by Beth K. Vogt, @bethvogt

I have fun crafting high-concept pitches for my novels.

A high-concept pitch is when you grab someone’s attention with a title or single sentence before they ever see a word of your writing. That “someone” can be an editor or agent at a writers conference, or they can be a potential reader learning about your novel through a blog post or a radio interview.

Several years ago, I landed a third-book deal from my then-editors with this high concept pitch:

Can a young widow fall in love with her husband’s reflection?

Now all I had to do was write the book. But beyond that single sentence that had grabbed my editors’ attention, I had a whole lot of nothing. Not a short synopsis. Not a long synopsis.

Nothing but that 11-word question.

That oh-so intriguing high-concept pitch had me in a headlock and refused to give up and say “Uncle,” so I could wrestle it into a simple synopsis, much less a real story.

Caught somewhere between panic and despair, I Skyped with my friend and mentor, NYT bestselling author Rachel Hauck. She listened to me wail and moan – thank God she didn’t snap any photos and post them on Facebook. I was a mess.

When I finally lapsed into silence, Rachel congratulated me. That’s right – she congratulated me – in a “been there, survived that, and you will too” kind of way.

“You have a ‘paralyzing premise,’ Beth.” If she could have reached through the computer screen, I think Rachel would have patted me on the back.

Um … hooray?

What’s a paralyzing premise … and what did I do about?

A paralyzing premise is one that seems to have a simple concept but when you start building your story, you have to do a lot of plotting and character work. You have to answer a lot of whys.

Let’s take another look at my high concept pitch, which became my contemporary novel, Somebody Like You.

Can a young widow fall in love with her husband’s reflection?

Simplifying this premise for my novel even more, the story is about the possibility of a young widow falling in love with her deceased husband’s identical twin brother.

When I started plotting out the book, some major whys needed to be answered. Questions like:

• Why didn’t my heroine know her husband had a twin brother?
• Why hadn’t the two brothers talked for the past twelve years?
• Why would the brother get in touch with his brother’s widow?
• Why should the heroine have anything to do with her dead husband’s twin brother?

And to answer all these questions, I had to understand my characters:

• who they were
• why they made the choices they made
• how they were going to interact with one another

Before I could go forward and write a single word of my manuscript, I had to delve into my characters’ pasts. That involved working through the Story Equation and each main character’s Dark Moment, Wound, Lie, Fear, and Flaw. It also meant answering all the whys – refusing to stay on the surface, but going deep into my characters’ personalities.

The next time you love your story idea but you’re stuck with just that – the idea – start asking your characters why they act the way they do. Why they don’t want to change. Why is the key to solving the problem of a paralyzing premise.

Things I Never Told You by Beth K. Vogt

It’s been ten years since Payton Thatcher’s twin sister died in an accident, leaving the entire family to cope in whatever ways they could. No longer half of a pair, Payton reinvents herself as a partner in a successful party-planning business and is doing just fine—as long as she manages to hold her memories and her family at arm’s length.

But with her middle sister Jillian’s engagement, Payton’s party-planning skills are called into action. Which means working alongside her opinionated oldest sister, Johanna, who always seems ready for a fight. They can only hope that a wedding might be just the occasion to heal the resentment and jealousy that divides them . . . until a frightening diagnosis threatens Jillian’s plans and her future. As old wounds are reopened and the family faces the possibility of another tragedy, the Thatchers must decide if they will pull together or be driven further apart.

Includes discussion questions.

Beth K. Vogt is a non-fiction author and editor who said she’d never write fiction. She’s the wife of an Air Force family physician (now in solo practice) who said she’d never marry a doctor—or anyone in the military. She’s a mom of four who said she’d never have kids. Now Beth believes God’s best often waits behind the doors marked “Never.” Beth’s first novel for Tyndale House Publishers, Things I Never Told You, released in May 2018. Moments We Forget, book two in the Thatcher Sisters series, releases May 2019. Beth is a 2016 Christy Award winner, a 2016 ACFW Carol Award winner, and a 2015 RITA® finalist. Her 2014 novel, Somebody Like You, was one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2014. A November Bride was part of the Year of Wedding Series by Zondervan. Having authored nine contemporary romance novels or novellas, Beth believes there’s more to happily-ever-after than the fairy tales tell us. An established magazine writer and former editor of the leadership magazine for MOPS International, Beth blogs for Novel Rocket and The Write Conversation and also enjoys speaking to writers groups and mentoring other writers. She lives in Colorado with her husband Rob, who has adjusted to discussing the lives of imaginary people, and their youngest daughter, Christa, who loves to play volleyball and enjoys writing her own stories. Connect with Beth at bethvogt.com.