A clear cut protagonist is not necessarily needed, but you know what's needed? Well-written characters and solid plot lines, all tied together by competent prose 😎 Look forward to read and review Casket Girls... INFAMOUS🦀
I think part of the issue is High Concept (HC), requires you to know your concept front and back, and then write a story about a character(s) who subvert it or tear it apart. Like in art, you must first learn the rules of perspective, balancing the form, depth, so on, for both animate and inanimate objects in your drawing. Then you can start breaking the rules and creating styles and designs. The difference between style art (like cartoons let’s say) and scribbles that sort of come together, is the knowledge of the rules of form and function and what’s appealing to the human eye. Or a lack thereof. So, you have to know the rules before you can break the rules, and break them in the “correct” way. And that’s hard as hell to do for a lot of people when it comes to high concept. First you need some kind of functioning high concept, then you have to figure out how to screw it up, and THEN you toss characters and plot at it. For example, a new kind of car that runs on salt water is invented. This could revolutionize everything! But there are 2 problems: 1) oil, gas, current car manufactures, and oil drilling companies, and politicians worried about payoffs and/or jobs in the economy would bury it as soon as they heard about it. 2) the actual inventor doesn’t care about any of that. He’s a teenager who made it so he could go fast and make a bunch of race cars and race. That’s his obsession. Enter the POV: a driver who loves speed, understands the economy and how this could help his country and the world, and for a backstory he’s an ex-US Army Ranger who likes speed even more than explosions. When the world hears about this after a big race, it’s do or die to some final destination live on internet drone-podcasts to both prove it works and reveal to the world this new engine. Sounds fun. Pure HC would likely strip most of that away, and set it 20 years after the engine went mainstream, and you have an ex-oil worker struggling to survive in a world that no longer needs him, and in some parts actively hates him. Along the way he figures out the engine can be disabled if ‘XYZ’ is done to it, but because of his old school skills, he figures out an easy fix can make it immune. This is a problem when the engines start failing, fast, everywhere, and he has to decide if he lets them fail or if he fixes them, and shows others how to do it. And maybe there’s an evil group that wants them to fail, and don’t like a talented mechanic fixing them. Story ensues. There you go. How’d I do? If I missed the mark, well, like I said, High Concept is damn hard, and often times can seem way LESS exciting, since you are asking a kind of ‘What If?’ for society itself, and then tossing in random characters to explore those questions. I would argue that some of the biggest problems with HC is that the characters have to carry the work all the way, the concept has to be both fully understood and understandably written for your audience to pick up on it, and that you have a lot of writers who are lazy at worldbuilding in a smart way, which HC absolutely demands. Just my long winded take on it. Thoughts? 😜
So, your hook is, 'what if saltwater fuel was invented in year xx?' The story is more of a thought experiment/exploration of the consequences. That will be divided in a number of assumptions and sub questions. - How does the engine work, and how is it different from conventional engines? - How is it produced and distributed? - Who would be against it, who would be in favor of it? - What would get in the way of general adaption? - How would oil rich countries adapt to this? In regard to the characters, and why I like HC so much, is that they are not chosen ones. They are as you say POV. They background allows the writer to have them explore the concept to its fullest potential. The conflict is very similar. But it's challenging because a. is needs to explore the concept, and b. needs to be exciting for the readers.
SPECIAL REAM OFFER 50% DISCOUNT Want to help us develop more content, like our lore videos with original art by various artists? Instead of Patreon, we use REAM Stories. A new subscription platform was developed by Indy creators and is specially made for readers and writers! We are making changes to the page, like including additional rewards. Recently, REAM added a lot more options, like PROMO CODES. And they are working on Kickstarter integration! So, keep an eye on our community tab! Firstly, you can join our REAM page for free by becoming a follower and get bonuses like wallpapers and other benefits! However, Now, you can become a REAM member with a 3-month 50% DISCOUNT on the Informant, Associate, and Coordinator tiers using promo code RRF and get more awesome content. Visit our REAM page today. Not only will you get previews of unpublished chapters and stories. The higher tiers will receive E-books, STLs, and more as the page grows. It would already help us a lot if you become a follower for free.
Interesting discussion. I'll need to read Casket Girls soon. Don't sell your characters short, you've got some great ones. IMO, high concept or not, the lack of relatable characters is a problem fro a lot of classic sci-fi. Consider Asimov, for example
I would say the Hero's Journey isn't a template for a good story. It's just a form that a lot of stories have historically used. Arguably less stories than some might think, since fitting a story to the exact pattern is a bit of a stretch sometimes.
