Is Your Concept Really More Scene Than Story?

March 10, 2018

by Larry Brooks

I hear feedback that writers want to learn about the advanced nuances of storytelling. The implication being that they’ve absorbed the basics and are ready to move on.

This is hardly ever true, by the way. You can add nuance to a painting of, say, cow droppings on the side of the road… but at the end of the day it’s still a painting about crap. Understanding the criteria for a conceptually-empowered, layered story premise – the “idea” for your story, which is rarely the first one that pops into your head – is the key to everything if you’re serious about this work.

Okay, cow droppings… that’s a little harsh. But it speaks to my point: a strong premise is a different facet of craft than is strong writing. You need both. Both require nuance. But too often writers sweat the latter without having mastered the nuances of the former.

So how do we render a premise compelling? Answer: understanding the criteria for just that, and the nuances involved. This becomes a nuance in its own right – developing an idea, rather than just plopping down and starting to write about an idea – and is very much part of the advanced level of craft writers are asking for.

Too many stories fail not because they lack nuance, but because they lack core story power.  Because the core story idea – the premise – isn’t strong enough. Often, when it isn’t, it’s because it lacks a conceptual layer at its core.

Let me walk you through a couple of real-life examples.

In my workshops I sometimes ask writers to pitch their story concept. This is after a review of the definitions of concept versus premise, which is a career-enlightening nuance once you get it down. Even after hearing that, about half the group gets it wrong, pitching a premise instead of a concept, or pitching what they believe to be a concept when in fact it is… something else.

Sometimes what they pitch, with the belief that they have a concept, is nothing more than a story beat. An idea for a scene.

A single scene is never the concept of a story. Because concept is part of the entire story arc. It is what empowers a premise with compelling energy.

Here’s a nuance for you: the starting gun, the catalytic moment for a story – which usually takes place within a scene – is probably not a functional description of the story framework (i.e., the concept).

Take these pitched “concepts,” for example:

A woman loses her mother’s ashes on the way to her funeral.
An unconscious alien is discovered on the bridge of a starship.
Someone wakes up in a tub of ice with a recently stitched incision in their abdomen.
A body falls out of a window onto the hood of a waiting taxi.

Again, none of these are actually concepts… in the nuanced sense that writers need to understand their concept as a framework for their story.

All of these are scenes. Moments. Story beats. Game starters and game changers, perhaps, but not the big picture of the story landscape.

When the writer begins a draft with one of these, they may experience their first blocked moment of panic right after penning the scene that exhausts the idea itself.

If you saw the recent (and terrific) film Ladybird, you’ll remember the opening scene, where the mother and daughter are in a car arguing, talking over each other until the daughter, in her frustration, opens the door while the car is still moving and ejects herself onto the side of the road.

Knowing the larger tapestry of that story, you’ll recognize that a pitch that sounds like this – “A girl argues with her mother and bails from a moving car, injuring herself” – isn’t the concept of Ladybird, but rather, a scene that launches the narrative.

Ask yourself these four things:

Can you pitch your story concept without borrowing from the premise itself?


How compelling is that concept, even before you add character and plot?


Is your concept a framework for the story, or more accurately described as scene within it?


If it is just a scene, can you elevate your story’s concept toward a pitch that more compellingly and accurately frames the premise itself?

Concept isn’t required for a story to work. Stories that lack a conceptual essence are all over the place… especially in unpublished and self-published work.

But if you want to break into the business, make a splash, get published and find a readership, it’ll require more than your writing voice to get there. You don’t need an idea for a story, you need a story idea that is packed with compelling power at the pitch level. Something that, when someone hears it, they are already in. You need a story that resonates and compels through intrigue, emotional resonance and vicariousness… at the story landscape level, not just via the writing itself.

Concept is your ticket to making that happen. So stick with it. Soon it will become part of your process, which is the most empowered nuance of all.

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