Writing tips

The plot
thickens

Choosing
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agent

Query letters

Inspire me!

But they
rejected me!

What is a "high concept" novel?

Put simply, it means a blockbuster story. Usually something big, and preferably international. If aliens are invading, or if your hero or heroine is going to save the planet in some other way - be it through war, a rampaging plague, or a hoard of killer tomatoes - you've probably got a high concept book on your hands.

A low concept novel, meanwhile, is a more down-to-earth, home-spun tale dealing with less earthshaking themes.

Both have their place in the publishing market. But many literary agents and publishers won't touch anything that they feel isn't the "next big thing" - which may leave your novel floundering.

That's not to say that a "small" novel can't break through. It's only that it's harder work convincing the trade that your series of pint size crime fiction tales are worth the effort involved in taking them to market.

You have to decide for yourself if you want to go the high concept or low concept route. And there's a cost to pay either way.

Personally I still favour the small-scale tale. I like writing about fairly ordinary people leading pretty ordinary lives - until something extraordinary happens.

My heroes are more likely to be dodging bullets than firing them. And I just can't get too excited about Turin Shrouds and mysterious Catholic sects and ancient Egyptian artefacts.

But lately, in an effort to get a publishing deal, I've been aiming higher and wider.

You may feel the pressure to do that yourself sooner or later.

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Sample 1

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DIRTY BUSINESS

This was a tale I dreamed up a few years ago. I created a tough guy named Harry Holland and buried a couple of drums of something nasty that was seeping out in the groundwater and doing pretty horrible things to people. My hero starts out in prison (minor crime, of course; nothing lewd, shameful, sordid or embarrassing) and I put him straight into a fight (just to get things moving). For the next 140,000 words, the tale went this way and that way, and all kinds of interesting characters began popping up, and getting murdered. Maybe too many characters. It's hard to say.
     The story may never see a printing press. But you have to develop whatever talents you have, and it's no great shame to have a few unheralded manuscripts in the drawer.
     Agents and publishers liked it - and continue to like it - it in varying degrees, but all have rejected it for various reasons. It might be that the novel is just rubbish. But it might also be that it hasn't got a 'high concept', and these days you can't get far quickly in the mainstream fiction world without one of those.
     Then again, my early query letters were naive and amateur and lost me a lot of opportunities. Also, I was so busy writing at the time that I wasn't always too careful about who I approached. So I sent the novel out the way people send out pizza flyers.
     Big mistake.
    It's currently out there again being looked at. It's always out there. Which is the only way to go. You have to keep putting it under agent's noses and on editor's desks. You have to 'campaign' your novels and work out strategies. Occasionally you have to change the title to get another shot at an editor or an agent who, hopefully, won't spot the subterfuge (it helps to rework some of the copy too, always improving it as your skills improve).
     Meanwhile, here's a taste of DIRTY BUSINESS. I flatter myself that I've come a long way since. All feedback, good, bad, or indifferent, is welcome. Even editors need editing.

Chapter One

For the past month he’d been expecting it. Some kind of physical assault. Or worse. Now it was coming. And fast.

The only wonder was that it had taken them so long to get down to it.

All the warning signals were there. The furtiveness. The coded mutterings to each other. The undisguised flashes of hostility focussed ever more intensely in his direction.

They were becoming increasingly daring; notably around the prison’s Victorian shower block where space was at a premium and inmates habitually brushed up against each other.

Three times in as many weeks as he’d leaned over a morning sink — his face thick with shaving suds, the air buzzing with the usual noisy pre-breakfast chatter — he’d felt someone caress him. First his back. Then his inner thigh. And then higher still. It could have been an accident, of course. Only it wasn’t. And if he’d been in a position to grab the offending limb he would have snapped the arm off at the elbow.

No hesitation.

But one sly hand darting through a moving wall of torsos was no easy catch. Besides, he was one, and they were three. He was prey and they were predators. And although he prided himself on his survival skills, he knew that sooner or later (but probably sooner, imminently even) serious and unavoidable trouble was coming.

It was in the air.

Now it was a warm Tuesday morning, July 2nd. They were prowling the exercise yard and sizing him up again. He’d privately dubbed them The Badd Ladds, so named after the characters in some comic he’d read as a kid. Which comic that was, he couldn’t remember now. It wasn’t important. Except that those Badd Ladds had been funny. Hilarious at times. Whereas these guys were anything but.

Prison, he understood, took some men that way. He even sympathised with them. Up to a point. In the outside world, these guys were probably broadly heterosexual. On the surface, at least. Had wives, perhaps. Kids too. Maybe a girlfriend tucked away somewhere for an occasional hour of slap and tickle.

