The Core Question defines the problem a section of text is trying to solve. The Core Question faces in two directions, back into the established narrative to define the movement required, forward into the storyline to generate more questions that lead to creative possibilities – which in turn lead to developed avenues.
At the very start of a creative work, the core question can also be used to investigate the different themes a work could explore and elaborate. In this case, when looking back, the core question is used to sort and consolidate preliminary ideas; when looking forward it generates new questions as pathways that an emergent narrative could take.
How does ‘The Core Question’ work?
The ideal Core Question is both framing and generative. It frames the requirement – the essential components of the section of narrative. And it generates the possibilities, themes and developments that could take the story and its characters insightfully forward, make adjustments, or invite new creative directions.
The Core Question has two essential characteristics. It is closed enough to define a broad direction of travel. It is open enough to generate useful pathways that follow the course the storyline needs to take.
How should you use The Core Question?
Use the Core Question to bring order to a seam of ideas that could form the foundation and framework of a creative narrative.
Use The Core Question – with a chapter, a scene, a passage – when you know what the section must accomplish but the elements of the storyline are not yet clear.
The framing and generative nature of the core question make it the ideal technique to use when you are faced with a blank page, or when the storyline has become overplanned and lacking the excitement, engagement, or plain creative appeal that you were searching for.
Framing and Generating: the two essential operations of a Core Question
Framing
The Core Question clearly states the objection of this section of the storyline. Looking back into the problem, it states – in a manner short and precise enough to keep in mind – exactly what the section of the narrative must achieve.
Generating
The Core Question must be able to generate siblings – a series of short, sharp questions that provide appropriate and creative material. Using the analogy of weaving, the Core Question is the warp, the sibling questions are the weft that add shape and embellishment to the underlying structure.
How to use The Core Question
The seven steps from stating the problem to building the narrative.
- Define the problem. State plainly what this section must achieve – the actions required, the character discovered and developed, the themes that should colour the section.
- Write an open question. Write this problem that you have now defined as an open question. A good open question – as well as containing the problem as defined, will always invite further questions. For instance, ‘what were the forces and incidents that led to the character finding themselves in this situation?’
- Make changes. Keep adjusting the question until it is specific enough to capture the requirement, and general enough to generate related questions.
- Find more questions. List as many sibling questions that relate to this core question as come to mind.
- Assess what you have. It will now be clear which questions could provide appropriate material for this section of narrative, given the problem it is required to solve.
- Draft the answers. Answering these sibling questions will provide the material required for the storyline. View each sibling question as an avenue to follow. Drafting a rough passage of text will help define that avenue, so that its form and characteristics become clear – along with how useful it will be to this (or later) sections of narrative.
- Build in style. Keeping the Style Guide you are working to in mind, add further detail to build the complete narrative passage.
Illustration: The Core Question
The following question could be the Core Question used to define the problem, form the foundation and framework, and generate the sibling questions needed to realise Chapter 1 of The Tailor.
What family background brought Anjali to tailoring, and what early experiences developed her abiding interest in tailoring and the design of clothes?
Four of the sibling questions that could have followed from this Core Question are listed below. Each question is followed by the defining of a potential avenue leading to a strand of narrative.
‘What were Anjali’s earliest memories of tailoring?’
Generates: The inheritance of the craft; tailoring running ‘as naturally as silk thread’’ through at least five generations.
The child is drawn to her uncle’s workshop; it is a world of texture and colour set against the spartan house at home.
‘How did Anjali’s interests develop as she grew?’
Generates: The pull upstream toward the workshop, and the collector’s habit of reading garments.
The dawning sense that clothing is ‘loquacious’ and says something about whoever wears it.
‘What was the world this family lived in?’
Generates: The grey town at the foot of a wet valley bordered by the sea, and the river that runs ‘like a silken ribbon along the seam of the valley’.
The sea lies at the foot of the valley, which represents the far horizon of Anjali’s ambition.
‘What did tailoring come to mean to her, beyond a trade?’
Generates: The central theme of the whole book; clothes shape and reveal character.
The avenue that leads to Anjali’s later ambition; her desire to be more than the owner of a shop that alters and repairs’.
Each of these sibling questions defines an avenue that leads to a strand of narrative. Ordering and developing these strands generates the first draft of Chapter 1 of The Tailor.
Illustration: The Core Question Creative Technique
The section of narrative from Chapter 1 of The Tailor as derived from ‘The Core Question’ above.
Anjali came from a family of tailors. Tailoring had run as naturally as silk thread drawn by a nimble needle through generations of Anjali’s family. The work of the needle and the loom had pulled her ancestors through crumpled and smooth history across at least five generations – that her grandparents had been able to determine – and possibly many more.
Anjali’s uncle first arrived as an immigrant in a grey town at the end of a wet valley, which was bordered at the bottom by the sea. A river ran like a silken ribbon along the seam of the valley and into the ruffled salt waters of the estuary.
Her uncle’s colourful workshop and the spartan furnishings of her parents’ house were worlds apart. But connecting them was the flowing textile of the river. The silver surface, the movement and the weave of the water through dark and light. [...] The river was the great designer, creating a pattern in a few seconds and then throwing it away as its waters rubbed the idea out; then moving effortlessly on to the next reflection.
There is personality in every garment. Clothing is loquacious. It cannot help but give away the nature and intent of the person who wears it. Some clothing wishes to fit in and some wishes to stand out. Clothing can be confident and determined, it can be hesitant or unreliable, it can be threatening, or it can be warm and supportive.
The Core Question in combination
Other techniques that work well in combination with The Core Question Creative Technique.
- Avenues – can be used to develop a section of narrative from the details established using a sibling question.
- Redefinitions – can provide a range of creative possibilities linked to the details established using a sibling question.