This post is for anyone who wants to write stories and is having trouble getting started, or for anyone who already writes stories but wants to deepen their craft. It is anything but a comprehensive list of questions to ask about your stories. It is just a start—a few suggestions to get the juices flowing, the ideas churning. Things to consider before you begin, after your finish a draft or two—or any other time during the writing process. These are questions I have found useful when I am writing, questions that have helped me along the way.
1. What is the conflict? Again and again, I read the stories of beginners, seeing the first glimmer of real skill and recognizing the same struggles and trials we all go through when we first start to write. I almost always find myself asking these fledgling writers the same question: “What is the conflict here?”
Many of my students write stories about their wedding day, the first date they had with their sweetheart or partner, an outing with their children, a family Christmas. These stories are often full of warm-heartedness and love, and they are often very dull, because they simply have no conflict. They are descriptions, really, rather than stories: sketches, rather than narratives.
Other times, I read stories that are chock full of conflict. Sometimes there are so many issues and problems going on that the story seems to be going a hundred directions at once.
Both of these problems can be resolved by asking yourself a simple—but not always easily answered— question: What is the conflict in this story? Every story must have one.
The conflict can be something the protagonist wants or longs for. It can be something he or she fears—or is afraid of losing. It can be a challenge, a competition, an obstacle or a hope. But it must be there.The thing that makes a reader read is the conflict in the story, and the urgent question of whether the protagonist is going to resolve it and, if so, how. Without that conflict, there is simply no reason to keep going from one sentence to the next.
That doesn’t mean you can’t write about your wedding day, even if the wedding was beautiful and the marriage that followed happy. It means you have to figure out what was challenging about that day—and if you’re a normal person, there was a lot. The same is true of the most cheerful family get-together or the most pleasant day at the beach.
There is always a conflict. Find it. Hold onto it. Sharpen it. It is the core of your story.
2. From whose point of view should the story be told? In The Story Behind the Story, Margot Livesey writes that her story, “The Flowers of the Forest” came out of her struggle with a novel that was refusing to be written. The problem? In her words, “I couldn’t find either a voice or a point of view…that seemed able to contain the story I wanted to tell.”
“Flowers” is told from the POV of a child, because Livesey realized she needed a narrator who was unaware of the greater significance of what was going on around her. Livesey chose from a virtually infinite variety of possible voices, picking a very specific one for a very specific reason.
Many of my beginning students think of the narrator as a rather neutral entity: Just the voice who tells the story, not really essential to the story itself. Yet who narrates your story is one of the most important questions you can answer because it shapes all sorts of things. Whether your narrator is old or young, male or female, wise or foolish, educated or ignorant, kind or cruel—his or her specific and particular history, personality, and take on the world—will determine how events are described and interpreted.
Not convinced? Try this: Take a story you’ve already writte, and rewrite it using a completely different narrator. Or write a very short story—a few paragraphs—in two or three versions using utterly different narrators. You will immediately see how powerful the choice of narrator is. The entire form of the story will shift depending on the eyes through which the reader is seeing.
3. Where is this story taking place? It’s amazing how many times I ask my students and clients how they chose the setting of their story and they have no answer. Often, they aren’t aware of ever having actually chosen. They just picked a place that seemed obvious—or a place familiar to them. Sometimes, they don’t even have a setting, just characters interacting, which gives the story an ungrounded, indistinct feeling.
Figuring out where each scene of your story takes place is essential because the setting guides all sorts of other things. Imagine an argument between a married couple taking place in the following: a) their bedroom, b) a family picnic, c) a supermarket, d) their child’s school. How different those arguments would be! Where the couple is will determine what they say, how loudly they speak, and what they do. It will also determine who else is present to overhear, intervene, or take part in the argument.
Even different rooms in a house can impact a scene. What happens in a bathroom full of water, razors, and hard, slippery surfaces is very different from what happens in a living room full of cushions, carpets, and overstuffed chairs.
Don’t pick a setting just because it seems like a likely one. Think about what you want to accomplish in your story and pick the perfect place.
4. What is the question at the heart of your story? “At the root of our lives is a question, a series of questions, a quest, some fundamental concerns or obsession,” writes Deena Metzger in Writing for Your Life. “A story also has a question at the core of it.”
The question is deeper than the conflict. The conflict is all about plot: “What is happening here?” The question isn’t about what’s happening, it’s about what lies under what is happening. It goes to meaning, to value, to significance, to discovery.
No one can answer this question easily. In fact, if an easy answer comes to you, it probably isn’t the true answer. To get to the question at the heart of your story, you have to step away from it. To give yourself time.To reflect. Be patient. It will emerge. It is the most challenging question you can ask, but it is the one that will inform all the rest.
[simple_contact_form]