper in full sentences without turning on a light.) Or I might have been humming a tune while washing dishes when the eureka moment happened. (Over half the time, the lyrics to the tune were related in some way. My subconscious is funny that way.)

Most often, the combination has not come from luck or the action of the muse. Harlan Ellison was the first to tell me to make lists of 20 (animals, cars, minerals, etc.) to escape the obvious. I hang onto these as categories amuse me (cognitive errors, arboreal primates, silent movie stars), and, when the muse does not show up and an idea is still nagging at me, I’ll look at these lists. And connections get made.

Does this result is a rich concept? No. It gives me a nice start to building a concept. Maybe.

Other starts come from dreams (which are vivid and raise questions). Or wondering about why another writer did so little with a concept. Or a lyric that gets stuck in my head and takes on a perverse, unintended meaning. Many times I've had a title pop into my head, written it down, and figured out the concept later on.

Basic concepts take ideas a step further. It may be that a character attaches to an idea. Or an idea feels stupid until the perspective changes. Of my anger at a news story blossoms into solutions.

Danny Simon said writers walk around with modeling clay in their hands. We mash, twist, and massage the lump until we look down and see we have an elephant. An elephant! That’s useful.

So the first step, whether it comes from dreams or collisions, or an emotional experience that won’t go away, is getting that elephant.

You can’t rely on the muse for this. You have to have a toolbox full of ways to generate concepts. For some people, it’s a high concept exercise of putting a known success in a fresh place. Die Hard in a plane (Air Force One). High Noon in space (Outland). Romeo and Juliet in the West Side (West Side Story).

Other people may get concepts by taking an idea further. When Philip K. Dick wrote “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” it led to what became Total Recall. But the concept of erasing memories was richer than that, and I strongly suspect that a much better film, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, emerged from a deeper contemplation of how, when memories are erased, so is learning and growth.

Sometimes, an idea is pushed into a different time, which is how Jane Austen’s Emma became Clueless and how The Tempest became Forbidden Planet.

So…
Master of Story Concept Development 1 - Have at least one go-to tool for turning an idea you like into a basic concept. Play with it. Practice it. Use it to create prototypes. (I like to write flash fiction stories based on these, but treatments and other short works count, too.)

Practice: Use your tool for creating basic story concepts for stories you’ll never write. In fact, create ten for every one you even attempt in a shorter form. The point is to be able to get your imagination to take on almost any topic that catches your attention and turn it into something. Get to the point where you could do this as an improv act. Or slam poetry. If you can’t produce a full page after coming up with a basic concept within twenty minutes, you haven’t mastered this. (It does not need to be a good page or one you’d pursue, but it has to be worthy of the concept.)

Once you have a basic concept, and it looks like it could be something bigger (feature script, novel), create a strong logline.

Here’s the form: 

To achieve an important Goal, the Protagonist must Act and overcome Obstacles, or Calamity will occur and she/he will not get what she/he Wants and/or Needs

Make the logline good. Really good. So that the hair stands up on your head. Don’t settle for anything vague or cliche. If you couldn’t get a “wow,” you’re not done.

Note: There have been times when I have run with an idea and created pages, chapters, even complete drafts before writing a competent logline. For some work, that’s just how it turns out. But don’t avoid this step. Even if you have a draft you love. Strong loglines will help in marketing. But, for me, they also is essential to providing focus. In fact, I use them for scene-by-scene analysis (though subplots may not benefit from a story’s logline).

Master of Story Concept Development 2 - Be an expert in creating wonderful loglines.

Practice: A great starting point is writing “wow” loglines for movies and novels you really love. Write a hundred or as many as it takes for their creation to become automatic. Write them for whatever you have done. Analyze the loglines of writing friends. Be able to write a better one for a movie that disappointed you.

Story Concepts are of little use if they don’t suggest possibilities. I call these OMG (Oh My God) moments. Part of Concept Development is having at least five of these. (Someone once told me that a good movie always had three memorable scenes, but push it to five. Not everything works out.)

The most obvious place to find your OMG moments is by knowing your genre standards. For instance, romances usually have a meet cute, a special place, a scene where you see why the characters are made for each other, a first kiss, a declaration of love, a dark moment, a grand gesture, and a happily ever after. (Horror stories, mysteries, thrillers, and other genres have similar standards.) You can twist these and subvert these… and you should surprise and provide more than people expect. But you can’t easily leave them out.

So, looking at your basic concept or your logline, does a first kiss that has never been seen before suggest itself? OMG!

Beyond genre, chances are that the logline will create expectations, scenes people hope to experience. Sharks imply chomping (probably of teens). Poverty implies a scene where hunger must be satisfied. A spy must at least come close to having her identity revealed. A surgeon must face an impossible case or lose a patient.

You must anticipate these expectations. That may mean asking people what they’d be looking for, any you might be surprised.

You must make such scenes OMG. I want to see a first kiss, but not one that merely checks the box. The first kiss must have a fresh situation or stakes that matter. Shock me.

You should have OMG scenes that go beyond tropes. Usually, these are attached to character (which I’ll deal with next week).

Master of Story Concept Development 3 - Develop a skill for creating more OMG scenes than you’ll need.

Practice: Before you watch a movie or read a book, write down the scenes that you expect to experience. If they are not included or they disappoint, consider how you would create them yourself. Also, if a scene disappointed you, how would you make it OMG? (You can also do this just from movie posters or book covers.)

As an advance practice, see if you can make scenes that impressed you better, raising the OMG score.

Note: While OMG scenes may come from prep, many (perhaps most) will sneak up on you as you write your draft. If you let them.

Hmm. Much more to cover here. Next week, I’ll take on research, characters (as related to concept), dilemmas and conflicts, and stakes.