Dear Madman

What’s holding your story up?

All narratives are based around a quest or question of some kind to propel the story forward.

Short stories only need one, usually around a specific period of time, a changing moment in a character’s life – the moment of epiphany, release or realisation.

Long form narratives like novels, memoirs and all narrative non-fiction, thrive on many quests or questions. Each scene has its own, each character has their own, but in order for the whole narrative to hang together and be a compelling read, the author needs to consider a CENTRAL QUEST OR QUESTION that is sustained throughout the entire story to unify and drive it forward.

This central quest/ion encompasses, and lies above or underneath, every scene and every other question or character goal.

Character goals play into the overall quest/ion but are not the same.

What could happen to start these friends on a novel-worthy adventure?

TRY THIS

To get started on finding your central quest/ion, focus in on your main character, your protagonist. What are their goals?

What do they want to achieve/encounter on the physical/material plane? Eg: Sophie wants to become a movie star.

What is their emotional goal? Eg Sophie wants everyone to adore her and for men to fall at her feet.

What is their spiritual goal? To be seen.

Knowing the answers to these questions, as well as defining your character’s strengths and weaknesses, will help you write this character as a fully developed agent in their story. But they are not the central quest/ion.

The central quest/ion is triggered by the inciting incident or call to adventure that sets this story in motion.

EG: In Sophie’s story she’s finally offered a main role in a film but it’s for a notoriously abusive director.

For Dear Madman the central question arises as soon as the man arrives at the family farm and is given work.

In my first novel Thrill Seekers the central question is sparked by the death of the brothers’ father.

WHAT IS YOUR INCITING INCIDENT? What unexpected external event, throws your character’s world into chaos and sets them off on an unforeseen trajectory?

From this inciting incident brainstorm a few quests or questions.

EG. What price will Sophie pay for pursuing her dream of stardom?

In Dear Madman – How will the meeting of this disturbed man and this family impact them all?

In Thrill Seekers – Will Brian be able to take care of his brother?

Make these overall quest/ions as open-ended as possible.

Here are a few more examples:

In a memoir – Will Marilyn ever find the son she was forced to give up for adoption as a teenager?

In a suspense novel – Will the protagonist survive?

In a romance – Will the protagonists ever come together and be happy?

These central quest/ions are usually simple but there is a lot at stake. Ultimately this quest/ion is what joins disparate sections of your story and keeps readers turning pages right up till the end.

WHAT IS YOUR CENTRAL QUEST/ION?

Will Bob’s new pants impress the ladies?

Make sure you have the right central quest/ion.

Recently I had the pleasure of editing an extremely well-crafted commercial women’s fiction MS with “Sisters” in the title. Central to the story is a crime which directly impacts all three sisters. The author’s central quest was to discover what really happened with the crime, which of course is an important part of this story. BUT at its heart this book is about the sisters, and how the crime will impact upon them and their relationships with each other.

So instead of the central question being “What really happened in this crime?” a better question would be “How will this crime impact these three sisters?”.

The focus on the sisters will ultimately give the author much more scope for developing the story further, as the crime places great pressure on the sisters’ relationships with each other.

CHECK your central quest or question. Is it serving the whole book, or just a section?

Remember each new chapter or scene will have its own question, but all of these play into the overarching narrative driver of the central quest/ion.

EXAMPLES

Sophie’s stardom story:

HOPE – Sophie won’t have to succumb to the casting couch and will retain her self-respect and integrity and become a star.

FEAR – Sophie will suffer abuse, sell herself short and become a bitter and twisted wannabe waitress.

Dear Madman

HOPE- We hope the interaction will be positive for them all.

FEAR – We fear it will end in an horrific tragedy.

Thrill Seekers

HOPE – We hope Brian will do a good job, and both brothers will grow to healthy, happy adulthood.

FEAR – We fear Brian will fail and his brother will die.

Make sure that the worst that can happen will at the very least FEEL like the end of the world for your character, even if it’s just not getting a boyfriend. Make sure you have enough at stake.

HOPE AND FEAR

Once you have your central quest/ion it’s easy then to manipulate reader emotion by moving them in one scene between HOPE – that there will be a good outcome and FEAR – that the very worst will happen.

EG. For our memoir: Marilyn writes to the hospital where she had the child to find details of the adoption – HOPE – she’ll find her son.

