Questions to Ask About a Story
These are general questions to ask about any story, whether it was a novel, a film, a picture book or something a person told you, and they work in a classroom, a reading group or at the kitchen table. The 58 questions run the way a discussion does: what happened, the characters, the setting and how it was told, then a group to ask after reading a short story, and last what you made of it.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Any story
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
A favorite scene is a matter of taste, but the turn can be argued for. When two people pick different moments, have each say what was still possible just before theirs.
Whose story was it, really?
Why ask it
The person we follow is not always the person the story is about: a narrator can spend the whole telling watching somebody else. Try removing each candidate and see which absence leaves no story.
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.
What kind of story is this, and what does that kind usually promise?
Why ask it
A ghost story, a love story and a fable each set up expectations before the first event. Saying the kind out loud lets a group see where this one kept the bargain and where it broke it on purpose.
What was ordinary life like before the trouble started?
Why ask it
A story begins when something disturbs a routine, so the routine is worth describing first. A reader who can say what was normal can say exactly what the first event broke.
What question kept you reading or listening?
Why ask it
Most stories hold attention with one unanswered thing: will she get home, who took the money, will he say it. Naming it shows what the story was built around, and whether the ending answered that question or a different one.
What did the ending cost, and who paid for it?
Why ask it
Put the first scene beside the last and list what was given up to get there: a friendship, a home, something a person used to believe. If the list is empty, the story may have been meant as a portrait more than a plot.
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.
Characters
Which character could you describe to someone who does not know the story?
Why ask it
Try it in three details, none of them a job or an age. The characters who can be described that way are the ones the storyteller spent attention on, and the blank ones deserve a follow-up of their own.
What does the main character do that tells you more than anything said about them?
Why ask it
Actions are the evidence and descriptions are only the claim. A character introduced as generous who never gives anything away is a warning about whoever did the introducing, sometimes the narrator.
What does a character want but never say out loud?
Why ask it
The unspoken want often drives more of the plot than the stated one. Look at what a character keeps circling back to, or what they refuse to discuss when another person raises it.
Which choice would you have made differently in that character's place?
Why ask it
It needs no literary vocabulary, only a reason, which makes it a strong question for a class. Follow it by asking what the character knew at the time, since readers judge with information the character never had.
Who did you side with, and did the story want you to?
Why ask it
Sympathy is steered by who gets the inner thoughts, who gets the last word and who is only ever seen from outside. Noticing the steering does not cancel the feeling, but it does show how the story works on a reader.
Who is in the story only to help or to block someone else?
Why ask it
Minor characters often have one job: bring the news, stand in the doorway, give the wrong advice. Listing those jobs shows the machinery, and the minor character who refuses to stay minor is often the surprise of the discussion.
Which relationship is not the same at the end?
Why ask it
Stories about one person changing are often about two people moving toward or away from each other. Name the pair and find the scene where the old terms between them stopped holding.
Was anyone treated unfairly by the storyteller, and not only by the other characters?
Why ask it
Cruelty inside the plot is one thing, and a story that quietly withholds sympathy from one of its own people is another. Asking which is going on gets at what the story is willing to admit.
What would the person in the wrong say in their own defense?
Why ask it
Give the bully, the liar or the wolf two minutes to explain, spoken aloud in the first person if the group is willing. A story whose wrongdoer has a case that almost holds is making a harder argument than one whose wrongdoer is simply bad.
Setting
Where and when does the story take place, and how can you tell?
Why ask it
Some stories announce it in the first line and others let it leak out through a coin, a train or a turn of phrase. How the information arrives is a choice, and a story that never says is usually asking to be read as anywhere.
What could only have happened in this place?
Why ask it
Look for the event that needs the place: a secret that keeps because the nearest neighbor is a mile off, a meeting that happens because there is one road out. Once something depends on the setting, it has stopped being scenery.
What does the place stop the characters from doing?
Why ask it
Distance, weather, money, a locked door, the customs of a small town: a setting works as much by forbidding as by allowing. Half the obstacles in a plot turn out to belong to the place and not to any villain.
Which detail of the place can you still see, hear or smell?
Why ask it
One remembered detail is better evidence than a general impression. Compare answers around the room: when several people name the same wallpaper or the same smell of rain, the storyteller chose it with care.
