Story Questions...

[khiemtran]

If your story question is "What happens next?" then you don't really have a story, you just have the dreaded sequence of events. It's the specifics around the question that make up the story nature. How will X get out of Y? What happens next in this sequence? You can even get a story out of 'What's wrong with this picture?'.

Reading without a story question is like watching a football game without "who's going to win?" It's the act of asking the question before the events unfold to answer it that makes up the experience.

Comments

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

So true!
Though, actually, some writers in some sub sub genres pull it off, e.g. Jack Vance in his Dying Earth semi-comic milieu novels. You have to be good, and inventive, and there have to be plenty of reversals.

Myself, I stick to my now notorious - amongst my wannabe writer chums - CQABN (pron "cabin""):

[Context], [Question]? [Answer], but [twist]. Now [implication].

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Interesting. So do you do it end-on-end or just once for the whole story?

As for the reversals, I think "what unexpected thing will happen next" can work as well, as long as the pattern is established.

It's funny, when I first read CQABN, I misread it as Close Quarter Battle At Night...

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

> Close Quarter Battle At Night...
That would be the Battle of Otterburn. :)


>So do you do it end-on-end or just once for the whole story

I do it nested:
Story CQABN
3-6 Act CQABNs
Oodles of Sequence* CQABNs

Sequence = one or more Scenes

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I'm coming to realise that story questions are what drives fiction much more than mere 'plot' does.

On another question - IIRC, you went for the Geza Ande collection of piano concertos - how do you like them?

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I love them so far. I'm been saving them as best I can, so I haven't heard all of them yet. I especially like his No. 20 and No. 26. He really finds a singing voice for the piano, which I think you need with Mozart.

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Story Questions ARE Plot.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

My useful question is "What's the next interesting thing that happens?".

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I use "why" a lot. And papersky's question is useful too.