They reply that all the records were lost in a fire twenty years ago – FEAR – she’ll never find him.

In Dear Madman – The man is fired and sent from the farm – HOPE – the family will be free of him and return to their normal hardworking but happy life.

BUT then the man gets work at the farm next door and spies on the family – FEAR – they’ve made things worse and triggered a psychotic man’s revenge.

In Thrill Seekers – Brian tells the drug dealer not to give his little brother any drugs – HOPE – he’s doing his job as a big brother and looking out for Douggie.

But then the drug dealer gives Douggie acid anyway – FEAR – things aren’t looking good. Douggie flips out and Brian looks the other way

WHAT IS YOUR HOPE AND FEAR?

Now you have your central quest/ion, work out your hope and your fear. Look at what you’ve already written. Is there movement between hope and fear? If not go back and insert some actions that will prompt either hope or fear.

For more on the secret to suspense – HOPE + FEAR = SUSPENSE – see HERE.

As you write on, make sure you have that ongoing movement between hope and fear in every scene, in every page if you can find a way.

Remember, every character has their own goals that have their own quest/ions. Each chapter and each scene have their own as well. As you go through your story, make a note on whether a scene ends on hope or fear then move us to the opposite in the following scene.

Through it all, like a giant darning needle sewing the whole story together, you’ll have the thread of your central quest/ion, uniting all the elements and drawing them tightly into one compelling narrative.

Hope you’ll find that useful. Now get to work and apply this theory to your story. Did it work for you? Let me know!

Remember to use the search bar here and my Writers’ Index to find articles I’ve written on craft over the past decades. Type your craft issue key word eg, Character or Plot, into the search bar and find all related articles.

You can also find FREE WORKSHOPS on my YouTube HERE

If you’d like me to help you sort out your central quest/ion then drop me a line and we can organise a zoom mentorship meeting to get you started in the right direction. If you’d like a full developmental edit, contact me HERE to arrange a booking. Slots are available from June 2027.

And if you’d like to join us for a full weekend of workshops and writing see HERE for all the retreat news.

If you’d like to buy a copy of Dear Madman, Thrill Seekers or my Guide Through Grief see HERE.

For a monthly dose of writing advice, hints and tips, writing prompts, retreat news and publishing opportunities sign up for my Substack newsletter HERE.

I hope you’ve found this information helpful. Let me know how you go!

Lots of love

Edwina xx

Most photos are mine, but the pants photo is by Gay Liddington and the roses and angel are from Steven Vella

Who’s talking? How many POV characters can we have? We have the woman on the phone, the older woman and the boy, plus the person on the other end of the phone line. Which one has most to lose? Who do we need to hear from?

Writers make choices all the time. One of the most important choices we make is who we choose to tell our stories. Selecting our ‘Point of View’ characters, or ‘Focalisers’ shapes the impact, focus and tone of our books.

How do you choose which character will be your protagonist? Who will readers align with most? Whose actions and emotional epiphanies will lead the story and shape the plot? What other characters provide necessary juxtapositions to that viewpoint? What other insights can be gained from lesser characters and their perceptions of the protagonist?

William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying was one of the first novels I read that demonstrated how effective multiple viewpoints of the same situation can be. In this short novel, Faulkner examines the death of a patriarch and the impact on his family, through showing us all of their perspectives. The same situation through different eyes. Anyone with siblings will understand how we can experience the same event as children, but each have different memories of it. Existence is subjective and by using multiple points of view characters we can express this subjectivity and draw out interesting points of difference.

Another great novel to study the use of multiple viewpoints is Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, which uses the voices of a missionary’s wife and children in Africa, even a very young child. Each of those voices is powerful and intimate and gives us insight, not only into the events of the story, but also into each character, as we see not only how they view themselves but how they are viewed by others and how each is impacted by the situation.

Me and my brother Matty riding a horse 1975

In Thrill Seekers I used three, first person voices. Brian, the eldest brother tasked with protecting his brother and mother after the death of his father; Douggie, the younger brother who develops schizophrenia and Beck, a girl in the neighbourhood entangled in the mess the boys make. The use of first person brings the reader as close as possible to the reader. First person, present tense is the most immediate and intimate of voices. I chose Brian to be the protagonist and to begin and end the story because he had most at stake. He was the one given the ‘quest’ of protecting the family so his struggle to do so shapes the narrative. Douggie’s voice gives the perspective of the son who has lost his battle with grief and his mind in the process. Beck provides a feminine view of the events and the boys themselves.

