Have you ever felt giddy while reading a good story? Good writing – whether it’s a novel, a screenplay, a short story or even a marketing scenario – makes you feel a palpable tension in the air and your fingers tremble as you turn the page… with every sentence that you read, you feel more and more compelled to find out what happens.
Seeing our readers like this is every storyteller’s dream, but finding out that the readers are distracted and disinterested would be the nightmare. If your readers just don’t seem to be engaged, it might be because you aren’t asking the right questions while writing – and we are not just talking about questions like “what happens next?” Join Wordsmith and learn how we can step up our question game to become better storytellers!
Why questions matter
Nothing motivates readers more than curiosity. If you can curate and dictate the questions in their mind, their attention is yours to command. To help us better understand question logic and rationale, we’ll be referring to Karl Iglesias’s book Writing for Emotional Impact: Advanced Dramatic Techniques to Attract, Engage, and Fascinate the Reader from Beginning to End.
“Because curiosity comes from our desire to answer questions, the best way to evoke it in the reader, and thereby heighten interest, is to set up story questions,” explains Iglesias. “A question demands an answer. Therefore, setting up a question automatically creates an itch that needs to be scratched.”
The most common story question we can ask ourselves is:
What happens next?
But we as professional writers need to do better than that. If we try to lay out the narrative one brick at a time, readers will inevitably get tired of the “and then… and then… and then…” style of storytelling. To avoid toothpaste-squeezing-esque storytelling, Iglesias recommends that you lay out your questions using the following guidelines:
1. Set up one central question
“Every story is about one central dramatic question that takes the whole script to answer,” he describes, before pointing to the classic thriller North by Northwest, where the protagonist Roger Thornhill is mistaken for the spy George Kaplan and must go on the run to prove his identity – the entire story revolves around the question “will Thornhill survive his identity crisis?”
When you apply this to marketing, your question must be able to carry the entire narrative. Using a luggage advert as an example, the central question could be “what travel experiences can the suitcase deliver?”
Iglesias doesn’t mention this, but we believe that having a complex central question (eg. something that requires more than yes/no answers or simple statements) provides more room for you to work with – especially when considering the following questions.
2. Set up a question for each act
Each act must also carry its own question that ties in with the central question. Through what transpires over the act, it should then connect with your next question in the subsequent act.
Continuing with his example on North by Northwest, Iglesias points out that the story contains three acts – act one’s question being “how will Thornhill prove that he’s not Kaplan?” – but at the end of act one, he’s framed for the murder of a diplomat, which leads to act two’s question: “will Thornhill clear his name?”
It is essential that you plan your story as you cook up each act’s question. If we wanted to create a story about a guy travelling across the world with his suitcase, we can think about each act as a destination or a theme. If act one was set at home, the process of packing and leaving for a new destination could symbolise metamorphosis or the pursuit of the new – giving us the question “why do we need to seek change?” or “what challenges or motivates us to travel?”
Try to envision the story from the perspective of your character (and by extension, your readers). You want readers to empathise with your story and to see and feel as they do to create an unshakeable bond.
Furthermore, consider what emotions you want your reader to feel as they go through each act, then try and tie that with the act’s question. For example, travelling to a new country creates a sense of wonderment, curiosity and excitement – think about what your character can experience to trigger these emotions later on!
3. Set up a question for each sequence
A sequence is a short collection of scenes – think a car chase between bank robbers and the cops, Optimus Prime challenging Megatron to end the fight once and for all, Romeo sneaking into the Capulet estate to confess his love to Juliet and so on.
Since an act is composed of multiple sequences, you’ll need a question for each sequence. Continuing with our travelling protagonist example, “what sort of transit does he take to the airport?”, “which destination will he go to?” and “what is there to do there?” are some questions that can come to mind.
4. Set up a question for each scene
Once you have the prior questions established, then you can start thinking about the specifics in each scene.
Don’t forget to link back up with the emotions you wanted to evoke earlier – think about what sights, smells or sounds you can use. For example, if you wanted to create a sense of wonderment upon visiting Morocco, a sequence might take place at the spice markets – where dozens of exotic spices of all colours and smells overwhelm the senses, or perhaps the shrill laughs of shopkeepers bargaining with tourists, or the overripe smell of camel droppings… there’s so much you can play around with!
Questions are the quintessential tool for writers and storytellers to get into the minds of their readers. If you can ask the right questions consistently, you’ll not only have hooked your audience into the scene, but into the following sequences, the next act – and ultimately – across your entire story.