Being back with you chatting about all things writing is so much fun! Especially after my stunning week in Copenhagen for the Louisiana Literary Festival. This Danish Writers Festival is internationally top tier. Elegant, informative, superb surroundings, excellent sound, stages, thoughtful tents, global best-selling authors and interviewers. And yummy food (this of course is enormously important). I can’t recommend a trip to Denmark for the Louisiana Writers Festival in late August highly enough.
Going to literary events helps me bring to the Art of Writing what’s on these big-name writer’s minds. With that in my thoughts, I would say that the top ranked writers I heard were very sure of the question they wanted their writing to ask. Their overall narrative query. The hypothesis, doubt or conundrum that they deliver through their themes. Their central question defined their themes. It’s their probe, or dilemma -- what they ask their readers to think about. When I say overall key issue questions, I mean the investigation through story into things like:
- What is the nature of good and evil?
- What is the cost of ambition?
- How does trauma shape us?
Obviously, the questions examined through these writer’s books were different for each author. But it was striking how the thematic backbone of story was important and clear in the Louisiana Literary festival discussions.
What is your key question?
If you don’t have an overarching theme with a question to be answered, how can you work out your plot? How are can you sort out your character development? How are you engaging your reader with the narrative?
If you work out a key question, it gives your novel a clear focus. Your characters, plot and setting all work together to explore a central idea.
If you know what question you are asking and, in essence, answering, your narrative stays on point, and your storyline won’t be scattered as you write. Characters grapple with your key question. Their growth and change are tied to how they engage with your question.
So, what question does your story ask?
This is an issue that will run through our heads in 2025 during our March 6 to 9 sessions in Brisbane. As well as our subsequent creative writing retreats in Italy next year.
If you’d like to share any comments or thoughts, I’d be happy to hear from you.
Email me directly at lisacliffordwriter@gmail.com.
My very best from Florence and happy writing!
Lisa