At various points in the writing process, it behooves all of us to sit down and ask some pointed questions about what we’re doing, where the story’s been, and where it’s going. Indeed, these questions are vital not just to check over what’s already been done but to prepare for the next steps. Trust my experience, if nothing else, when I say that a spot of preparation and forethought can make the writing process exponentially smoother and more satisfying. Further, if you like me (and many artists) are a perfectionist, these checks help assure you that, while far from finished, you are moving forward towards the right goal- and if you aren’t, they’ll help you to find that goal.

To that end, I’m going to give you some of the questions I ask myself, explaining what they mean and why they matter in each instance. These aren’t all the questions you can ask, of course, and they aren’t half of the ones I do ask, though my process is not so formal as a checklist, not so formal as this article’s organization may suggest. Write, and you’ll discover your own checks, your own points of strength and weakness, your own methods of prepping. These are merely a starting point.

#1 What Is the Story’s Conflict?

This question is vital to ask at the beginning, the middle, and the end. Simply put, unless I know what my story is about, I can’t write it. I can string events together, craft sequences, and add in sub-plots, but all that’s coming out at the end is a disjointed mess. The central plot of a story is its backbone; it holds the events together and gives them meaning through context.

When I start a story, I need a seed-idea of some sort. This has to include a plot-hook somewhere along the line, though not always immediately. A story can start with a circumstance, but for that circumstance to become a story it must start a plot. So not having an answer to this questions is permissible when the first chapter starts, but by the time the introductory phase ends, you need to have a decent grasp on the answer.

As the story develops, however, the central conflict can change. Especially as the first draft grows (but also at later stages), you may realize that you need to redirect or alter it. In my current project, I began the first draft with one idea for the plot, and while many of the events of that plot remain, the core of it, the conflict, is different now, changed by the time I was half-through the first draft.

When the story reaches an end, either the end of a draft or of the entire writing process, this question should be second-nature to answer. By this time, we should know bone-deep what the conflict is.

The conflict of the story is the tension at its center. It’s the question of whether Frodo will be able to destroy the Ring, whether Jadis can be stopped before she ruins either the new world or our old one (The Magician’s Nephew), whether Hale can complete the work he began during the War (Declare). This conflict is the single-sentence question of what will happen; it’s what the characters of the story are striving to answer. The conflict may be physical or spiritual, financial or relational, romantic or filial, military or personal. It can be the question of a single man’s peace or of a nation’s survival. What matters is that it binds the story together.

This question, however, has another element to remember. We must ask it about every story inside the story. Any story that so much as hints at novel-length will have multiple sub-plots, some of them entirely internal to the main plot- whether Frodo can resist the ring- and some of them almost independent, at least apparently- Mr. Bultitude’s travails (That Hideous Strength). Each of these elements, sub-plot and scene-plot alike, has its own conflict, and integral to writing them well is an understanding of what that conflict is. Sometimes it’s obvious; sometimes it’s not. Regardless, we need to understand.

#2 What is the Character’s Conflict and Arc?

This question isn’t applicable to every character. Plenty of characters are steady-state, not altered and with little complexity to their decisions. The soldier deciding whether or not to use his halberd on his assailant doesn’t need extensive character planning. For character with change and complexity in them, though, this question is vital, particularly in the process of writing.

A character arc, when we consider it as an element, is actually a form of plot. The character starts in one state, undergoes a catalyzing event or demonstrates initial instability, changes in reciprocity with his circumstances as he acts and is acted upon by the story, and in the end he is somehow altered, whether by an outright change or by a confirmation of what he had in the beginning, what he doubted or wavered in but now doubts no longer. Like a plot, then, the character arc has a central conflict, one carried out through sub-arcs (sub-plots) with their own conflicts.

