What Are Your Story’s Dramatic Questions? | StoryCraft Advent Calendar Day 3
I will confess that I am someone who sometimes flips to the end of the book to see how things are going to turn out. I can’t help it! I get so invested in stories and their characters that I need to know if they are going to be okay. I get to the point where the stress takes over and I just need to flip to glance at the last few lines to see that they aren’t at someone’s funeral or something. Actually, usually if I am worried that a character will die, I just flip to the end to see if I can find their name and then quickly flip back before I can read any details. (I don’t want to completely spoil it for myself, just lower my blood pressure a little.)
If you have those moments when you feel like you care more about what is happening to the characters in your book than you do with situations in your real life, you know it’s a good read. And usually what you’re eagerly flipping through pages to find out is the answer to that story’s dramatic question.
I love using dramatic questions to help understand the structure and stakes of a story. What is the question that your story is trying to answer? In an adventure story, it might be whether or not the protagonist is going to succeed in a mission. In a romance, it is if and how the main couple are going to fall in love. And, most obviously, in a mystery the question is “Who dun it?”, whatever “it” might be.
When I’m working through my outline and the different plots that a story will have, I give each of them a dramatic question. And every scene that I write will be created in service of finding out one or more answers.
Dramatic questions are closely linked to your protagonist’s wants and needs. You can frame them in a similar way to how you would frame your logline. (If you’re not familiar with loglines, we have a whole post about that!) You can form your dramatic question by filling in the blanks:
Will [the protagonist] overcome [their flaw/obstacle] to achieve [their goal]?
My current project is a modern adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and I can use this framework to not only form the main dramatic question of the piece, but all of the side plots as well. Here, it becomes “Will Anne fight for her love of Fredrick and win him back?” This question speaks to her fatal flaw – that she is not able to stand up for what she wants within her overbearing family and social circle.
I don’t stop at just the story’s central question. I also use this tool to inform each of my book’s subplots. For this book, it is set in society groups in today’s New York City, and starts with Anne’s family filing bankruptcy on their hotel empire. The secondary plot is all about Anne finding her own place within the world of hospitality and stepping out of the shadow of her frivolous family. So, my secondary dramatic question becomes “Will Anne find her own place within the world of hotels without the interference of her family?”
The secondary question draws on some of the same flaws and obstacles – Anne is not great at standing up for herself and comes from an elitist background that doesn’t align with her personal goals and values. But by articulating this second pathway, it helps me to determine what scenes need to be included in this story to see that plot line through.
Dramatic questions also work well with a lot of the other tools that we use in the StoryCraft process for outlining. You can turn each dramatic question into a line on your Subway Map to compare the progress of all of your plot lines and balance the momentum of your story. You can also build out a Story Clock for each dramatic question to see if they develop and resolve at a steady pace throughout your story.
But mostly, what dramatic questions do is force us to get to the root of our stories and what the stakes are going to be for both the characters and readers. If you’re going through the agenting process or writing blurbs for your book as a self-published author, you will need to be able to answer the question “Why should someone invest their time in reading this book?” The dramatic questions often speak to that and what your readers will care about within your story’s universe.
So, what are the dramatic questions for your story? Let us know why we will keep turning those pages. And allow these questions to build up as you’re working through your draft. What might be difficult to articulate before you start writing might become very clear as you get to know your characters and the journeys they are on.
Happy Writing!
-Jess
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