How to Generate and Critique Story Ideas (Part 9): Test Your Concept

Here are five questions you can ask about any idea you come up with to help determine if it’s something worth pursuing as a script.

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” Those are the words of Dr. Linus Pauling, the only person to ever win two Nobel Prize Awards. This is sage advice, especially for writers. A strong story concept is one key to the commercial viability of a novel, short story, or screenplay.

Over the next two weeks, I will run a ten-part series: How to Generate and Critique Story Ideas.

Today in Part 9: Test Your Concept.

Now that you have several tools to help you generate story concepts, you need a way to assess them. Here are five questions you can ask about any idea you come up with to help determine if it’s something worth pursuing as a script.

Does the concept have a grab?

The concept should have significant narrative elements that “grab” a reader’s imagination, elicit curiosity, and arouse an emotional response.

These elements may include the core conceit, key characters such as Protagonist and Nemesis, the central conflict, themes, where the story fits into its genre, and so on.

Does the concept have an indicator?

The concept should “indicate” to a reader the general direction the narrative will take, and that it promises to be an entertaining ride.

When any studio executive, producer, manager or agent hears a story concept, they want to be able to see the overall contour of the plot and what is compelling about it.

Does the concept have an audience?

The concept should conjure up a distinct “audience,” one a reader can readily match to a targeted, demographic group.

Anyone who is in a position to buy a script when hearing a story concept for the first time will immediately think, “Who will want to see this movie?”

Is the concept big enough to be a movie?

The concept should feel “big,” something that could sustain the interest of a script reader (and eventually a moviegoer) for up to two hours.

From a buyer’s standpoint, this question is directly related to the previous one: “Will the experience of watching this movie satisfy the viewer who spent $10 to see it?”

I have framed these four questions from a script reader and buyer’s perspective, however they work at the level of a writer thinking about the story strictly as a writing project:

• Does the concept have enough of a grab to give me confidence I can write a fully fleshed-out and entertaining story?
• Does the concept have a clear enough indicator to suggest a strong Plotline and Themeline leading to a satisfying resolution?
• Does the concept have a specific enough audience so I know for whom I am writing the story?
• Does the story feel big enough for me to find the narrative elements I need to write an engaging story of one hundred pages or more?

If those questions don’t speak directly enough to your writer’s soul about a story concept, this one surely will:

Does the story resonate with me on a personal level?

You may have stumbled upon the greatest high concept of all time, but if you don’t connect with it, if you don’t sense much in the way of enthusiasm for its narrative possibilities, and/or if the story doesn’t play to your writing strengths, it’s probably not a good idea to write that story.

You need to have some sort of personal connection with a story to find its emotional core and imbue its characters with life.

You need to have a passion for a story to keep luring you back to the writing and push you to FADE OUT. Writing is hard work. Writing something for which you do not much enthusiasm is really hard work.

With any story concept or logline you consider writing, you should ask yourself each of these questions seriously and honestly. As I suggested before, there is little point writing a spec script based on a story concept that has no chance of selling. Other than writing pages, which of course is valuable, writing a spec script based on a mediocre or inferior story concept is finally an exercise in futility.

Think about it this way: When you talk about trying to become a Hollywood screenwriter [or equivalent in your country outside the U.S.], you are not competing against your neighbors or friends or anonymous writers in a miscellaneous screenplay contest, you are going up against the best of the best, working writers who know the craft. That is your competition. And the first test of whether you can compete with Hollywood screenwriters is your story concept.

Part 1: What if…
Part 2: Halliwell’s Film Guide
Part 3: Images
Part 4: Titles
Part 5: Gender-Bending
Part 6: Genre-Bending
Part 7: Think International
Part 8: Franchise

Tomorrow: Part 10 of the series How to Generate and Critique Story Ideas.