Questions to Ask Yourself When Writing a Story
Questions to put to a story you are still writing, whether it is a short story, a novel or a screenplay. They are questions to ask your novel while it can still change, and the Plot group holds the questions to ask about your plot when the middle stalls. The 63 run in the order the work does: the premise, the main character, the plot, how it is told, single scenes, then revising a finished draft.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Premise
Whose story is this?
Why ask it
Ask who ends up most changed, not who appears most. A draft with two candidates tends to read as unfocused, not as an ensemble, and the fix is to choose one and give the other a supporting role.
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 a reader would miss anything in them, or whether you only needed them to find your way in.
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.
Could I tell a stranger what happens in two sentences and leave them wanting the third?
Why ask it
Name the person, what they are after and what stands in the way, then stop before the outcome. If the two sentences need a paragraph of background first, the idea is still a situation and not yet a story.
Is this idea a short story, a novel or a screenplay?
Why ask it
Count what it needs. One turn in one life is a short story, a want that takes many reversals to settle is a novel, and a story carried by what people do and say in front of a camera suits a script. An idea stretched past its size shows in a sagging middle.
What kind of story do my first pages promise?
Why ask it
A body on page one promises an answer, and two people who cannot stand each other promise a romance or a war. Write down the promise a newcomer would hear, because the ending is judged against it.
Who am I writing this for, and what have they already read?
Why ask it
Picture one actual reader: a twelve-year-old who loves heists, an aunt who gets through a crime novel a week. What they have read tells you which explanations to skip and which familiar turn they will see coming from chapter two.
What do I know about this world that an outsider would get wrong?
Why ask it
That knowledge is your reason for writing this one: how a night shift really smells, what a family says instead of sorry. If you cannot list five such details, the story is being built from other stories, and some research or a setting nearer home may be due.
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.
Character
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, the character has a goal and no secret, and every choice they make will be the one a reader already expected.
What is my main character wrong about at the start, and when do they find out?
Why ask it
This is the spine of a change arc, and its position dictates pacing: too early and the rest is aftermath, too late and the ending feels rushed. If they are wrong about nothing, they will end the story as they began it.
What does my protagonist do that contradicts what they say?
Why ask it
Characters become believable at the gap between statement and behaviour. One with no contradiction is a position, not a person, and their dialogue will read as the author agreeing with themselves.
Why is this the person the plot happens to?
Why ask it
Swap in a calmer, braver or richer lead and see whether the trouble still works. The best fit is the person least equipped for this particular problem, so that events press on exactly the thing they would rather not look at.
What would my main character never do, and what would make them do it?
Why ask it
Draw the line early, in a small scene, so the reader knows it is there. The pressure that finally pushes them over it is often your climax, and if nothing in the story could, the line is decoration.
What is the worst defensible decision my main character could make, and does the story let them make it?
Why ask it
Protagonists who always choose sensibly leave the author manufacturing external accidents. A bad decision the reader understands is the cheapest way to generate consequence that feels inevitable.
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 its loss lands later and the thing is not introduced in the same chapter it is sacrificed.
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.
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.
Which two characters could be merged into one?
Why ask it
Two friends who both give advice, two rivals who both sneer: a reader blurs them together anyway. One person holding both jobs is usually more contradictory and so more alive, and a long cast list is harder to follow on the page than in your head.
How is my main character different on the last page, and which scene did it?
Why ask it
Put a finger on the page where the change happens. If you can only say it built up gradually, the reader was probably told about the change and never watched it. A character who refuses to change can carry a story too, as long as the refusal costs them something.
Plot
What event makes the old life impossible, and how far in is it?
Why ask it
Look for the moment after which your main character cannot go back to an ordinary Tuesday. If it arrives late, check what the pages before it are doing besides warming up, and whether a reader would wait that long.
What happens if my main character does 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, and a draft like that feels slack however good the sentences are.
What does my main character actually lose if they fail, and would a reader care about that loss?
Why ask it
Stakes named in the abstract, like a city or a kingdom, rarely land. Readers care about the loss they can picture: a person, a place, a version of the self the character was hoping to become.
What is in the way, and is it a person, a situation, or the character themselves?
Why ask it
Purely external obstacles turn the character into a problem solver and the story into a sequence of tasks. Purely internal ones stall the plot. Most working stories have one of each, pushing in different directions.
Can I join each event to the next with "so" or "but"?
Why ask it
Tell the plot aloud and listen for "and then". Those are the places where events sit side by side with nothing causing anything, and the middle goes soft around them. Fixing one link often means making an earlier choice matter more.
Where does luck help my main character, and can I make it hurt instead?
