Questions to Ask About a Story
Questions for talking about a story with someone else, in a classroom, a reading group, or at the kitchen table. They work for a novel, a film, a short story, or something a person told you.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What happened, in a few sentences?
Why ask it
A short summary is harder than it sounds and it shows what someone thinks the story was about. Whatever gets left out of a retelling was never central for them.
Who wanted something, and what was in the way?
Why ask it
Almost every story reduces to this pair. If a reader cannot name the obstacle, the story may have had incident without any real pressure behind it.
Where did things turn, the point after which nothing could go back?
Why ask it
Locating the hinge is a better test of attention than naming a favorite scene, and people often pick different moments for good reasons worth hearing.
Whose story was it, really?
Why ask it
The person we follow is not always the person the story is about. Disagreement here usually opens up the most interesting part of the discussion.
Who changed, and who stayed exactly the same?
Why ask it
Characters who do not change are often the ones holding the story's argument in place, so noticing them explains what the story treats as fixed.
Was anyone treated unfairly by the story itself, rather than by the characters?
Why ask it
Separates cruelty inside the plot from a story that quietly withholds sympathy from someone. It is the question that gets at what a story is willing to admit.
What did the storyteller leave out on purpose?
Why ask it
Omission is a choice and usually a deliberate one: an offstage death, a skipped year, a motive never explained. Naming it shows what the gap was doing.
Did the ending come from the characters, or was it handed to them?
Why ask it
An ending produced by choices feels earned; one produced by coincidence or rescue feels arranged. Most complaints about endings are really about this distinction.
When did you first know how it would end?
Why ask it
Early certainty is not always a flaw, since some stories work on inevitability. What matters is whether knowing made the rest better or made it a wait.
Which part felt too long, and which felt rushed?
Why ask it
Pacing complaints locate the sections the storyteller cared about least, and the two answers together usually reveal where the material fought the plan.
Where did it stop being believable for you?
Why ask it
Every reader tolerates a different implausibility, and the one that breaks the spell is rarely the largest. That point marks where the story lost their trust.
What does this story seem to think a good person does?
Why ask it
Gets at the story's values through its rewards and punishments rather than through its speeches, which often say something more flattering.
How would this look told by the character we hear least from?
Why ask it
Shifting the narrator exposes what the chosen point of view was protecting, and it is the fastest way to see the story's frame from outside.
Which line or image is doing the most work?
Why ask it
Directs attention to craft without requiring technical vocabulary. If nothing stands out, the story may have run entirely on plot.
What did the setting make possible that another setting would not?
Why ask it
Tests whether the place mattered. A story that could be relocated without changing anything was using its setting as backdrop.
What does the title promise, and does the story keep it?
Why ask it
Titles make a claim about what the story is. Reading it back against the ending is a compact way to argue about what the story achieved.
Where does this sit next to other stories you know?
Why ask it
Comparisons show which tradition someone is reading it in, and where two people file it differently they usually disagree about what it was trying to be.
What did it make you think about in your own life?
Why ask it
Placed late on purpose, once there is enough trust for a personal answer. Asked too early it produces a polite one.
What would you want to happen next?
Why ask it
Invented continuations reveal what the listener felt was unresolved, and often what they wanted the story to be rather than what it was.
If you retold this to a friend, what would you cut?
Why ask it
Retelling forces a judgement about what the story cannot survive losing, which is a sharper verdict than saying whether it was good.
Discussing a Story With Someone
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to ask
Start with description, not judgement
Asking what happened before asking whether it was good gets everyone onto the same events. It also gives a quiet person something safe to answer first.
Ask about the story, not about them
Questions aimed at the text are easier to answer than questions aimed at feelings. The personal answers come anyway, once someone is warmed up.
Follow up once, then stop
One follow-up turns an opinion into a reason. A second usually turns the conversation into cross-examination.
With children or a class
Ask what a character wanted
Wanting is the part of a story children read most confidently, and it leads naturally to obstacles, choices, and consequences without any literary vocabulary.
Accept a wrong answer as a starting point
Ask where in the story they saw that. Sending someone back to the text is more useful than correcting them, and it makes evidence the habit.
Let them argue with the ending
Asking what should have happened instead is a real critical exercise dressed up as a game, and it produces better reasoning than asking what the story meant.
What to avoid
Do not ask questions with an answer key
If you already know what you want to hear, people will guess at your reading instead of offering their own, and the discussion stops being one.
Do not hunt for symbols
Asking what something stands for invites invention. Asking what a detail does in the story keeps the answer tied to the page.
Be careful when the story is someone's own
A personal account is not a text to analyze. Ask what they wanted you to understand from it, and leave craft questions out of it.