Thanks, Jeff.

Hi Jack,

These may or may not be “high-concept.” Think of high-concept as easy to repeat the nature of the story — a story which revolves around a major idea or concept. Distinct from a story that you have to dig into and explain or tell the narrative of the story to. Even though most stories are not high concept, there are still things that everyone can do to help make their script more commercial, starting with these listed here.

Thanks for bringing the term up. That term is mysterious for a lot of people…. even inside the industry people see it differently!

Hi Marcus,

Great point. And I can definitely understand why it’s confusing. It’s like with anything in marketing, it has to “fit” somewhere. From a new writer, it’s extremely unlikely that they’re going to take something really different from you. The films Avatar and The Matrix were films by two of the biggest names in the business — Joel Silver and James Cameron.

And no something really different attracting audiences. Audiences are far more reliable to come back for very similar (but a little different) films. Think of how many re-makes and franchises we get. Think of how a movie star has to be attached to a Hollywood film for it to be made. That’s because the audiences want the same thing…. with a little variation. Audiences want the reliability of an actor they like.

And think of all of the genre films…. same story over and over with a little variation.

You’re question is a valid one, “what’s too different?” But I would approach it slightly differently. I highly recommend that you try to write a script in a traditional format first…. a genre type film that follows the beats, but has a twist on the story. Genres have been around for a long time and work for a reason. Try to get really good at one of them first — writing the genre with a twist on a story. If you do that, you won’t be too different. But the challenge on that is to come up with a hook that’s different for the story that fits the genre.

For kicks, here are a couple of things that are too different and are mistakes: Having a voice-over narration that doesn’t belong to anyone in the world of that story. Submitting a 300 page script…. that’s too different. A lot of examples that I could give are just plain bad writing…. not that they are too different. And of course, if a big shot VIP filmmaker gets inspired enough…. all bets are off…. However, they have developed more of an intuitive sense of what will appeal to audiences, so their “really different idea,” would probably be a better guess than most people would make.