Essential Questions

What I’m Reading: The Unsung Hero by Suzanne Brockmann AND The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory.

What I’m working on: Typing up some more hand-written stuff from my trip. Adding to the scene with Galen and his most trusted advisor. (Tonight is my Valentine's night out with the DH, so I'm expecting only minimal words.)

New words today: 124

My day job is in education. I really try to keep that aspect of my life separate from my writing. However, a concept we’re exploring at work poses some interesting ideas for writing so I thought I’d bring it up here.

Essential questions.

The long and short of it is that I’m in charge of helping teachers learn how to write and use essential questions in their classes. For the record, I’m a big proponent of essential questions and was using them naturally long before I ever knew I was doing it.

What is an essential question? Grant Wiggins says, “an essential question is – well, essential: important, vital, at the heart of the matter – the essence of the issue.”

He goes on to say the “meaning of essential involves important questions that recur throughout one’s life. Such questions are broad in scope and timeless by nature. They are perpetually arguable. We may arrive at or be helped to grasp understandings for these questions, but we soon learn that answers to them are invariably provisional. In other words, we are liable to change our minds in response to reflection and experience concerning such questions as we go through life, and that such changes of mind are not only expected but beneficial.”

Essential questions don’t have easy answers. Rather, they are big ideas. A person’s answer will depend on prior knowledge and experience and assumptions and the consideration of alternatives and connections.

So, I’m thinking many writers use essential questions when they write. They take a question that’s important to them and provide a lens for viewing that question in the form of a work of fiction. I’m wondering if being able to state a question up front might help guide the story you write.

Perhaps an essential question is sort of like a theme, but I’d prefer to think of it as a question. I don’t want someone to tell me what I’m so supposed to take away from a story. I’d rather figure that out myself.

I’ve been thinking about theme for awhile now, but I’m going to think of it as a question instead – an essential question.

For example, the themes I’d come up with for Slayer all had to do with good and evil. But they were really hard to state. I like it in question form better: Is there such a thing as pure good or pure evil? What would pure good look like? What would pure evil look like? What happens if someone commits an evil act to preserve pure good? Can you be both evil and good at the same time?

Essential questions.

I’m not sure I answer those questions in my story. Maybe different people have their own answers. However, I explore them.

What essential questions does your writing explore?