That was fun! Juggling the Art of Writing in Brisbane alongside Cyclone Alfred. But we did it! We Zoomed all our classes with only a few hiccups for Queensland writers without electricity and internet. The Brisbane 2025 group are now our Cyclone Writers! They were fantastic. What story ideas! My hope now is that the Cyclone Writers will set up their own writers’ group. Become accountable to each other with deadlines and gentle critique and encouragement of each other’s work. If you have a writers group date you are more likely to keep writing!
What stood out like fireworks on a quiet evening during this creative writing Art of Writing was the constant search and identification of your Major Dramatic Question. Your (MDQ) is the central question that drives the narrative forward and keeps readers engaged. It usually revolves around the protagonist’s main goal, conflict, or challenge, and it isn’t fully answered until the climax or resolution of the story.
As we write we are constantly wrangling with our MDQ’s. It’s a rare writer that starts with a really succinct MDQ. Which leads me to the First Draft. Your first draft is for YOU. I cannot emphasise this enough. If you write for your reader from the start, you risk overthinking and stifling the natural flow of the story. By writing for yourself first, you create a raw version of the work that you can then shape, improve, and refine. Build your story’s foundation for YOU first.
When you write for yourself, you’re more likely to stay true to your voice, your emotions, and your original vision.
The first draft is where you can be unapologetically honest with yourself.
Your MDQ so often comes organically with your first draft. If characters are the driving force of most stories, they will evolve in your first draft. Then you’ll understand their motivations, desires, and fears more clearly. You will often find your story CONFLICT too, on many levels when you find your MDQ. Your MDQ often arises as you deepen your understanding of what your character wants and what stands in their way. The moment you recognize this goal is the moment you identify your Major Dramatic Question.
What a beautiful and transformative experience it is to realise you have your MDQ!
In other news:
Our next Time to Write live interview and writing zoom session is Tuesday April 8th 7pm Sydney time with Paul Daley. Your zoom link is here and below. Save this link because it’s a recurring zoom so the link will always work. Paul Daley’s new book The Leap will be out in August this year. I cannot wait to chat with Paul about that mysterious alchemy known as story. When Paul is writing his books, what comes first? Plot or Character? And how on earth does he deal with the dithering that happens to almost all writers before they sit down and actually write?
Paul Daley is an author, journalist and essayist. His books have been finalists in major Australian literary awards including the Prime Minister’s History Prize, the Nib and the Manning Clark House Cultural Awards. A journalist for more than 30 years, he has worked as national affairs editor for The Bulletin magazine, and for The Sunday Age and The Age as political correspondent, foreign affairs and defence correspondent and London correspondent. He has won two Walkley Awards—for Investigative Journalism and also for Indigenous Journalism for his coverage of Australian cultural amnesia on frontier violence and the historic theft of Aboriginal ancestral remains. He has won Kennedy Awards for Indigenous Journalism and Best Columnist, and is the collaborative winner of the NSW Premier’s History Award for The Guardian’s ‘The Killing Times’ series on frontier massacres. He writes a regular columns and features for The Guardian. His most recent novel is Jesustown, a story of frontier violence and cultural theft. Summit Books (Simon & Schuster) will publish his third novel, The Leap – about a town marred by the legacy of colonial racial violence and dispossession and described by its publisher Jane Palfreyman as ``a literary mystery’’ - in August 2025.
See you on April 8th at 7pm Sydney time!
Art of Writing retreats this year:
Florence: The Art of Plot and Theme, June 1-5, 2025.
Florence: The Art of Telling Your Story, July 6-10, 2025.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89955043300?pwd=AOLDvUgQUz8ED8avx73FlWLXAkygkN.1
Meeting ID: 899 5504 3300
Passcode: 796072
Lisa