Why Your Story Question Matters

Successful Fiction Writing = Organizing + Creating + Marketing

I blog weekly on one of the above three topics, alternating between them. This week, I’m blogging on Creating. My topic today is: the “Story Question” of your novel.

What is a Story Question?

Every novel has a Story Question—a central question that drives your reader to keep reading. A novel that doesn’t have a strong Story Question is a boring novel, and it’s easy to put down “for later.” But later may never come. A novel that has a strong Story Question keeps the reader turning pages, no matter how late the lying clock says it is.

A central part of your task as a novelist is to create a Story Question in your reader’s mind—a Story Question that won’t quit. As we’ll see, there are naive Story Questions, and there are Story Questions that make your novel unforgettable. 

Examples of Story Questions

A few examples should help clarify things. 

In The Lord of the Rings, the wizard Gandalf tells the hobbit Frodo very early in the story that the magic ring Frodo has inherited is toxic. It’s so morally dangerous that nobody can be trusted to keep it. The Ring will corrupt all who own it, and the most powerful will be corrupted fastest. And the evil Lord Sauron is looking for it now, because it will greatly increase his power over Middle Earth. The only solution is to unmake the Ring—to cast it into the Crack of Doom where it was forged, many hundred miles away in the evil Land of Mordor, under the watchful eye of Lord Sauron. The Story Question is “Will Frodo destroy the Ring of Power—or will it destroy him?”

In Ender’s Game, Ender Wiggin is a six-year-old boy living in a future version of Earth obsessed with fear that an alien ant-like race (the “Buggers”) will return for a Second Invasion. The First Invasion failed, thanks to a once-in-a-millennium military genius named Mazer Rackham. The home planet of the Buggers is many light-years away, but the First Invasion was many years ago, and now the time is growing short. When the Second Invasion comes, who will save the planet? A Battle School orbits the earth where genius children are sequestered in an unnatural environment where they are trained in military arts. The greatest honor any family can have is to give up its son (or occasionally its daughter) to be trained in Battle School. The Story Question is “Will the commanders of Battle School be able to train Ender before the Buggers arrive—or will they break him in their mad rush to beat an impossible deadline?” 

In Outlander, Claire Randall is an English nurse vacationing in Scotland in 1946 with her husband Frank. They were separated for most of the War, and now they’re trying desperately to reconnect. When Claire touches a mysterious standing stone at the mystical site Craigh na Dun, she finds herself transported back in time to 1743. She’s immediately kidnapped by some Scottish rogues and taken many miles away from the standing stone. The Story Question is: “Will Claire find her way back to her own time—and will she go back if she can?” 

How to Raise Your Story Question

So how do you raise the Story Question in your novel? Should you just say it straight out?

You can, but if you do, it’s likely to be very simple and on-the-nose. Readers prefer a complex Story Question, one they participate in, one they figure out for themselves. Once a reader fully understands your Story Question, they feel an ownership in your story, and they’ll be deeply invested in your novel. For hundreds of pages. Maybe thousands.

It’s important to note that the real Story Question is not the naive one that the reader initially sees. A naive Story Question is one-dimensional—a will-he-or-won’t-he proposition. A strong Story Question has a hidden gotcha buried in it.

In The Lord of the Rings, the naive Story Question is: “Will Frodo destroy the Ring of Power?” This assumes that destroying the Ring is easy. Just take it to your nearest Crack of Doom and drop it off. But the Ring corrupts all who touch it, and Frodo has touched the Ring. The nearer Frodo gets to the Crack of Doom, the stronger the Ring’s power, and the greater his urge to keep it. The reader soon realizes that Frodo might not have the moral strength to destroy the Ring. And now it’s a real Story Question, with teeth of iron. The Ring might very well destroy Frodo.

In Ender’s Game, the naive Story Question is: “Will Ender be the Chosen One, the next Alexander the Great?” But all the clues from the first chapter onward scream that he will. So this is not a great Story Question. However, even in the first chapter, it’s clear that Ender is being manipulated by the adults—put in danger from other kids, bullies who are much bigger and stronger. Ender is smarter than any of the others, but brains only go so far in a fight. Can he keep winning, even as the bullies get stronger? And if he keeps winning, will he lose his goodness—that thing that keeps us rooting for him? That’s a much stronger Story Question. Will we still like Ender when he becomes the next Alexander? 

In Outlander, we get a hint of the Story Question in the brilliant first two sentences of the epigraph: “People disappear all the time. Ask any policeman.” So the naive Story Question is “Who is going to disappear?” Soon enough, we guess that it’s Claire, the lead character of the story. When she does disappear, going through time at Craigh na Dun, the Story Question evolves to be a bit more interesting: “Will Claire get back to her own century?” But we’re not done evolving. Claire quickly finds herself attracted to Jamie Fraser, a handsome young Scot. She can deal with mere physical attraction. But then she’s forced to marry him, and she soon realizes that he’s her soul mate. So now the Story Question becomes a terrible dilemma. Maybe Claire doesn’t want to go back. She loved her first husband Frank, yes, but he’s not here. And he’s definitely not Jamie. In a situation like that, what would you do? Now there’s a Story Question to keep you reading until your nails are chewed right through.

Homework

1. If you subscribe to BookBub, you get an email every day with short summaries of half a dozen novels at great prices. Read through today’s list and look for the Story Question. Is it a naive Story Question or a complex one? Or do you have enough information to even make a guess at what the Story Question is?
2. Pick your 5 favorite novels of all time. For each one, write down the naive Story Question and any more complex Story Questions that emerge as the story evolves. What is the dilemma that the final Story Question raises?
3. For the current novel you’re writing, what is the naive Story Question—the one you show the reader first? How far into the story are you before you reveal this Story Question? Do you evolve it later into a more complex Story Question? Can you sharpen it to have a more powerful dilemma?