Why ask it
A coincidence that lands them in trouble reads as bad luck, which readers accept. One that gets them out reads as the author stepping in. Hunt for the overheard conversation and the key left in the door, and make the character earn each one.
What changes at the midpoint so the second half is not the first half again?
Why ask it
Something should turn the chase around: the hunted starts hunting, the secret comes out, the goal turns out to be the wrong one. Without a turn, the middle of a novel becomes a row of obstacles of about the same height.
What would the main plot lose if I lifted out each subplot?
Why ask it
Try it one subplot at a time on your outline. A subplot that can go without leaving a hole belongs to another book. The ones worth keeping complicate the main want, or show somebody else answering the same question differently.
How much time does the story cover, and what would halving it do?
Why ask it
A summer squeezed into a week forces decisions before anyone is ready, which is most of what tension is. If the plot needs years, look for the deadline inside each stretch: a wedding date, a lease running out, a child starting school.
What have I set up that never pays off, and what pays off without a setup?
Why ask it
Make two lists from the draft: every weapon, promise and odd detail the story draws attention to, and every skill or object that saves the day. Unmatched items on the first list are loose threads. Unmatched items on the second read as cheating.
Which single scene is the whole story built to arrive at?
Why ask it
Naming it, even roughly, tells you what every earlier scene has to set up and what can be cut. You do not need the ending fixed while drafting, only a direction. If you can name two such scenes, check whether two stories are overlapping, each with its own climax.
Does the ending turn on something my main character chooses?
Why ask it
Check who acts in the last decisive moment. If a rescuer arrives, the villain slips or the weather changes, the character has been watching their own ending. Even a tragic finish lands harder when it follows from a choice the reader saw them make.
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.
Telling
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.
How close does the telling sit to my main character, and does it stay there?
Why ask it
Decide whether the reader is inside one head, moving between several or watching from outside, then check a chapter for slips. A sudden line of what another person privately thinks is the usual one. In a script the same question becomes whose scene it is.
Why this tense, and what would the other one change?
Why ask it
Rewrite one page in the other tense before settling. Past tense lets a narrator know how things turned out and colour the telling with it. Present tense shuts that door, which suits a story where nobody sees what is coming.
Which three details would let a reader see this place without a paragraph of description?
Why ask it
Pick the ones only this place has: the smell of the stairwell, the sign with a missing letter, what the neighbours do at six. Rain on a window could be anywhere, so it costs words and leaves no picture. Hand the details to a character who is busy doing something else.
Where does the reader know more than the character, and where less?
Why ask it
Knowing more gives dread: the reader has seen who is waiting in the flat and the character has not. Knowing less gives surprise. A draft that keeps the two level from first page to last has put both tools down, so pick a few places to let one side get ahead.
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.
What is the latest point each piece of backstory could arrive?
Why ask it
Mark every paragraph of history in the first chapters and ask whether the scene around it would be confusing without it. Most of it can wait until the reader is asking for it, and some of it only ever mattered to you while you were building the character.
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 line of dialogue that repeats what the scene has just shown. Cutting explanation usually raises the tension, because readers who are assembling meaning stay alert.
What is each conversation really about, underneath what is said?
Why ask it
Two people arguing about the washing-up are rarely arguing about the washing-up. Write the true subject in the margin, then check that nobody states it outright until the scene where saying it costs something.
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.
If this is a screenplay, what is on the page that a camera cannot see?
Why ask it
Go through the action lines for thoughts, memories and feelings nobody could film. Each one needs turning into something an actor does or says, or an object the audience can see in the room. The same pass tightens prose fiction, where a moment shown often beats a moment reported.
Scenes
Does every scene change something?
Why ask it
Go through your scene 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 the ones readers tend to call slow, even when they are the best written.
Who wants what in this scene, and who leaves with it?
Why ask it
Give every person in the room a small aim, even the waiter. A scene where one person wants something and everyone else supplies information reads like an interview. The aims need not be large: one wants to leave, the other wants an apology first.
How late can I enter this scene, and how early can I leave?
Why ask it
Cut the arrival, the greeting and the coffee being poured, and start where the first thing is at risk. At the other end, try stopping one beat before the tidy closing line. Readers fill in doors opening and closing without being asked.
Which two scenes are doing the same job?
Why ask it
Second arguments, second warnings and second near misses are the common ones. Keep whichever is stronger, move anything new from the other into it, and the story will seem to speed up without a single event being lost.
Would this scene be harder for the character somewhere else?
Why ask it
A break-up at home is private and can go on for pages. The same words at a sister's wedding, in a moving car or in front of the children have to be chosen differently. Moving a flat scene is often a quicker fix than rewriting its dialogue.
