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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27511
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27511
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

If you lead with a compelling concept, you should write an essay. A story is not, principally, about exploring an idea. Principally it is about creating an experience. Creating an experience can be a fantastic way to explore the implications of an idea. But it can only do so effectively if it is first and foremost a compelling experience. We don't receive the philosophical implications of the experience if we don't first receive the experience itself in all of its force.

Think about _Flowers for Algernon_. The concept is simple: _Mentally handicapped man receives treatment that makes him smart enough to figure out that the effect of his treatment is temporary_. By itself, the concept is a punchline of a rather cruel joke. But that is not how we remember the book. We remember a profoundly moving experience of a man's personal tragedy. The whole story is built on a concept, and yet it is not the concept, but the personal story that moves us, that makes us remember _Flowers for Algernon_ when so many other stories quickly fade from memory.

A concept, in other words, is never compelling in itself. A hundred other writers might have tackled the same concept and made something completely forgettable (and maybe they did). It is the characters and the writing and the vividness and poignancy of telling that make _Flowers for Algernon_ compelling. So it must be with any story.

Original score: 6