- What do you really want and why?
- What stops you getting what you really want?
- Why would your life be complete if you achieve what you want?
- How are you going to achieve your objectives?
- Have you got other characters to support you and, if so, how reliable are they?
- Are you making your life unnecessarily complicated? (Worth asking this one - any complications getting in the way of your character achieving what they want should be those that arise naturally out of the plot. There should be nothing that seems "faked" to increase the tension in the story. The tension should be genuine, the obstacles real and so on. For a non-fictional narrator, a good question to ask instead of this one is are you communicating as clearly as possible (i.e. go for clarity, not gobbledegook, don't make your narration unnecessarily complicated? Are you conveying the facts reasonably? Are you backing the facts up with evidence? What are your sources?).
- What has driven you to decide this is what you really want?
- What if you're wrong? (How would your character handle that? That could make for a really interesting story).
- Are there limits you won't cross (and if so what are these? What is your thinking behind this?).
- Are there rules you are prepared to break? What would the consequences be? How are you going to limit your risk (or are you not worried about that? Some characters aren't!).
Now if answering those questions doesn't generate story ideas, I'd be very surprised!
Image Credit: Pixabay