Could someone follow this scene with the sound off?
Why ask it
It is a film test, and it catches scenes where two people sit and talk while nothing anyone could watch changes. Give someone a thing to hide, a room to cross or a job to finish with their hands. Prose gains from the same check, because a long exchange with no bodies in it floats loose of the room.
Which scene happens offstage that the reader was waiting to see?
Why ask it
Look for the places where you cut away and came back with it already over: the confession, the fight, the first meeting. If earlier chapters built toward it, a summary feels like a broken promise, however elegant the jump.
What's the scene I'm avoiding writing?
Why ask it
The confrontation, the death, the admission, the moment your character is genuinely unlikeable. Avoidance is often a sign that it is the load-bearing scene, and a draft can stall in the manoeuvring required to get around it.
What question does the end of each chapter leave open?
Why ask it
List the chapter endings on one sheet. A chapter can close quietly and still leave something unsettled, such as a letter unopened or an answer not yet given. Three in a row that end with someone going to sleep is a pattern worth breaking.
Revising
Is this draft complete enough to revise, or do I still need to reach the end?
Why ask it
Revising an unfinished draft is how a year goes into the first fifty pages. Decide which mode you are in, and if the end is not written yet, put the Revising group away until it is.
What did the draft turn out to be about that I never planned?
Why ask it
Read it through once without a pen and notice what keeps coming back: a kind of scene, an image, a quarrel between the same two people. That is often the real subject, and revising toward it works better than forcing the draft back to the outline.
Does the ending answer the question the opening asked?
Why ask it
Drafts drift, and the ending frequently resolves a question that emerged in the middle while the opening promised something else. Readers experience that as an unsatisfying ending even when the last scene is strong.
Where would a reader put this down?
Why ask it
Name the page; you probably suspect it already. Look just after the point where the outcome stops being uncertain, and in the middle of any section you kept because you liked writing it.
Which passage am I proudest of, and is it doing any work?
Why ask it
Many drafts have one: a set piece written before the story knew its shape. Ask what a reader would not know or feel without it. If the answer is nothing, it goes, or it moves to a place where it earns its keep, however good the sentences are.
If I had to cut a fifth of the length, what would go first?
Why ask it
You already know the answer, which is the point of asking. Whatever came to mind in the first two seconds is probably there for you and not for the story. Cut it in a copy of the file and see whether you miss it after a week.
What will I ask my first reader, and what will I do with the answer?
Why ask it
Hand over the draft with two or three things you want to know, such as where they skimmed and what they thought the main character wanted. Decide beforehand that one person's taste is a single opinion, while two readers stumbling at the same page is a repair job.
Does the working title still fit the story I actually wrote?
Why ask it
Titles chosen before the first draft tend to name the idea, and drafts wander. Try pulling a phrase from the last third of the manuscript, where the story finally knows what it is, and see whether it carries more than the placeholder.
Where did I stumble when I read it aloud?
Why ask it
The tongue catches what the eye forgives: a sentence with too many clauses, a name repeated four times, dialogue nobody could say in one breath. Mark the spots without stopping to fix them, then go back. For a screenplay, hearing the lines spoken matters even more, since they were written to be said.
How will I know this is done, and not just that I am tired of it?
Why ask it
Set the test before the last pass: every scene changes something, the ending answers the opening, two readers got to the end. When your edits start swapping words back to an earlier version, this draft is as good as it will get and the next step is letting someone see it.
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 scene it is all heading for. 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. A stall often sits just 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.
Adjusting for a novel, a short story or a screenplay
Questions to ask your novel
A novel has room to go wrong in the middle, so spend longest on the Plot group: the midpoint, the subplots and whether one event causes the next. Answer from an outline with one line per scene, not from memory, because at this length you remember the book you meant to write.
A short story
Most of the Premise and Scenes groups apply, and much of Plot shrinks to one question: what is the single turn? Subplots, a large cast and a long span of time are usually the first things a short story can do without.
Questions to ask for screenplays
Everything has to be seen or heard, so the Telling group changes shape: point of view becomes whose scene it is, and backstory has to come out in action or dialogue. Read the Scenes group with running time in mind. Length and format conventions differ between film, television and stage and from one market to another, so find out what the people you are sending it to expect.
Questions to ask about your plot first
When the plot is what is wrong, take five of them first: what makes the old life impossible, what is lost by failing, whether events are joined by so or but, what turns at the midpoint, and whether the ending is chosen. A plot that answers those usually holds, and everything else in the Plot group is for making it better.