writing the heart of your story (5 page)

Chapter 5: The Major Dramatic Query

“A prudent question is one half of wisdom.”

~Francis Bacon

You’ve now learned why the visible “goal” of your protagonist needs to be revealed in some measure in the first few pages, and what we’ll explore next is the need to establish what are referred to as the plot question and the spiritual question your book is raising. For, the plot question is tied up in the visible goal (they are pretty much the same thing), but the spiritual question is a little different but just as crucial, if not more. Hold on—I’ll explain.

You may not have a deeply themed book, but there must be some reason you are writing this story. What is your story about? If you were asked, “Why did you write this book?” (and spend months, maybe years of your life doing so!) how would you answer? Hopefully, there is a specific thing you want to say to your readers.

It doesn’t have to be a “message” or sermon on life, but every story deals with themes on one level or another, and your views as a writer will come through the story, sometimes whether you intend it or not. Better to begin a book with intention—intending to say something and leave your readers with that “take-home” thought when they read the last line and close the book. (And we’ll be looking more deeply at theme later, but you need to have theme foremost in your mind at the beginning of your novel.)

Mind Your MDQs

Theme ties in with your MDQ or major dramatic query (or question)—which is the aforementioned “plot question.” I think the most important, mind-blowing material I learned in recent years that helped me in my writing craft was to learn about the MDQ. And I hope after you read this you will feel similarly. Now, with every novel I write, I begin with this element. And don’t worry, you can learn about MDQ PDQ (pretty darn quickly).

Yes or No?

The MDQ or major dramatic query is a yes-or-no question you ask at the start of the book. Very simply, it’s a question that must be addressed in the first scene regarding your protagonist, as it sets the stage for the entire novel. It is also called the visible plot goal (which you have now learned about).

Your question may be “Will Mary save her brother before he kills himself?” or “Will Frodo destroy the ring and save Middle Earth before Sauron gets his hands on it?” or “Will Dorothy make it back to Kansas or be stuck with those annoying munchkins for the rest of her life?” You get the idea. The are only a few variations of this plot question, and they involve the character either getting something or somewhere, saving someone, finding something, or escaping something (as you learned in a previous chapter).

Now, the answer that you reveal at the end of the book can be either yes or no. Maybe Dorothy will, after all, end up living in Munchkinland, but she might enjoy it, and find her true path to happiness there. You re the writer; it’s your choice. You do have to answer this question, by the way, and that’s why you set it up in the first scene. It’s the key to your story. But . . . it’s not the heart of your story.

The Heart Is in the Spiritual Query

There are actually two sides to this MDQ coin. And now we flip this coin over to find the spiritual query or question. It’s a little harder to pinpoint, but it reveals the heart of your character and the heart of your story. Without it, you might have an exciting plot, but will anyone really care about the story, or even read it to the end? Without a spiritual question for your protagonist, the answer may be no.

When I say “spiritual” question, I am not talking about faith or faith-based stories. Every good story has a “spiritual” question that concerns the protagonist. A question that involves the character’s spirit—her heart—is what we’re concerned with.

Think about Frodo. His MDQ spiritual question might be “Will Frodo find peace and inner contentment through his journey to destroy the ring, even if it kills him in the end?” Dorothy’s spiritual question might be “Will Dorothy find her place in the world, feel she fits in, feel at home somewhere?” Think about how these spiritual MDQs are raised at the start of the stories, alongside the plot MDQs. Both questions should be asked in the opening scenes of your novel.

Now, what it crucial to realize is that both questions get answered at the same time and in the same scene at the end of the book! This is amazing, and when done well, makes your book a winner. Dorothy gets home (plot MDQ) but at the same time she realizes she’s always been home; that here, with Aunty Em, is where her heart truly lives (spiritual MDQ). Can’t you hear Judy Garland say, “Oh, Aunty Em—there’s no place like home!” Talk about a clear visible plot goal, with the spiritual MDQ answered metaphorically!

So before you even start writing (or if you are partway through your novel), write down your two MDQs—the plot question and the spiritual question you need to raise in the first scenes that will be answered in one of the last scenes in your book. This is what should shape and give impetus to your entire novel—these questions. Your plot arc and character arcs will all begin and end based on these questions. They seem simple, but the reader needs to know what they are.

This doesn’t mean you state them blatantly (although in my novel
Conundrum
, I decided to actually have my main character, Lisa, in first person, ask the MDQ in her head—literally and exactly word for word. That worked for my book, and it sure left no confusion on the reader’s part as to what the novel was about and what Lisa’s plot and spiritual questions were).

I’ve given you a lot of important, big things to think about, and I hope you will see how mind-blowing the MDQ topic is!

Think about
. . . the MDQ for a while to get the hang of setting up your novel at the start with these important elements. It will make writing your book that much easier. The MDQs become a beacon of light that guides your protagonist on her long, dark journey to the end of the story and into the heart of your story.

Chapter 6: First Thoughts for Your First Paragraphs

“Beginnings are always messy.”

~author James Galsworthy

I’ve been going over all the essential elements you need in your first scene, all of which should to show their heads on the first page or two. I’ve talked about eliminating backstory and excessive explanation and setting up your protagonist’s visible plot goals and the MDQs to this point. In this chapter we’ll look at a few other essential first-scene elements needed to shore up the structure of your novel and smooth the way to the heart of your story.

If you can succeed at this first scene, you are well on your way to writing a terrific novel. Conversely, if you fail to include all the major elements you need right away, you will lose your reader, and that equates to a failed attempt at hooking and keeping your reader turning page after page.

