In today’s Words In Progress with Mary Adkins, we continue our series where we speak with writers and writing professionals about a specific aspect of the craft of writing. Today’s episode focuses on The Big Question.
Mary is the author of 3 books including, When You Read This, which was named Best Book of 2019 by Real Simple and Thrilllist, and Privilege, named a Best Summer Beach Read of 2020 by Today.com. And you can order her new book, Palm Beach, which comes out this August.
Mary Adkins is also a writing coach. She teaches an on-demand course, with the addition of live workshops called the 12 week book draft. She’s also offering a Free Masterclass on How to Write your Novel in 3 months, without killing or embarrassing yourself!
We learned so much talking with Mary about The Big Question. This is the question that is at the heart of your story. She gave us such fun examples and tips to help our novels shine! And comparing writing a novel to a cross-country road trip! We love this analogy!
Here we list the six qualities that each Big Question should have. Of course, Mary goes into detail with examples of each on the podcast.
- Deep, not just practical
- It is meaningful to someone in the book
- It’s thorny – there are arguments to either side of it
- Emotional, touch on the feelings of the main character
- Ethical, touches on human values in some way
- You want it to be a question that you don’t know the answer to so that you’re more open to discovery as you write. It also gives curiosity that motivates you to keep writing.
After discussing and giving us great examples, Mary suggested, as an exercise, we think about what we’re interested about because the big question is usually coming from a place specific to what the author finds fascinating.
Listen to the full episode for more of Mary’s tips and insights, or you can watch the episode on our YouTube Channel.
And please subscribe right here on our website to get an email with each new episode and to keep up with all our contests.
2 Comments
I listened to this episode with great interest. I’m also a mystery writer, and it occurred to me that the story question for each mystery could relate to the mystery itself. For example: to what lengths will a person go to keep a secret from being found out? Murder? Kidnapping? Theft? What has to happen in that persons mind to justify such drastic measures?
I’m not sure this meets all of Mary’s criteria, but I wanted to suggest this way of viewing the larger story question as maybe not pertaining to the sleuth, but to the murderer or victim instead.
Love this approach! Thanks for listening and reaching out! Best wishes on your writing! Always fun to connect with other writers!