(George Lucas pitches the ultimate in marketability: “It’s Star Wars meets My Little Pony!”)

If you aim to distill a great work of literature into a single sentence, the results generally verge on the hilarious. After all, no matter what Chomsky says about sentences about being potentially infinite, a sentence generally conveys a single idea.

What is high concept?

Increasingly, agents and publishers seem to be after “high concept” books, that is, books with a premise that can be explained in a single-sentence log-line or pitch. (Note that “high” in this context does not mean “lofty”, but rather “heaps of”, or “awesome”.) Now, while there’s nothing wrong with books that have a certain clarity of plot or theme, I can’t help but wonder, in light of some of the books I’ve received for review recently, whether this emphasis on “high concept” is to the detriment of the other key elements that make a book work.

Changes in the pitching and reporting process?

Obviously I’m speculating here, but I do think this may have something to do with the way in which the various gatekeepers in the publishing industry want to see ideas pitched. (We are, after all, the Twitter generation) The problem is, of course, not the fact that these pitch approaches exist, but that what people expect to get out of these pitches seems to be changing.

For example, Publisher’s Marketplace is full of both single-sentence descriptive pitches (“When seventy year old secretary Betty Lou hears that she’s about to be fired she arms herself with the office staple gun and sets about exacting revenge”) and of the slightly infamous X meets Y-type pitch (“It’s My Little Pony meets the four horsemen of the apocalypse!*”). Anecdotally, I’ve heard of (established) authors pitching new books based on a logline and a sample chapter or quickie synopsis.

High concept: just the beginning?

And while these pitches get across the gist of the novel, that’s all they do.

That’s all they’re meant to do.

After all, even a novel that can be described in a single line, or as an X meets Y, should be able to extend beyond that summary. That logline should simply be a salient idea or premise.

But what my review pile seems to be telling me is that the emphasis on a pitch-line that not only knocks an editor’s socks off, but even puts a few holes in them as well, seems to be resulting in books that aren’t much more than this pitch. They seem to be overly reliant on concept and that are weak in areas of plotting, characterisation, theme or prose.

And while in some cases a great concept can sustain a reader even if those other areas are lacking, over time the problem can become exacerbated.

When high concept becomes a problem

The first example is where a high concept book is turned into a series. When a book is so utterly reliant on concept, it’s inevitable that the other bookish scaffolding so important to the reading experience is going to suffer. And although it’s possible to get away with this over a single book, when it’s stretched over multiple books it becomes increasingly obvious how much of the author’s creation is hinging on a given concept. What tends to happen in such series is that each book takes on a similar plot arc. This is because it’s impossible for the author to let the story evolve beyond the original book–which is inextricably tied to the original pitch concept.

A second example relates to trend genres. High concept books are famous for being new “twists” on classic or highly accessible themes, which is where the “It’s leprechauns meets Oceans II!” stuff comes in. Obviously, when a particular theme or subgenre is hot stuff, the market’s going to be flooded with it (until we all scream for a reprieve). And the formula of “the same but different” is a good way of ensuring that readers will be likely to engage with a given book as being something new, while also finding it happily familiar and in touch with their reading tastes. But the danger here is that these comparisons can lead to a highly superficial approach to writing.

It’s one that I’ve been seeing in particular in books where the “high concept” is in large part to do with the setting, and I’m finding that it’s particularly prevalent in the dystopian and postapocalyptic subgenres that are so popular right now. Both of these subgenres are highly reliant on setting/milieu, and I think it’s very easy for the substance of the book to be lost against a grim backdrop.

Moreover, when a high concept pitch is scaffolded onto existing books in the genre/subgenre, it’s very easy to end up with a number of books that all draw on a similar base but are differentiated only by a “twist”. And while good ol’ hermeneutics says that everything’s influenced by everything else, I can’t help but think that it’s the degree to which this is is a conscious decision that will translate into how effective the final product is.

Why a high concept pitch shouldn’t be overestimated

So when a book is pitched as, say, “Mad Max meets Anne of Green Gables,” what is one supposed to get out of that beyond a vague sense of place and tone? (A red-headed, freckled lass roams the now desolate Prince Edward Island on a motorbike, alternatively shooting people and baking them cakes?)

And I think that’s the issue. Not only does War and Peace sound a wee bit ho-hum when summed up in a sentence, but a book that’s pitched as a sentence can fail just as epically when expanded beyond that.

A concept is just that–a frame, an idea, a notion, a setting–and while it doesn’t necessarily mean that a book is going to be shallow or derivative, I do worry, as a reader who reads for style, tone, and character over plot and concept, that the emphasis on concept as a pitch device will result in a number of poorly executed books based around a great idea.

*okay, I kind of want to read this