How much of the place was described, and how much did you supply yourself?
Why ask it
A story may give a room two or three objects and leave the rest to the reader's memory of rooms. Ask which house or street each person pictured: it shows how little a story has to say, and why two readers can disagree about one scene.
What mood does the setting put you in before anything has happened?
Why ask it
A hot afternoon with nothing moving and a station platform at night raise different expectations without a single event. See whether the story then delivers on that mood or was setting you up to be misled.
Who belongs in this place, and who is a stranger to it?
Why ask it
Plenty of plots begin when someone arrives or someone leaves. The character who knows where everything is kept and the one who has to ask are living in different stories, and the narrator usually stands nearer one of them.
What difference do the season, the time of day or the year make to what happens?
Why ask it
A harvest that has to come in, a last bus, a war two years off that nobody in the story can see: time in a setting acts as a deadline or as irony. When a story is set in the past, list what the reader knows that the characters could not.
Does the place change during the story, or only how someone sees it?
Why ask it
The same kitchen can be a refuge on the first page and a trap by the last with not a chair moved. When the description of a place shifts, look for what happened to the person looking at it.
If the story moved to your own town this year, what would have to be rewritten?
Why ask it
Work through it event by event and keep a list. Whatever cannot survive the move, such as a letter that takes three weeks to arrive or a rule about who may marry, is what the original setting was contributing.
The telling
Who is telling this, and how much do they know?
Why ask it
A narrator inside the story knows only what one person could see and may have reasons to shade it. A narrator outside it can go anywhere, so the thing to notice is which characters they stay close to and which they keep at a distance.
Why does the story start where it does and not a day earlier?
Why ask it
Every opening is a cut. A story that begins with the knock at the door has decided that the years before the knock are background, and a different first scene would have made a different story.
What did the storyteller leave out on purpose?
Why ask it
An offstage death, a skipped year, a motive never explained: gaps like these are usually chosen. Ask what the story would have lost if the missing scene had been shown.
How would the story go if the character we hear least from told it?
Why ask it
Hand the telling to the servant, the younger sister or whoever was only talked about. Count the scenes they could not have witnessed and the ones they would describe in other words, and you have found what the original point of view was shielding.
Which part felt too long, and which felt rushed?
Why ask it
The slow stretch and the hurried one are often one problem seen twice, since time spent in one place had to be saved in another. Ask whether the rushed part was the one you most wanted to watch.
What shows up more than once, and what is different the second time?
Why ask it
An object, a phrase or a kind of weather that returns was put there to be noticed. The change between its two appearances, a coat that fitted and now does not, can be the story's quietest way of showing what happened.
Which line or image is doing the most work?
Why ask it
Choose the one sentence or picture you would keep if the rest had to go, and say what it carries: a character, a mood, the whole ending. When nobody can choose, the story was probably running on plot alone.
What does the title promise, and does the story keep it?
Why ask it
A title is read before anything else and then again, differently, after the last line. Say what you took it to mean going in and what it means now.
What did the story make you expect that turned out to be wrong?
Why ask it
A wrong guess is not a failure of reading, because stories plant them deliberately. Go back to where the false expectation was set up and decide how fair the trick was.
Where did it stop being believable for you?
Why ask it
A reader will accept a dragon and then balk at a character who forgives too fast. The thing that breaks the spell is rarely the largest, and it shows which rules the story had taught you to expect.
Short stories
What is the single event this short story is built around?
Why ask it
A short story rarely has room for more than one real event, with everything else as approach or aftermath. If two readers name different events they have read two different stories, and hearing both is the discussion.
How much does the first sentence set up?
Why ask it
With only a few pages to spend, a short story cannot warm up. Reread the first sentence once you know the ending and see how much of the situation, the voice and the trouble was packed into it.
How much time does the story cover, and what gets a single line?
Why ask it
Some short stories last twenty minutes of a character's life and others pass over ten years in a sentence. What is summarized and what is slowed to the minute shows where the writer thought the story really was.
What happened before the first line that you had to work out for yourself?
Why ask it
Short fiction tends to begin late and explain little, leaving a marriage, a death or a quarrel to be inferred from how people speak. Try to agree on the backstory as a group, and notice which clue each person leaned on.
