Problem
Answer the following 9 questions for a short storyin as much or as little detail as you find helpful. These questions are designed to help focus your ideas; they are not meant to trap you or stifle your creativity. Try to have fun with them!
A. Who is your protagonist and what do they want?
B. In what ways is your protagonist going to change during the course of the story?
C. What happens to set the narrative in motion? What is the inciting incident that interrupts the stasis?
D. What point of view are you writing the story in and why?
E. What is universal about your story? Why is it relevant to other people's lives? Why should somebody care who doesn't face the same problems as your characters? (For instance, none of us grew up in medieval Verona, children of two warring families, but we can all relate to the experiences of love and loss.)
F. What is at stake for your protagonist? How will the events put them in peril (physically, psychologically, or emotionally)?
G. Which section of a bookshop do you imagine this story would appear in (literary fiction, young adult, crime, etc.)?
H. In which of the following ways will your story be entertaining?
a. Being held in suspense.
b. Witnessing conflict
c. Emotional stimulus
d. Accessing gossip and secrets
e. Receiving useful or interesting information
f. The strange: the bizarre, unusual, and exotic
g. Titillation, the taboo, and the erotic
h. Experiencing beauty and wonder
i. Ridiculing & reviling others (Satire)
j. Comedy
Create elevator pitch/logline for your story.