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Once you have ensured that the story seed you came up with connects with you enough, you should probably test its concept potential. The following are the notes on the subject I gathered years ago from many books on writing.

• Think of the preliminary answers to the dramatic questions that your “What if?” implies. What is inherently compelling and wonderful about those answers the story could provide?
• See if this could be the case: many different stories could arise from your concept, because it is fresh and different, it is rich with dramatic and thematic potential, it creates a wonderful story landscape and arena for the stories that arise from it, it has massive potential for conflict and confrontation with an antagonist (the villain), and most important, it is simply and almost overwhelmingly compelling.
• Could it be so high concept that it will draw an audience without any other components? Could it, all by its lonesome, get people saying ‘wow’?
• Are you sure the concept strikes you as unique and worthy and exciting, so it could be for someone else?
• Is the conceptual centerpiece going to be compelling to anybody besides me? Can I get outside myself and explain why?
• Is it so appealing that readers would want to believe in it?
• Will this concept cause the reader to feel something?
• How would it make the reader experience wonder?
• Are you creating a world that will intrigue readers (like The Hunger Games)? Are you creating a world readers will want to visit (like Jurassic Park)?
• Does it unfold within a setting, time, or culture that would allow the reader to take an appealing, vicarious trip into such a place?
• Is it so strong that it will make nine out of ten people say that they want to spend some time in that world?
• Could your concept push buttons?
• How could you tweak the concept to infuse it with something outrageous, tense, full of conflict?
• Could the concept contain some intriguing ironic contradiction?
• Can you make it dangerous, fun and attractive, like the idea of a dinosaur park? Desirable and original?
• If the concept has been used before, how is yours taking an unique approach, or is framed in unusual or intriguing circumstances (setting/locale or world/local events), or features characters whose careers or passions frame the concept in a fresh, compelling way?
• Could this concept produce high-concept set pieces that would push the envelope, that won’t look like any other story?
• How could you twist the whole idea so that it poses an intriguing dilemma or conflict?
• Are you sure the concept is inherently interesting, fascinating, provocative, challenging, intriguing, disturbing, engaging, even terrifying, before adding character or plot?
• How would this concept give a premise something to work with, something that fuels that story world, the characters, and the situational dynamics with conceptual givens, suppositions, truths, and constraints that drive and color everything that happens?
• Explain how the premise is set up to be compelling because of its concept, which contributes rich dramatic fodder to the story that arises from it.
• How can the concept go deeper?
• You are holding the secret weapon of storytelling in your hands. Think bigger. Go further.