How to Come Up With High Concept Ideas That Sell

Let's start with a hard truth: anyone who promises you they have the secret key to sell a screenplay is full of sh*t. If you could sell scripts that easily, you'd be doing that, not writing blogs online.

Selling anything nowadays is hard. Fewer specs get set up each year, but it's still worth writing them because they can lead to other work.

But there are certain things you can write that will get wide attention. Those are high-concept ideas.

Coming up with a high-concept idea can feel like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. We have some prompts for you to use, but maybe you want to chase one down on your own.

Today, I want to break down the high concept, debunk some myths, and look at ways you can start generating these ideas today.

Let's dive in.

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What Actually Is a High Concept?

I think there are usually some misconceptions that "high concept" just means explosions, CGI, and a $200 million budget. That’s not true.

A high concept is just a premise that is easily communicable, highly original, and carries inherent conflict in its telling.

Maybe an easier way to think about it is that it’s a movie that you can pitch in your logline, and the person listening instantly sees the poster, understands the stakes, and knows exactly why people would buy a ticket.

Agents and managers love these projects because they can immediately think of a dozen buyers looking for these kinds of projects.

So, how can you come up with them? Well, I've spent my entire career trying to perfect that...and I haven't. But here's what I do when I'm stuck.

1. Build a "What If?" Machine

The foundation of almost every great high-concept idea is a compelling "What if?" question. It takes a normal situation and injects an extraordinary element, or takes an extraordinary situation and grounds it in a relatable human reality.

So when I am stuck and have no ideas, I just start making lists of mundane situations and then give each of them absurd complications.

As you can see...this sort of works for some famous movies.

• What if a theme park managed to clone real dinosaurs, and the security systems failed? (Jurassic Park)
• What if we could enter people’s dreams to steal their secrets? (Inception)
• What if a family had to survive in a world where making even the slightest sound would get you killed? (A Quiet Place)

Sit down and write out a bunch of these. You don't even have to add complications; you can do it in two steps. Sometimes I'll just write, like "what if when you hit puberty you could fly?" Then I'll make a list of stuff like that, and come back and add the complications later if I like the direction of the story.

Most of these will suck, but it gets your mind moving.

'A Quiet Place' Credit: Paramount Pictures

2. The Art of the Mashup (X meets Y)

This is probably what I have always been best at. But mashup movies are hard to sell. I'll warn you up top, people will often say they want just one genre because it's easier to see the poster. I've found that it's less strict in the current market, but it's always something to think about.

So yeah, it does kind of suck to feel like you're good at the one thing that sells the least, but I digress...

Hollywood executives do love familiar things presented in a new way. The easiest way to generate a high-concept idea that feels both original and safe is to use a mashup.

That means you take a proven structure or genre and smash it against a completely different setting or tone.

• Alien: Jaws in space.
• Speed: Die Hard on a bus.
• Warm Bodies: Romeo and Juliet meet a zombie apocalypse.

So if you want to brainstorm these things, take a list of classic movies or proven genres and start mushing them together.

See where that gets you.

Again, you'll find a lot of duds, but eventually, two ideas will spark a premise that you can make your own.

3. Flip the Cliché

Here's another thing I think about a lot. What cliches are so ubiquitous in film and TV that we all sort of know what will happen when we see them coming?

And then I base an entire movie on doing the opposite.

Think about the standard slasher movie: a masked killer hunts down teenagers.

• The Cabin in the Woods flipped it by making the horror a controlled, corporate ritual.
• Tucker & Dale vs. Evil flipped it by making the "creepy hillbillies" entirely innocent and the college kids a danger to themselves.

So p ick a genre you love and write down five of its biggest clichés. Now, brainstorm what the exact opposite of that cliché would be. How does that inversion change the entire plot?

And try taking the story from there.

'The Cabin in the Woods' Credit: Lionsgate

The Final Thing: The Logline Test

We go back to the original test. Once you have your idea, you must test it. Write it out in a few sentences to make sure it passes the logline test.

"When [INCITING INCIDENT] happens, our [FLAWED PROTAGONIST] must [GOAL] or else [STAKES]."

If you read your logline to a friend and you have to spend five minutes explaining the lore, the worldbuilding, or the backstory for it to make sense, your concept isn't high enough yet.

You have to keep boiling it down so it becomes simple to understand and to pitch.

Summing It All Up

These are things that have worked for me over the years. They are not guarantees of sales; they're just ways I think can help your script connect with as many people as possible and, therefore, get in front of as many buyers.

Writing is a grind, but brainstorming should be fun. Give yourself the freedom to explore any idea you want.

Let me know what you think in the comments.