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asking questions

The gold we don't know we have

Some beautiful friends will meet us at a cafe in an hour. It's been a while since we've caught up, and they have stories to share: stories of losing a baby, of living through cancer, of managing rambunctious kids, of working in their own businesses, of just trying to survive.

I wonder how their faith is now. And their relationship? Do they still have that spark, that driving love for each other that was so evident the moment they met? How hard is life for them, and how can Rach and I best give love? Be love?

What is it, to be a friend?

Perhaps, it is to sit with when times are hard. To encourage when feeling down. To listen more than speak. To intuit, towards wisdom. To be love, in as many different forms as possible.

Also, perhaps, it is to create experiences that last. Tell a story that is funny. Remind them that they are loveable. Place them in a scene where they are the hero. Encourage the parts of them that they can’t draw out on their own today.

I don't have the answers. This isn't that kind of post. And I'm honestly not very good at maintaining a lot of friends. But I'm tremendously interested, as an observer and a participant in this magic that happens between friends. There seems to be a third entity that is created when two people converse: something neither of us could create on our own. In community, we seem to draw out parts of each other that are hidden.

We mine the gold we don't even know the other has, and the tools of discovery are love, encouragement and compassion.

I would like today's conversation to be something like that. Just find the gold, allow it to be its own expansive entity, and when we say our goodbyes, we all somehow walk away with the treasure.

Three layers of questions I ask everyone

I'll let you in on a secret. This business I'm running, where I help you write your best books and tell your best stories, is really just a trojan horse. It's a useful by-product of my real journey to find all the ways to craft a meaningful life.

Every hour I spend researching storycraft, and narrative theory, and story philosophy, I am learning how writers engage their audience, how they create meaningful moments, lasting change, character transformation. And it's incredibly powerful to master all these techniques, so that our stories can be powerful and memorable. But beyond the creating of stories and content and ideas, I'm finding myriad crossovers with the living of meaningful stories.

Everything we respond to in storytelling also holds a truth somehow in real life, and this fascinates me. I think it is important, and you'll find a lot of my writing is trojan-horsing these ideas into the conversations. Just wanted to give you the kind of heads-up that the city of Troy would have no doubt appreciated.

One such story/life crossover is in the questions writers ask of their characters.

When writing engaging characters, we ask questions in layers. From the external layers at the surface, through the feelings and emotions of the internal layers, all the way down to the philosophical beliefs and worldviews that a character has. Finding the answers to these questions helps us to understand and identify with our characters, and also develop deeper more meaningful interactions with them.

Thinking in this way was extraordinarily useful during all the interviews Rach and I conducted for the book we published a few years ago, and it has become something I apply in my daily conversations now, to craft more meaningful interactions.

Here are a few examples of how this External-Internal-Philosphical framing reveals more of a character, enough that we might actually start to care about them a bit:

CONFLICT:

What is the external problem?
"I lost my job, I've lost my cashflow..."

What internal discomfort is being caused as a result?
"I’m frustrated, afraid, anxious..."

What is the philosophical base of all this?
"I care about what others think of me... Status is important to me."
"I don't know if I am enough? Do I have what it takes to choose a new path?"
"Being fired for good morals was wrong, and unjust!"

AMBITION:

What is the external desire of the character?
"I want to exercise and get fit."

What is their internal desire, the subtext, the “why”?
"I want a particular person to find me attractive."

What is the philosophical base? Why is that “why” so important to me, or to the world?
"I believe appearances contribute to attraction."
"I don't think I have anything else of value inside me, so how I look matters."

CHANGE:

After everything, what has changed externally?
"I’ve lost weight, I’m fit now."

What has changed internally?
"I’m confident, I can trust myself with my choices, I actually like myself now."

What has changed philosophically?

"I believe I am loveable and valuable. Appearance doesn’t matter as much as I thought, but self-worth, that’s the big thing!"

—

Obviously these answers can go in so many directions, but hopefully you can see the potential in asking the questions. We uncover more about a character, and eventually we will land on something that resonates with us. I may not care at all about your job, but I totally understand the tension around "do I have what it takes?" I don't really care about what actually happened at recess, but I do care about how it made my child feel, and what he believes about that interaction.

Whatever is going on in another's life, asking questions from all three layers can help us find the common ground, and make their stories matter.