Day 38: The Dramatic Question

A good Dramatic Question provides the engine that drives your characters’ actions but also makes them matter. So how do you determine if you’ve got a good one? What is a Dramatic Question and what is it not? And how does a good Dramatic Question complicate over the course of the book to become something larger? To help us answer these questions are writers John McClure and Christine Murphy.

A recovering philosopher, John McClure just can't keep Aristotle from coming up in conversation. Really he's sorry about that. His short fiction has appeared in Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, and he is a graduate of GrubStreet's Novel Incubator. An amateur baker, musician, and crackpot, he prefers to write about the ordinary as if it's profoundly weird and spends most of his time debating with his husband, his crazy dog, and lots of dead and made-up people. He's currently finishing a novel in verse about a family, a cabin, and a maybe-maybe-not-imaginary bear.

Christine Murphy is a vice president of individual giving in Portland, Maine. She holds a PhD in Religion, specializes in International Development, languages, research, teaching, and mentorship, and is a graduate of the GrubStreet Novel Incubator program. She recently signed with an agent for her first novel.

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