Like a plot, then, we need to know the crux of the character arc. Perhaps even more than the central plot arc, in my experience, the central character arc is liable to change. Human beings are exceptionally complex beings, so complex that we never truly know ourselves, let alone other people,¹ and while characters are exponentially less complex, they are still liable to mutate as we write them, to become complex along paths we didn’t necessarily expect as we learn to know them. Don’t be surprised, therefore, if you realize that the character arc you started with is subtly or obviously wrong for the character you’ve created; at this point, the question is which one you sacrifice or modify to fit the other (and to what extent both change in the process).

If, like me, you tend to pants the micro elements of a scene (start with a seed and grow it, rather than following a strict outline), this question becomes particularly important. Knowing the axis your character is changing along and how they’re changing and why is essential. Without this knowledge (I speak from experience), writer’s block becomes a standard state, not the exception, because you won’t have a clue where to go. That obstruction can be cleared, or at least weakened significantly, by establishing for yourself who the character is and how he’s changing.

The elements to remember in this question, then, are the following: who he is at the start, how he’s changing, why he’s changing, where (roughly) he’ll likely end, and how this interacts with the rest of his character and circumstance.

#3 Why’s He Doing This?

Character motivations are absolutely essential, if sometimes slightly ephemeral. At any rate, many stories flop at a very simple, easy-to-miss point: why is this character choosing this particular choice? See, it’s easy for us authors to know what is supposed to happen in the story next and forget to question why it’s what happens next. Particularly when it comes to background characters and antagonists who work in the background, it’s easy to forget to check that they would do what they are doing.

Characters can act as you please, but if they act without an understandable motive- or the promise of a motive- the reader won’t be interested. Instead, he’ll be confused and put off. He’ll find the story you present unconvincing, and then everything falls apart. The secondary reality disintegrates. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to explain the motive. What it does mean is that you need to notice the motive; you need to check that he’s not acting against his own character. If the Count (in Why Ought I to Die?) had suddenly decided to hand out unicorn plushies to everybody on the island, the story would immediately fall apart- the plot might technically function, but nobody would care. The humanity of the characters would be destroyed

So when you’re writing, take care to ask this question about your characters’ actions- all the characters, all the actions. Sometimes the question isn’t truly necessary, admittedly. Asking why the baker sells bread to a normal-looking customer doesn’t need the double-check; his motive is obvious. With the important characters, though, and the important events, be sure your ducks are in a row. Be sure that you know why the character is doing what he’s doing.

Consider also how much the reader needs to know. Sometimes he does need the motive spelled out. Sometimes the implication is all that’s needed. Sometimes the motive can be left almost ineluctable- but be careful here. Don’t make the reader lose faith in the consistency of the story; he must believe that even though he hasn’t found the motive, it is present, regardless of how self-contradictory the character’s actions seem at a given point in the story. A necessary prerequisite for this, of course, is that you know the motive, know how it makes sense.

Conclusion

The three questions I’ve presented today are just a start, but, honestly, I can see them being almost overwhelming already. The first application is easy enough. The central plot of the story, the central arc of the protagonist, and the reason the protagonist acts, all these are, if hardly easy, at least questions you already know you’re going to be asking, questions you know you’ll enjoy answering. What about the rest though? What about the myriad of sub-plots and scene-plots, the intricacies of sub-arcs and side characters, the million actions that compose the narrative? The good news is this: as you write, you’ll realize you’re answering these questions by instinct, as part of the process of generating the narrative. You’re already doing some of this, if your stories are remotely coherent, and practice will make this intuition comprehensive. You’ll still need to double-check, of course, because all men make mistakes, but the minutia, well, that quickly becomes instinct to do correctly. You’ll develop too, by reading as well as writing, a sense for when something works and when it doesn’t, when you need to double-check and when you don’t. It won’t be perfect (that’s what editors and beta readers are for), but it’ll get better with time. Even then, though, you’ll find yourself asking these questions when you get stuck, whether in this form or another.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – Even setting aside bias, information lack, and the like, humans are on a rough parity for information storage and analysis. We simply don’t have enough room in our lives to fit a full understanding of somebody else on top of our own selves, and of course complete self-analysis is an infinite recursive loop due to the lack of true internal partitions in the human psyche.