General Questionnaire (subject to revision)
1. How does the story capture your attention initially?
2. If only trouble is interesting, what is the ‘trouble’ in this story?
3. People often talk about what is ‘at stake’ or what is ‘risked’ in a story, by which they
mean what is wanted, or what might be lost. What do you think is at stake here?
4. Describe the ground situation. What details convey this information?
5. What is the central conflict? What is the crisis? Describe the resolution.
6. Burroway presents a plot as having conflict, crisis, and resolution. In his book, The
Lonely Voice, Frank O’Connor defines a story as having three necessary elements:
exposition, development, and drama. John Barth’s formulation in “Incremental
Perturbation” sounds a little more complex: exposition (ground situation), conflict
(introduction of the dramatic vehicle), complication, climax, denouement, and
wrap-up. How do these concepts apply in this story?
7. What is the ratio of summary (where we are told what happens) to scene (where we
are shown what happens)? Discuss.
8. What specific details do you think you will remember when you think about this story
later? Why? In what way are they specific, definite, concrete, particular, or (perhaps
most important) significant?
9. Frank O’Connor also introduces us to the concept of the submerged population. How
might a character in this story be considered part of a so-called submerged
population?
10. What do we know about the character(s)? Would you say they are more typical or
more individual? Why? What universal qualities do they embody?
11. Who is the main character? How does the story cause you to believe in that
character? Authorial interpretation, appearance, thought, speech, action? Don’t
merely identify the categories; you should be more specific in your analysis--use
examples. If there is no single main character, then what makes you care about what
happens in the story? Do NOT say, ‘I don’t.’
12. Identify the point of view (first, second, or third-person). How does the writer’s choice
of POV influence our experience of the story? (Who speaks? To whom? In what
form? At what distance? With what limitations?)
13. Can you find any examples of ‘free indirect discourse’ as discussed by James Wood
in How Fiction Works? Describe their effects (regarding the author / narrator /
character / reader relationship).
14. etc.