I’m working on a critiquing workshop. This is just an hour long presentation meant to help writers learn the fine art of the critique. I wanted something easy to remember, easy to sort of break down to use as a template. I tried to think of the various questions you could ask of a work, but it got cumbersome and there were so many things that depended on other things, and the whole thing became such a mess that I found it might be too difficult for anyone to remember.

I remember when I first started critiquing I ran across someone’s critique guide. It was twenty five pages of questions asking specifics about the story’s start, the ending, the characters, the setting, theme, mood, grammar, and the magic systems. I mean any question you could think to ask was in this guide.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do think something like that can be helpful. When you want a real detailed analysis of what’s working and what’s not a guide like that is perfect. If you just need to know where to start, it can be daunting.

More than once, as a newbie writer, I sat down with one of my first drafts and that document and couldn’t really figure out what I was supposed to do. What if I start by fixing the beginning, but then figure out my main character is shallow and I need to start over? What if I fix up the setting, just to learn that I need to cut that scene? I lacked clarity and direction, so more often than not I wasn’t analyzing my own stories.

While at Clarion West I received a great piece of advice from Maureen McHugh. Pick out one thing you think is working and one thing you think needs repaired. Expand on these a little, and that’s about all you need to convey to the story’s author. This has worked well for me, but it’s awfully subjective to my story taste. My taste tends to be Baroque. When the Story Schema hasn’t quite imprinted on your mind, this might not be the most helpful critique to give or get, because you might love Robert Ludlum and I might love Elizabeth George, and even though we are writing in a similar genre our prose and structure are going to look very different.

So I needed something more. At first, I thought I needed a shorter list of questions. Maybe it’s asking the right questions in the right order? But that would be totally based on where the story’s weakness resides (Ideally, you shouldn’t have to initially know this). Then I got to thinking about the Story Schema. There are lots of them. Some people call these plot skeletons. So I considered the plot skeleton as a basis for all my questions, but quickly realized that there are many, many short stories that do not actually contain all the parts of the typical plot skeleton—yet they work marvelously.

Then I realized I needed the simplest model I could come up with. A story in its most basic form. This is the foundation from which to judge just about any story. There are probably some exceptions to this, but I do believe this should cover things generally.

A person struggling for something they want.

If you can remember that statement, you know just about everything you need to ask of a story. Any story, I believe. Even the literary. It’s simple, I know, but the idea is to make sure the basics are covered.

I wanted something that was self-documenting. Self-documenting is a concept that programmers use when writing code. I have the option of writing comments in my code. This allows me to tell other programmers what I might be doing with a particular function or variable. However, I could also just write the code in a way that tells another programmer exactly what it’s doing.

This statement should do that. As a writer you should be able to tell me the following: who the story is about, what they are struggling against, what they are struggling for, and what they want. Generally, I think if you have these things, you have a story. Now there are some ways you can expand on this. For instance, I find the best stories are those where the main character wants something quite badly, but actually needs something that is in conflict with what he wants.

Finding Nemo. A father fish (A Person) faces dangerous obstacles while searching the ocean’s floor with his absent minded companion (struggling for) for his lost son who he wishes to protect from harm (something they want).

This covers the basics for the story, but there is so much more to it. What he really wants is to keep his son safe. What he needs is to let loose and enjoy his son’s life. These two things are in conflict and make for a fantastic story.

However, the idea isn’t to make the perfect system, just give people a good place to start. Your story should at least have a character who wants something and the character should have to struggle for this thing. If these things are missing, you might have a story problem.

Is the character shown and adequately illustrated?

Are his or her struggles shown and adequately illustrated?

Is what he or she wants shown and adequately illustrated?

I think if you can start here with your critique or with your story analysis, you’ll find what needs to be strengthened, what needs to be cut, what needs to be improved.

Hopefully, with fewer headaches and a lot less confusion.