Who has a name in this story, and who does not?
Why ask it
'The girl', 'the man', 'my uncle': a missing name can make a character stand for many people, or it can show how little the narrator bothered to learn. Decide which it is here, and what the one person who is named did to earn it.
Was there a moment when someone suddenly saw their situation clearly?
Why ask it
Find the sentence, if there is one, where a character understands something about themselves or about another person. Then ask whether they will act on it, because a story built on a moment of seeing often stops before it says.
Which detail seemed minor the first time and matters on a second read?
Why ask it
On a second pass the small things stand out: an object mentioned early, a remark that sounded like chatter. Ask each person for one, and whether it was a clue all along or only looks like one now.
Does the last line close the story or leave it open?
Why ask it
If the ending felt abrupt, ask what one more page would have added and whether you would have wanted it. A story that stops at the moment of change is leaving the consequences to you.
What would have to be added to make this a novel, and would it be better for it?
Why ask it
The answer shows what the short form left out by design: other points of view, the years before, what became of everyone. It also tests whether the story is a compressed novel or something that only works small.
Your take
What does this story seem to think a good person does?
Why ask it
Look at what the story rewards and what it punishes, not at its speeches, which often say something more flattering. A group can agree on the plot and still split on this.
What is the story saying about its subject, and do you agree?
Why ask it
Start with the subject in a word, such as loyalty or leaving home, then ask what the events claim about it. A reader is allowed to follow a story closely and still think it is wrong about people.
What other story does this one remind you of, and where do the two part ways?
Why ask it
The comparison a person reaches for shows what kind of story they took this to be. The parting of ways is the useful half, because it is where this story did something of its own.
What did it make you think about in your own life?
Why ask it
Hold this back until the group has spent a while on the story itself. Asked in the first five minutes it tends to get a polite answer, and a personal one is easier to give once the characters have taken some of the attention.
Did you like it, and is that the same as thinking it is good?
Why ask it
People admire stories they did not enjoy and love ones they know are clumsy. Splitting the two answers keeps a discussion from ending at a show of hands.
What are you still unsure about, and does the story mean you to be?
Why ask it
Confusion comes in two kinds: a gap the reader can close by looking again, and a gap the story left open deliberately. Sorting one from the other sends everyone back to the text with something to look for.
What feeling were you left with when it ended?
Why ask it
Ask for the feeling before the opinion, and for one word if people hesitate: uneasy, relieved, cheated, homesick. Then find the last thing in the story that produced it, which is often a sentence and not an event.
What would you want to happen next?
Why ask it
The scene someone invents shows what felt unfinished to them: a reunion, a punishment, an apology that never came. It can also show what they wished the story had been.
What would you ask the person who wrote or told it?
Why ask it
The question each person chooses is the thing the story left them wanting: a reason, a fact, a fate. When the storyteller is in the room, as with a grandparent or a classmate, this is the one to actually put to them.
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
Even young children can usually say what a character wanted, and that answer leads on 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.
Have them draw the setting first
Before any of the Setting questions, ask for a quick map or sketch of where the story happens. Children put in what the story told them and what they made up, and the difference between two drawings is a discussion that has already started.
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.
After reading a short story
Read it twice, or reread the first paragraph
A short story can be gone through a second time in the same sitting, silently or aloud around a table. If there is no time for that, go back to the opening paragraph once the discussion is under way: knowing the ending changes what those sentences are doing.
Agree on the facts before the meaning
Short fiction leaves a lot unsaid, and a group can find halfway through that it disagrees about something plain: whether a character died, who sent the letter. Ask each person for the line that made them think so. Sometimes the text settles it and sometimes the story has left it open, and it helps to know which.
Choose two or three groups, not all six
For one class period or one evening, take a few questions from Any story so the events are agreed, then go to Short stories. Add Setting when the place is doing much of the work, as it does in a story confined to one room, one journey or one afternoon.
Leave an open ending open
When the last line does not say what happens next, let people give their versions without ruling on a winner. Then ask what in the story each version rests on, which turns guessing into reading.
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 keep the questions under The telling for fiction: nobody recounting a hard year wants to hear which part felt too long.