Questions to Ask Yourself When Writing a Story
Craft questions for a story in progress, from working out whose story it is and why it starts today, through to diagnosing the scene you keep skipping and deciding whether a draft is ready to revise.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Whose story is this?
Why ask it
Ask who ends up most changed, not who appears most. Drafts with two candidates usually read as unfocused rather than ensemble, and the fix is choosing one and demoting the other to a role rather than splitting attention evenly.
Why does it start on this particular day?
Why ask it
If nothing about the opening day is different from the week before, you are probably starting too early. A useful check: cut your first three pages and see whether anything necessary is actually missing or only comfortingly present.
What does my main character want, and what do they want that they can't admit?
Why ask it
The stated want drives the plot; the unadmitted one produces the choices readers find interesting. If you can only name the first, characters tend to behave sensibly, which makes them predictable rather than sympathetic.
What happens if they do nothing?
Why ask it
This is the stakes test. If the answer is that life goes on much as before, there is no pressure in the story and no reason for the character to act, which is usually why a draft feels slack even when the sentences are good.
Who wants the opposite thing, and are their reasons as good?
Why ask it
Write the antagonist's case in their own words and see whether it holds up. Opposition built on cruelty or stupidity produces a story with no real argument in it, and readers can feel the outcome being arranged.
What does my protagonist have to give up to get what they want?
Why ask it
A win with no cost reads as wish fulfilment. Naming the price early tells you what to plant in the first half so that losing it later lands, rather than being introduced conveniently at the moment it needs to be sacrificed.
What do they do that contradicts what they say?
Why ask it
Characters become believable at the gap between statement and behaviour. If you cannot find one contradiction, you probably have a position rather than a person, and the dialogue will read as the author agreeing with themselves.
Who is telling this, and what can they not see?
Why ask it
Every viewpoint has a blind spot, and the blind spot is where the interest lives. A narrator who understands everything perfectly leaves the reader nothing to do, which is often why a technically clean first person still feels flat.
What does the setting make impossible?
Why ask it
Weather, distance, law, poverty, a locked border. Settings that only supply atmosphere can be swapped out without consequence. Settings that remove options push characters into the choices the story needs them to make.
Which of my characters exist only to help the protagonist?
Why ask it
Look for anyone with no want of their own: the wise friend, the accommodating partner, the mentor who only advises. Giving each of them one goal that inconveniences the protagonist usually adds more life than adding new characters would.
Would I know who was speaking with the names removed?
Why ask it
Try it on a page of dialogue. If all the voices share your rhythm and vocabulary, they will read as one person in different chairs. Differences in length, directness, and what each person avoids saying do more work than dialect or catchphrases.
What am I explaining that a reader could work out?
Why ask it
Watch for the sentence after an action that names the emotion, and the paragraph of history dropped in before a scene needs it. Cutting explanation usually raises the tension, because readers who are assembling meaning stay alert.
What am I withholding, and is that suspense or just delay?
Why ask it
Suspense is when the reader knows enough to worry. Delay is when they are simply uninformed. If a secret is being kept only because revealing it would end the story early, the structure needs work rather than another chapter of hints.
Does every scene change something?
Why ask it
Go through the list and write what is different at the end of each: a decision, a relationship, a piece of knowledge, a loss. Scenes where the answer is nothing are usually the ones readers describe as slow, even when they are the best written.
Where would a reader put this down?
Why ask it
Name the specific page. Most writers know and avoid the answer. It is usually just after the point where the outcome stops being uncertain, or in the middle of a section you kept because you liked writing it.
What's the scene I'm avoiding writing?
Why ask it
The confrontation, the death, the admission, the sex scene, the moment your character is genuinely unlikeable. Avoidance is a reliable sign it is the load-bearing scene, and drafts often stall in the manoeuvring required to get around it.
Roughly what is the last scene?
Why ask it
You do not need the ending fixed, but you do need a direction, because it determines what has to be established early. Writers with no notion of the last scene tend to produce middles that expand rather than build.
What happens if the ending is the opposite of what I planned?
Why ask it
Run it as an experiment for ten minutes. Sometimes it exposes that your planned ending is the one the story is already arguing against. Even when you keep the original, you find out which parts of it you were assuming rather than earning.
What is this about in one sentence, without describing the plot?
Why ask it
Not a logline: the underlying subject, such as what someone owes a parent, or the cost of being right. If the sentence only arrives after the draft, that is normal. If it never arrives, the revision has no principle to cut by.
Is this draft finished enough to fix, or does it still need to be finished?
Why ask it
Revising an incomplete draft is the most common way to spend a year on the first fifty pages. Deciding which mode you are in, and telling yourself which questions are off limits until then, is usually what unblocks the work.
Working with these at different stages
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Which questions belong to which stage
While drafting
Stay with the questions about want, opposition, cost, and the last scene. These generate material. Questions about dialogue, explanation, and where a reader would stop will only slow you down and tend to produce a polished opening attached to nothing.
When stuck mid-draft
Being stuck is usually a structural problem a few scenes back rather than a failure of inspiration. Ask what happens if the character does nothing, and what scene you are avoiding. Most stalls sit immediately before the scene you do not want to write.
When revising
Now use the diagnostic questions: what every scene changes, what you are explaining, where a reader would put it down, whether the voices differ. Work with the whole draft printed or in one file so you can see shape rather than sentences.
A revision pass that uses the answers
- 1List every scene on one line each, with what changes by the end of it. Scenes with nothing in that column are your first candidates for cutting or merging.
- 2Mark the point where the outcome stops being in doubt. Everything after it needs a reason to exist beyond tidying up.
- 3Reread only the dialogue, skipping the prose. You will hear repetition, throat-clearing, and characters who sound identical much faster this way.
- 4Search for the places you named an emotion and try deleting the sentence. Keep the deletion if the scene still works, which it usually does.
- 5Check the first three pages against the day you chose to start on. If the story only begins on page four, start there.
- 6Write the one-sentence subject at the top of the file, then cut anything that has nothing to do with it. This is the pass that shortens a draft honestly.
Common pitfalls
Answering these on paper instead of writing
Planning documents can grow indefinitely without a story appearing. Give the questions an hour, not a week, then go back to scenes. Some answers only arrive by writing the scene wrong first.
Making the protagonist reasonable
Characters who behave sensibly at every turn produce no plot. The story usually needs a decision the reader can see is a mistake and can also understand, which means letting your protagonist want something inconvenient.
Confusing complication with complexity
Extra subplots, timelines, and viewpoints often hide a thin central conflict rather than deepening it. Test each addition by asking whether it puts pressure on the main want or merely postpones it.
Polishing the opening indefinitely
Openings are the most rewritten and least reliable part of an unfinished draft, because they have to be shaped by an ending that does not exist yet. Leave the first chapter alone until the last one is written.
Asking readers if they liked it
You will get politeness. Ask instead where they got bored, where they were confused, what they thought the character wanted, and what they expected to happen next. Those answers are usable; praise is not.