Reader Question: What exactly do you mean by “story conceit”?

From Marc:

My question is, what is your exact definition of “story-conceit”?

Is it the premise, how the plot plays out, what the story is all about or a special, unique approach to tell the story?

One definition of conceit is an “idea.” So when I use the term story-conceit, I mean the central premise of the story. With K-9, it was the idea of a human cop teamed up with a dog cop. With Inception, it’s the idea that people can enter into other people’s dream states. With Groundhog Dog, it’s the idea that the Protagonist has to relive a day over and over and over again. 

Some people in Hollywood may use the word hook the same way as in, “What’s the story’s hook?” In fact, that’s why in my screenplay paradigm Narrative Throughline, the mid-Act One major plot point is called The Hook precisely because that is often when the story-conceit is set into motion or made clear to the reader.

If you boil down the entire process of generating original story concepts, what you’re really talking about is finding a unique story-conceit or hook.

What is the central idea of my story concept?
What is the hook that will grab people’s attention?

This is one reason why high-concepts have, do, and will continue to reign in Hollywood because a good high-concept will almost necessarily have at its core a strong story-conceit. Armed with a strong story-conceit, a studio is in a much more favorable position to successfully market a movie because they can promote that one central idea to hook a viewer’s attention.

Moreover a strong story-conceit makes the life of a screenwriter that much easier because everything we do in our prep-writing and page-writing process revolves around that central idea, exploring all sorts of ramifications and possibilities, but always with the touchstone of the story-conceit to focus the Plotline and Themeline.

Takeaway: Whatever story you are working on right now, ask yourself: What is its story-conceit? If you can sum it up in a line or two… if it sounds compelling… if it’s a unique twist on an idea… then you’re probably in good shape. If you can not identify the story-conceit… or it doesn’t feel compelling… or it comes off as too ‘similar’ and not ‘different’ enough… perhaps you’ll want to consider writing another, stronger story concept.

We might as well use this opportunity to open up another round of GITS reader questions. So if you have something about the craft or business of screenwriting on which you’d like to get my opinion, please post your question in comments or email me.

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