What is a "High-Concept Hook"?
You may hear this phrase tossed around in the publishing world but may not be sure what it means. Whether you’re self publishing, trad publishing, or just want to market your online work to the rest of the world, you need to have a high-concept hook, AKA a one-sentence pitch.
This is the gripping concept your story is formed around told in one sentence. It usually contains the main character, the inciting incident, what they want, and the stakes. It’s your elevator pitch, or the thing you’d tell someone if they asked “hey what’s your book about” but you knew they didn’t actually want to sit there and listen to you talk for half an hour.
A great place to find examples is actually in streaming services like Netflix. Each movie has a one sentence pitch intending to draw in their audience. For example, here's the hook for Murder Mystery:
On a long-awaited trip to Europe, a New York City cop and his hairdresser wife scramble to solve a baffling murder aboard a billionaire’s yacht.
Here’s what this hook tells us:
- The main characters are an NYC cop and a hairdresser, they're married
- It takes place on a billionaire’s yacht in Europe
- The inciting incident (there’s been a murder), and thus genre.
- There’s a reason they need to solve it quickly, shown in the word “scramble”, it has personal stakes
- We know it’s a comedy because of the word “baffling” (sub-genre)
This is also a great hook because it incites several questions—how did they get aboard a billionaire’s yacht? Why are they scrambling to solve the murder? What makes the crime so baffling?
As the audience, I am now intrigued and need to watch this movie to find out the answers to my questions.
Let’s see another example. Here’s Ready Player One’s high-concept hook:
In a world on the brink of collapse, a talented gamer takes the lead in a series of challenges to win ownership of a massive virtual reality universe.
In this case, we get world, MC, and objective. Both the world and “massive virtual reality universe” tell us this is a sci-fi.
Anyone but you:
At a lavish destination wedding, two singles whose one date ended badly pretend to be a couple to pacify her interfering parents and make his ex jealous.
Good Will Hunting:
When an MIT professor discovers that an aimless janitor is also a math genius, an unconventional therapist helps the young man find his potential.
Your high-concept hook should:
Incite questions from the reader—they just have to read your book to find the answers.
Give an idea of the genre.
Tell the main focus of your story—this isn’t the time for introducing side characters and subplots. What you read in the hook should be what you can expect the story to focus on.
Another effective form of a high-concept hook can be drawing comparisons to other existing works, and how yours differs like:
Mad Max meets The Hunger Games
Or
Pride and Prejudice during the zombie apocalypse.
Or
The Secret History with high school girls.
These can be really effective with agents or publishing houses that have listed those titles in their “favs”. However, you want to be careful not to give the agent/house something they already have too much of.
How do you make your own?
Start with your character. A name doesn’t tell us much, but “a burnt out student”, or “empathetic doctor” does. A job, hobby, or descriptor of your character is a great place to start. Then, add the inciting incident, and either the stakes or what the character wants.
Here’s an easy template to get you started:
When (inciting incident), (MC) must (objective) in order to (stakes).
For example:
When a gangster’s son steals his car and kills his dog, a fearless ex-assassin takes on the entire mob to get his revenge.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Psst... Did you know I launched a website?)
Head on over to www.gatesannai.com (or click here!) for exclusive blog posts, updates on my work, and pictures of my dog.
While you're there, consider signing up for my newsletter too :-) It helps a lot in my aspiring author journey, I really appreciate it!
