Web fiction
High concept
A work that can be easily pitched with a succinctly stated premise: built on a 'what if' with broad appeal rather than character subtlety.
High concept is "a type of artistic work that can be easily pitched with a succinctly stated premise," the opposite of low concept, "more concerned with character development and other subtleties." The frame is film: a high-concept movie is one "pitched and developed almost entirely upon an engaging premise with broad appeal," typically built on an overarching "what if?" scenario ("what if we could clone dinosaurs?"), and "is considered easy to sell to a wide audience because it delivers upon an easy-to-grasp idea." The origin of the term is disputed; Justin Wyatt's High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood (1994) is the study the article cites.
Publishing took the label over as the high-concept hook. Agent Carly Watters, on Jane Friedman's site, calls it a premise "you can immediately wrap your head around and see how it can drive a novel." It is the engine a query letter leads with and the hook half of what upmarket fiction promises.
Sources
- Wikipedia: High concept fetched 2026-10-20
- Jane Friedman: what is upmarket fiction? fetched 2026-10-20; Carly Watters defines the high-concept hook