Writing Exercise: Asking Questions

Whether you are writing a fantasy novel, or a sports column for a local newspaper, you can always stand to improve your copy. There are many writing techniques you can employ to improve the quality of your copy. Asking proper questions, for example, is a critical writing technique that you should consider using if you don’t already. If you already do go through a process of asking yourself questions about your writing, remember, it’s a skill that can always be improved.

Asking the proper writing questions is an art form, really. For the sake of this blog posting, let’s say you are engaged in writing a fantasy novel. You stare at the blank page, and ask yourself – Where on earth do I start? (Assuming you are writing about earth J ) How do you know what questions to ask? That question is a great place to start. While the answer to that question largely depends on your topic and your style, if you start by asking questions about the basic components of your story, you should be well on your way. For example, you should consider your character, plot, setting, theme, and your world (etc).

Without a doubt, there are many opinions on where to start with your questions, but you will start with your character, because all good stories are about characters.

Character:

· How many characters are in your story? Why?

· Consider your main character. What are his strengths and weaknesses? (Please, give him flaws – they make him realistic)

· What are your character’s physical attributes? Why do they matter? Take Harry Potter, for example. His scar wasn’t just there, but rather, it had a purpose in the story. It was one more thing that tied his relationship to the antagonist.

· What is your main character’s goal? What does he want to achieve more than anything?

· How is your main character going to accomplish his goal? What is standing in his way? (This will create some conflict – that’s a good thing).

· Who is your villain? Does he have henchman? What does he want? Why does that conflict with what the main character wants?

· What do your characters represent? Characters should, after all, represent attributes in humanity that we can all relate to, whether we hate or love them.

· Have you thought about having complimentry characters? Usually the protagonist is surrounded by those characters that possess the attributes he or she wants, but lacks. This helps maintain tension throughout the story.

Setting:

· Where does your story take place? Why does this matter? (If this doesn’t matter to you, thinking again).

· How does your setting impact the culture of the characters that inhabit it?

· When does your story take place? Time influences the thought process and social norms of the era.

Theme

· What message do you want to deliver to your audience?

· How can you leverage your setting, and characters etc. to deliver your theme in a more powerful way for your readers?

· How can you deliver the message without preaching?

Plot

· What is driving your character to move the story along?

· How can you introduce conflict early on to get the reader interested in the story?

· What are the motivations for each scene in your story?

· What’s the plan?

World Building

· What is the culture in this world?

· Is magic allowed? What are the consequences for using magic? What are the rules?

· How do the various worlds of your story interact with each other?

· Who teaches the laws of the other world to your characters?

· How do people travel in the other world?

· How do people know what’s going on in each world? Or, do they?

The list of questions could, and should go on and on. If you want your writing to stand up to all the readers out there, you want to ask a lot of questions and answer them in your writing. After all, the readers will, right?