My nana's sisters are the flower girls here, their mother seated on the far left

In Dear Madman I again used three main strands. I like the balance three brings and often warn writers of the dangers of only using two focalisers. This results in a battle for supremacy, whereas three strands weave together easily, like a plait. The murderer Joe’s voice, came to me so strongly I had no choice but to take dictation of his flood of excuses, blame and hopelessness. His voice was so strong it was a fight to contain him and wrest back control of the book. I attempted to balance his first-person rant with a more subdued third person omniscient (this means going into multiple character’s viewpoints within the same section) strand of the family members, with each expressing the impact of this man’s presence and actions throughout. Still the book’s balance wasn’t there until I added the third strand, my own memoir voice, interpreting and reflecting on my research journey and the intergenerational effects of violent crime.

HOW DO YOU CHOOSE YOUR POV CHARACTERS?

Choose your protagonist – the character with a quest or question that must be answered. This character usually has the most to lose. Think about this throughout. What is at stake? What is the very worst that could happen to them? Make it worse.

Will you have an antagonist? Is there a human adversary to your main character? Getting inside their head will give an interesting depth and perspective. Why do these ‘bad’ guys do the bad things? What motivates them? (Every one of your characters has a goal, desires and dreams, even those without focaliser status)

Which other character’s perspective will bring the most nuance and insight to the story events? Find another character who loves, or hates, or is investigating one or both of the other focalisers. What will they bring to the story?

Mother, daughter, child? What part does each voice play?

HOW MANY VOICES?

From experience I’d recommend three to five focalisers. More than this can become confusing for the reader, unless expertly managed. Beware of the two hander and that battle for supremacy – finding that balance is very tricky.

DIFFERENTIATING THE VOICES

A lot of commercial fiction these days separates different viewpoint third person POV sections in their own chapters. For example a story of three sisters around the death of their mother, which is told in chapters that alternate between the three perspectives. Even though they were brought up in the same family, culture and environment, each of these voices needs to be immediately recognisable. Their way of speaking, thinking and being in the world must show through in their chapters from the first line of each of their sections. A heading with their name at the top of the page isn’t enough.

Get to know your characters through daydreaming about them, collaging their worlds, doing lots of backstory writing about them, getting into their heads. Try my “Getting into Character” exercise for a great way to access their psychology. Differentiate each one with idiosyncratic ways of speaking and behaving. One may bulldoze over everyone else’s attempts to speak. Another may end every sentence with a question mark or start each one with “sorry”. Another may remain mostly silently but have the greatest insight into the hearts of the others and herself.

A change of perspective can bring new light to a situation and illuminate it! Same cave ceiling, different perspective!

Using multiple viewpoint characters is also very useful in shaping a suspenseful plot. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received in my 24 years plus of writing, is “Don’t take the reader where they want to go.” End a scene on a cliffhanger – never solve a situation within a scene – then take the reader to the next POV character and flesh out their scene leading to another cliffhanger, then switch to the next POV and then finally back to our first character, resolve that dilemma and move onto the choice or cliffhanger and so on.

In traditional memoir you are confined to the first person past tense voice of “I”, though even then we have “previous you” and “wise you now”. But you can also do as Kris Olsson did in Boy Lost and I did in Dear Madman, recreate scenes and characters from the past to provide other strands and viewpoints.

I hope that has demystified using multiple points of view a little. Any questions just ask!

If you’d like to immerse yourself in your writing and learn more about the craft from me and the wonderful Kerstin Pilz in person, we still have a few rooms left for our September 19 – 24 Byron Bay Writing Retreat. Writers of all levels of experience and genders are welcome. If you have an ABN for your writing, all retreats are tax deductible! YES!

Bookings are now open for Italy 2027 too (one large single and one shared room – grab a writing friend for the holiday of a lifetime!).

In the meantime, write like the wind – wild and free and don’t let the bastards get you down!

Lots of love,

Edwina 🙂 xx

Edwina Shaw

WRITER / EDITOR / MENTOR / THE HEALING POWER OF STORY

What is Your Story’s Central Quest or Question?

Look! Who’s Talking? Managing Points of View in Your Stories

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