A good story and character are not wrong it keeps our sanity in check in the modern age, readying the opinions of the author in works is something I only started to get more into in the last 12 years, because I am lazy reader, a very, very, very lazy one,
A clear cut protagonist is not necessarily needed, but you know what's needed? Well-written characters and solid plot lines, all tied together by competent prose 😎 Look forward to read and review Casket Girls... INFAMOUS🦀
I think part of the issue is High Concept (HC), requires you to know your concept front and back, and then write a story about a character(s) who subvert it or tear it apart.
Like in art, you must first learn the rules of perspective, balancing the form, depth, so on, for both animate and inanimate objects in your drawing.
Then you can start breaking the rules and creating styles and designs.
The difference between style art (like cartoons let’s say) and scribbles that sort of come together, is the knowledge of the rules of form and function and what’s appealing to the human eye. Or a lack thereof.
So, you have to know the rules before you can break the rules, and break them in the “correct” way. And that’s hard as hell to do for a lot of people when it comes to high concept.
First you need some kind of functioning high concept, then you have to figure out how to screw it up, and THEN you toss characters and plot at it.
For example, a new kind of car that runs on salt water is invented. This could revolutionize everything! But there are 2 problems:
1) oil, gas, current car manufactures, and oil drilling companies, and politicians worried about payoffs and/or jobs in the economy would bury it as soon as they heard about it.
2) the actual inventor doesn’t care about any of that. He’s a teenager who made it so he could go fast and make a bunch of race cars and race. That’s his obsession.
Enter the POV: a driver who loves speed, understands the economy and how this could help his country and the world, and for a backstory he’s an ex-US Army Ranger who likes speed even more than explosions.
When the world hears about this after a big race, it’s do or die to some final destination live on internet drone-podcasts to both prove it works and reveal to the world this new engine.
Sounds fun.
Pure HC would likely strip most of that away, and set it 20 years after the engine went mainstream, and you have an ex-oil worker struggling to survive in a world that no longer needs him, and in some parts actively hates him. Along the way he figures out the engine can be disabled if ‘XYZ’ is done to it, but because of his old school skills, he figures out an easy fix can make it immune. This is a problem when the engines start failing, fast, everywhere, and he has to decide if he lets them fail or if he fixes them, and shows others how to do it. And maybe there’s an evil group that wants them to fail, and don’t like a talented mechanic fixing them.
Story ensues.
There you go. How’d I do?
If I missed the mark, well, like I said, High Concept is damn hard, and often times can seem way LESS exciting, since you are asking a kind of ‘What If?’ for society itself, and then tossing in random characters to explore those questions.
I would argue that some of the biggest problems with HC is that the characters have to carry the work all the way, the concept has to be both fully understood and understandably written for your audience to pick up on it, and that you have a lot of writers who are lazy at worldbuilding in a smart way, which HC absolutely demands.
Just my long winded take on it. Thoughts? 😜
So, your hook is, 'what if saltwater fuel was invented in year xx?'
The story is more of a thought experiment/exploration of the consequences. That will be divided in a number of assumptions and sub questions.
- How does the engine work, and how is it different from conventional engines?
- How is it produced and distributed?
- Who would be against it, who would be in favor of it?
- What would get in the way of general adaption?
- How would oil rich countries adapt to this?
In regard to the characters, and why I like HC so much, is that they are not chosen ones. They are as you say POV. They background allows the writer to have them explore the concept to its fullest potential.
The conflict is very similar. But it's challenging because a. is needs to explore the concept, and b. needs to be exciting for the readers.
SPECIAL REAM OFFER 50% DISCOUNT
Want to help us develop more content, like our lore videos with original art by various artists? Instead of Patreon, we use REAM Stories. A new subscription platform was developed by Indy creators and is specially made for readers and writers! We are making changes to the page, like including additional rewards. Recently, REAM added a lot more options, like PROMO CODES. And they are working on Kickstarter integration! So, keep an eye on our community tab!
Firstly, you can join our REAM page for free by becoming a follower and get bonuses like wallpapers and other benefits! However,
Now, you can become a REAM member with a 3-month 50% DISCOUNT on the Informant, Associate, and Coordinator tiers using promo code RRF and get more awesome content. Visit our REAM page today.
Not only will you get previews of unpublished chapters and stories. The higher tiers will receive E-books, STLs, and more as the page grows. It would already help us a lot if you become a follower for free.
LOL. absolutely not.
Interesting discussion. I'll need to read Casket Girls soon. Don't sell your characters short, you've got some great ones. IMO, high concept or not, the lack of relatable characters is a problem fro a lot of classic sci-fi. Consider Asimov, for example
I would say the Hero's Journey isn't a template for a good story. It's just a form that a lot of stories have historically used. Arguably less stories than some might think, since fitting a story to the exact pattern is a bit of a stretch sometimes.
A good story and character are not wrong it keeps our sanity in check in the modern age, readying the opinions of the author in works is something I only started to get more into in the last 12 years, because I am lazy reader, a very, very, very lazy one,