But in the inside world of locks and bars and deadbolts, a different sexual dynamic takes over. And with their normal physical needs frustrated, he knew some guys will take their sex however they can get it. Through barter. Through mutual favour. Or, if necessary, by force.

But not with him, he’d determined.

At least not while he was still breathing.

‘Got a light?’

It was one of the inmates. He’d sidled up on Holland’s left, his head held low, a skinny roll-up between his lips. The inmate’s name was Henry Slocombe; a tall, skinny, prison-sharp drink-of-piss who did a small, but lucrative trade in extra hard-core wank mags that came in through one of the screws. Once the staples were removed and the pages trimmed, the pussy was flogged off piecemeal returning as much as a ten-fold profit on a five quid investment.

More if it was black or asian pussy.

Slocombe had the cell next to Holland and was doing five years for receiving. Slocombe was okay.

‘How’s that again, my friend?’ said Holland, unsure if he’d heard right.

‘A light, man. Match.’

‘Oh.’ He relaxed slightly. Gazed across the yard. ‘Sure.’

He slipped a bookmatch from his trouser pocket. Plucked one free and flicked it alight with his thumbnail. He didn’t smoke. But he was wise enough to keep a few ciggies stashed away here and there for currency purposes. He kept a bookmatch too for much the same reason. Goodwill being the best currency of all.

Cupping his hands around the flame, he watched as the other tilted forward to snatch some fire.

‘Watch your arse,’ said Slocombe, speaking beneath his breath.

‘Sound advice,’ replied Holland, never too proud to accept such advice when offered in good faith.

‘And hey. One of them’s got a shiv.’

‘Which one?’

‘Roberts.’

‘You sure?’

‘Fucking certain, mate. Sold it to him.’

Roberts was a squat, nervous looking, angular guy with a shaved head covered with amateur tattoos. He was doing four years for armed robbery. Holland had already noted that Roberts was left handed.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

Slocombe drew heavily and exhaled the smoke. ‘Can’t help you when it gets rough. Got my own interests to watch out for — and a business to run. You understand that, don’t you?’

‘I do,’ replied Holland, snuffing out the match and walking off, stuffing the bookmatch away again.

He could feel Slocombe staring after him, but didn’t look back. He was too busy scanning the yard, ‘placing’ inmates who he felt were either liabilities or assets. He counted twenty or so of the former, and exactly none of the latter. Not that he expected any of them to wade in when the fists started flying. The best he could hope for was that they gave him enough space to do what he had to do to protect himself.

Self defence, as he was apt to tell his pupils in the outside world, was a fluid thing. Rule number one was to avoid getting into a scrap in the first place. Rule number two was to get out of it as quickly as possible. Rule number three was to carry the action into public view.

Meaning, in this case, under the watchful gaze of the screws.

Which was fine advice in principle. Only suddenly there weren’t any screws. Not one. Five minutes ago there had been four warders talking amiably with the inmates and/or barking orders at whoever was doing something he ought not to have been doing.

But now they were gone. Just like that.

A less cynical man might have concluded that they’d simply all chosen that moment to take a leak or grab a cup of tea. But Holland knew better. Men could be bought, both in and out of prison.

He strolled across the asphalt to more open ground, aware that the tension was ratcheting up. It was spreading like a bad smell around the exercise area and telling all the inmates hanging around there that something heavy was about to go down, that they’d better stay clear because it was time for the new guy, the cold fish, Mr Harry-fucking-Holland to be reminded exactly where he is in the pecking order.

Which was at the bottom.

And then it happened. The Badd Ladds began manoeuvring for position. An arena was formed. Holland suddenly found himself standing alone in a rough circle of men all waiting to see how the new fish handled himself.

He felt alone.

Exposed.

He spun round on his heel, not afraid, but alert. Hands at the ready. If there any way out of this, he would have taken it. But the only option was surrender. And that was no option at all.

He looked across at where the Badd Ladds were now standing, a tight triangle of men, their hands at the ready, their eyes filled with hope and brutal lust. He looked the other way and saw, beyond the circle, that there was nothing but a narrow brick alcove that the screws occasionally used as a snoophole, and beyond that a wall that was perhaps thirty feet high.

That, suddenly, was the size of his world. Reduced. And highly volatile.  He looked at the Badd Ladds again.

‘You don’t want to do this,’ he cautioned.

‘Oh yes they fucking well do,’ said a voice in the crowd.

‘Dead meat,’ said someone else.

‘Fishy, fishy,’ said another.

Holland  took a deep breath and braced himself for the assault.

He didn’t have to wait very long.

If you're interested, you can find some more samples of my novels at: www.michael-oneill-fiction.co.uk.