The #1 Objective for Your Novel

So . . . what is the #1 objective in writing your novel? (Drum roll . . .) To elicit emotion. Not any one specific emotion, but some emotion. And you should have an idea of what kind of emotion you’d like to incite in your reader. But that’s your aim—to move your reader.

Okay, I know I’m veering off course here, but one of my favorite books of all time is Walter Moers’s
The City of Dreaming Books
. If you haven’t heard of this German author who draws crazy cartoons throughout and has the most wacky, warped imagination on earth, you need to discover him. In this novel, Optimus Yarnspinner, a young writer (who is more like a goofy dragon), inherits from his beloved godfather an unpublished short story by an unknown author. His search for the author’s identity takes him to Bookholm—the so-called City of Dreaming Books. On entering its streets, our hero feels as if he has opened the door of a gigantic secondhand bookshop.

Thus begins his journey in the treacherous underground where books are alive, scheming, and intent on trapping and torturing you in catacombs hard to escape. What is so compelling, though, is this short story, which I seem to recall is only ten pages long, is the most spectacular piece of fiction ever written. When Optimus shows it around to the booksellers, they grow obsessive. You watch the fleet of emotions that come across their faces as they read this magnificent piece of work. Tears, shrieks, gasps, cries—it’s a masterpiece and unbelievable that anyone could write such stuff. And of course, it then is priceless and highly coveted. Which leads Optimus into all kinds of danger.

My dream is to someday spend a good amount of time (perhaps a year) trying to write the most powerful, beautiful, moving first scene (ten pages) that will evoke this kind of intense emotional response. I hope one day to host a workshop each year called “the Ten-Page Challenge,” where a group of writers spend a few days seeing if they can create such a powerful scene. What if you could make your reader cry, become breathless, gasp, experience an elevated heart rate—all this in your first scene. Is it possible? I believe it is.

First Paragraph, First Thoughts

Since we’re discussing the heart of your story and all the major elements you need to set up in your first few pages, I want to stop for a moment and talk about the whole experience of diving in to begin establishing all these essential first elements needed in your novel. As I mentioned earlier, that first scene has a tremendous burden, and you may have to go back once your novel is done and rewrite that scene to tie in neatly with the themes you’ve developed throughout your novel, as well as homogenize your voice. 

There’s nothing wrong with this, and if you keep in mind you are just trying to line up all your ducks without too much precision at first, you won’t freeze up from the enormous weight of the task. The ducks are going to bump into each other and quack a bit in irritation, but later on you can calm them down and impose order on them so they swim in a nice tidy line. (Okay, just felt like I had to run—paddle?—with that analogy.)

Who’s Your Audience?

I find that I often start each novel a bit rough in terms of voice and style. I don’t write each book in the same style; in fact, many of my books showcase such diverse styles that readers have commented that they never would have known I was the author of these very different novels. In a series, for example, you would want to keep the same identifiable voice and style, and that’s what I do in my seven-book fantasy series, which I’ve set up to be able to go deep and evocative with language and imagery. But in my “noir” suspense dramas, I use an entirely different style—more of a tight, terse voice that fits the genre.

And that’s what you want to always be thinking about as you begin to write your novel and start setting the tone as you write the first scene. You need to know who your audience is and what style they’re expecting when they read that genre. If you’re writing strict genre (tailoring your novel to fit in a very specific slot), you need to do your homework and study the style and voice of writers who write those kinds of books. No doubt you are probably already a fan and reader of that genre (that’s why you love writing it), and so you should have a feel for this already as you begin your book.

Where to Start?

In addition to making sure your first scene has all the aforementioned elements, you also want to think about what situation would best set up your premise (what your story is basically about), plot arc, character arc, theme, and mood for your novel. You may have to write a bunch of different first chapters, as I sometimes do. Sometimes it’s not until you near the end of writing your book that you get the right idea for the opening scene. You might be like John Irving, who starts every novel with the last line of his book and works backward (yes, he does!). But he’s onto something there—do you see? He knows exactly where he wants his readers to end up—plot-wise and theme-wise. He already knows the end of the story and the take-home feeling or thought he wants to evoke, so he sets about figuring how to lead that back to the start. Maybe that technique will work for you.

Think about the heart of your story and the heart of your character. Once you find a way to put her heart right out there from line one, in a scene that throws her at odds with her world and shows how she reacts, you are on your way.

Introducing Your Character in the Middle of Something

One of the most important decisions you have to make is in picking just the right starting place to begin your novel. You want the story to start in present action, in the middle of something happening, with your POV character right in the situation and revealing her (or his) fears, dreams, needs, or goals and the obstacle that is in the way and presenting a problem.

What to Focus On

Your voice and style will have a lot of influence on that first scene—the way sentences are structured, the length of the chapter, the tone and pacing. But for the most part, you don’t need to concentrate too much on things like pacing and chapter length, for you’ll tweak and tighten those in your revisions. What you do want to pay special attention to are the things on the First-Page Checklist. It’s a great handy sheet to keep in your notebook next to your desk to refer to as you dig in to your first chapter or come back to rework it.

Don’t Aim for the Mona Lisa

I would suggest you think more about being a sketch artist rather than a detail painter as you write this first chapter. I recall reading an interview with Gabriel Garcia Marquez that so impressed me. In the interview, he mentioned how he often spent months honing the first paragraph of a novel before writing any more, in order to get clear in his head all the major elements he wanted in that book—mostly in regard to tone, voice, pacing, and inciting incident.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
is one of my favorite novels of all time, and his opening paragraph is a great one that does set up all those things for the entire book.