Questions As A Pitch

Moving on from making the plot into questions, I also thought it clarifies the mind as to the over all theme or character arc by transforming the story into a question (or several questions).  

Will Elizabeth find true love, while sticking to her principles? (Pride and Prejudice)

Will Briony ever be able to make amends? (Atonement)

Can Jennet balance the demands of her husband, her children and her art? (An Equal Stillness)

Yes, it makes them all sound like a trailer for a B movie, but it does capture the essence of the books, the 'what it's really about'.  In fact, thinking about it, the blurb for Adultery for Beginners used the question format: Can an adulterous wife be a good mother? which neatly encapsulates the theme.  

Pitches are so hard to do - it has to be worth a shot at least!

Writing the Plot as Questions

I'm developing this technique and using it on my current WIP, so I thought I'd share it with you now and see if anyone else thought it was a good idea.

Put the plot into questions.  So, if the purpose of a scene is to get out of the room before the bomb explodes you write "Will they get out of the room in time?"  On a more mundane level, if a character is going for a job interview, the question is "Will X get the job?"

Immediately it adds tension.  We want the answer to be Yes - but it's more dramatic if No is a likely option.  So, all the way through the scene, No must be a plausible - in fact, probable answer. Every time it looks as if X is getting out of the room, or getting the job, something happens that makes it unlikely.  

Posing the plot as a question pushes you into making your characters really struggle to get what they want.  And as we all know, if it's easy for them, we don't want to read.  It's the struggle that makes it all worth while.

Idea or Story

When I was on my MA there was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow attached to the department who could be consulted about writing matters.* Our RLF Fellow was an experienced novelist and I went to see her about the novel I was hoping to write while on the MA.

I outlined my idea: a group of university friends who go out to Kenya for the wedding of one of them. The novel would be about their relationships and shifting friendships. The RLF Fellow didn't look impressed. 'That's an idea, not a novel,' she said dismissively. 'Have you got anything else?'

Put on the spot I dragged up an idea from the back of my brain. 'I was thinking about a woman who has an affair, then ends it, and her former lover blackmails her,' I blurted out.

'Ah,' the RLF Fellow said. 'Now that's a novel.' The novel attracted questions: who was the woman, why was she tempted to have an affair, who was the lover, why did she end the affair, and so on. In answering them I would discover my novel, and the process of writing Adultery for Beginners was certainly easier as a result. Now, when I start writing a novel I play around with characters and situation until I find the questions. And then I answer them.

* The RLF Fellowship scheme has changed since then and concentrates on helping all students with literacy rather than literary endeavours.