Crafting our stories well is forming our questions well. Good stories are inspired by good questions.
One way to craft stories from experiences is by mapping out the kinds of questions the story could address, answer and not answer.
This includes two kinds of questions:
- Questions the story opening could raise in the minds of listeners
- Questions listeners could have and ask after hearing the story opening
Question mapping is richest when it engages all the basic question forms of who, what, when, where, why, how, how much and what if. Curiosity is the clearest indicator of a well crafted story.
We give stories an edge of curiosity when there are questions the story doesn't answer. We don't measure a story's character by how much it tells us but how well it entices and evokes our curiosity.