How do you know when you’re ready to start your story?
Sometimes it’s obvious you’re ready to start because you can’t help yourself. You just start writing, and four years later you realise you have an eight-hundred-page novel and the editing job from hell.
However, if you live in my world than you have a brief for a script, a deadline, a cast list and maybe an idea about a guy you saw on the news the other day and this woman in the park who told you that you were a bad father because you let your children play on the see-saw.
To help you get from vague ideas to something you can start writing, I’m going to show you the four-question test. Not only will the four questions help you solidify vague thoughts into something that will work as a play, it also works pretty well as a pitch when you get asked “what is your play about” and all you’ve got is “there’s this guy and something to do with a see-saw.” Ready? Here goes.
What do you need in a story?
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know there are several classic components that a lot of people seem to miss. You need a protagonist or protagonists. They need to be empathetic – we must have a reason to like or admire them. They need to have an external desire, a thing that they want and that they feel they are missing. Some sort of conflict must emerge that forces them to change. Initially, trying to serve their external desire will lead to failure to defeat the conflict (at the midpoint of the story), after which point they either discover what it is they really need to be happy and through that discovery defeat the conflict (comedy), or they fail to realise what they really are and fail (tragedy). Simple, right?
Well, no, not at all. If it was easy everyone could do it. But here are four questions that will help get your story a) to the point where you can be confident the pieces are in the right sorts of places and b) you can actually pitch it to somebody else. Take each question, and clearly answer it in one sentence.
Question 1: Who is (are) the protagonist(s)
It never ceases to amaze me how many writers want to skip this line. It shouldn’t amaze me, because I was the same. As a writer, the desire to write a sexier first line is strong. And you should when it comes to your book (probably). But the first question answered here is: who is (are) the protagonists(s).
John is a 50-year-old writer from New Orleans
Claire is a 24-junior lawyer at a firm in London.
Noah is a 4-year-old French boy with an unnatural proclivity for climbing in places that are forbidden.
Why should we have such a dull first sentence? Because the audience needs it. Knowing who the story is about helps them project themselves into the story, to create the mental simulation necessary to understand what they are reading. If you skip this sentence, I guarantee your audience (and you) will be grasping for the protagonist for the next few sentences rather than concentrating on the story.
Two things to note about question 1: protagonists can change, and you can sneak in a want.
Identifying a single protagonist in your questions doesn’t mean you can’t have a multiple-character, multiple-thread story. But every story has to start somewhere, and the reader needs an initial character through which they can enter the story (even if they don’t make it to the end of the first chapter, see Game of Thrones!). In the hit TV series, Piper is nominally the protagonist of Orange is the only Black. But as the seasons progress the story becomes and increasingly ensemble piece, until at times she is virtually side-lined.
So, don’t use have multiple multi-faceted characters as an excuse to hide from this question. Pick one, start there.
Second, if you really want to then you can sneak a want into this first sentence:
Keith is a 41-year old ex-Navy officer who has always wanted to be a novelist.
Rules are there to be broken. But don’t get too far ahead of yourself…
Question 2: What does your protagonist want?
John is a 50-year-old writer from New Orleans. After thirty years of writing crappy crime novels he can’t stand it anymore: he can’t find another word to put on the page.
Claire is a 24-junior lawyer at a firm in London. She has her eyes set on the big promotion that will set her on the way to a partnership.
Noah is a 4-year-old French boy with an unnatural proclivity for climbing in places that are forbidden. The gigantic apple tree at the end of the garden reaches so high to the clouds that there must be some treasure hidden in its heights: a treasure Noah is desperate to find.
Remember, the bigger the want the more interesting the story. It should be clear and immediate. But this is also the external desire of the character. The first and most obvious thing they want in the story. Revealing their more complex, internal desires are what telling the story is about.
Question 3: What is stopping from getting what they want.
John is a 50-year-old writer from New Orleans. After thirty years of writing crappy crime novels he can’t stand it anymore: he can’t find another word to put on the page. But even if he could escape his publishing contract, the local mobster is about to break his legs for $20,000 of unpaid poker debts.
Claire is a 24-junior lawyer at a firm in London. She has her eyes set on the big promotion that will set her on the way to a partnership. But the partner pushing for her promotion has just been accused of sexual harassment – an accusation Claire is sure is false.
Noah is a 4-year-old French boy with an unnatural proclivity for climbing in places that are forbidden. The gigantic apple tree at the end of the garden reaches so high to the clouds that there must be some treasure hidden in its heights: a treasure Noah is desperate to find. But his parents have forbidden him from climbing the tree, and the old oak overlooks his school where eagle eyed teachers wait to rat him out to Mam and Dad.
You’ll notice all my sentences start with “but”. This is, in part, a bad writing habit on my part. But (see) it is a way to highlight that question three acts as a counterpoint to question two. What do they want, what is in their way? You can already see that just by making up random stuff of the top of my head as answers to the question, a story is emerging.
So why do we need a question 4?
Question 4: What is the Kicker?
The purpose of question 4 is to hint at the inner motivation/desire that will emerge in the story, and to illustrate the “kicker” – the thing that makes this story different and exciting. This should be the bit that makes the reader go “ooooh, I want to read that.” It’s the hardest question to answer.
So, I guess the question is “What is at stake at what makes this story special?”
Thus far you should have been keeping your answers to one sentence. Here at the kicker you might be forgiven for expanding to two. Maybe even three.
John is a 50-year-old writer from New Orleans. After thirty years of writing crappy crime novels he can’t stand it anymore: he can’t find another word to put on the page. But even if he could escape his publishing contract, the local mobster is about to break his legs for $20,000 of unpaid poker debts. Then the mobster makes an offer John can’t refuse: he’ll cancel the debt if John writes the mobster’s biography. Would John need his spent imagination if he were writing a true story? And is it worth risking his soul to stop feeling like a fraud?
Claire is a 24-junior lawyer at a firm in London. She has her eyes set on the big promotion that will set her on the way to a partnership. But the partner pushing for her promotion has just been accused of sexual harassment – an accusation Claire is sure is false. Should Claire stick with her boss and risk her reputation and ethical credibility, or bail on him and risk her promotion? And what is the truth behind the rumours?
Noah is a 4-year-old French boy with an unnatural proclivity for climbing in places that are forbidden. The gigantic apple tree at the end of the garden reaches so high to the clouds that there must be some treasure hidden in its heights: a treasure Noah is desperate to find. But his parents have forbidden him from climbing the tree, and the old oak overlooks his school where eagle eyed teachers wait to rat him out to Mam and Dad. The only solution is to wait and sneak out of his bedroom at night – night when his father can’t see him, night when the whisperers who wait at the top of the tree come out to play.
Is that it?
Hopefully you can see that the process of taking your vague idea and forming it around these four questions gives you an excellent start at framing your story around a conflict, and being able to explain it to others (a crucial step in getting a story clear in your head.)
Answering the four questions doesn’t limit you. It doesn’t stop you from having other protagonists (see Orange is the New Black). It doesn’t mean you story can’t or shouldn’t be more complex than four lines. I can and should be as complex as you want it to be.
But this is a great way to start. Try it. I promise it will help.
photo credit: www.pictoquesto.com <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/25759827@N00/48615498788″>Deadly Questions</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
