# Who
During the month of November I'll be sharing a daily message to all the
writers of Cosmic Voyage (and beyond). These messages are affirmations,
writing prompts, story questions, and observations aimed at helping
story development and motivation.
For the first week of NaNoWriMo I'll be focusing on the basic questions
of the story: who, what, where, when, and why.
If you're a detailed planner you may have most of this worked out
already. In this case, take the time to review and reflect and maybe,
just maybe, you'll find a new nugget, or a different way of looking at
your story.
If you're a pantser you may have skipped them entirely, waiting on the
story that comes out to do all the work. I hope to show that even in an
impromptu story there's a lot to be gained from jotting down some
thoughts on each point before you dive in too far.
And for those of you who are already begun and underway with your logs
on Cosmic, or in your new novel, it's never too late to go back to the
basics. Perhaps it'll lead you in a new direction or perhaps it will
motivate you to continue on your path.
This first week is all about questions, so lets dive right in:
## Who is in the story?
Who are your characters and how are they related to each other? Do you
have a large ensamble or a small select crew? Are they a family or were
they tossed together by chance? This is also a good time to think about,
at least in rough terms, what makes them each unique.
## Who's story is it?
This is ultimately about determining who your protagonist is, and the
answer may not be obvious. A good protagonist will instigate change in
the story. Without them, something else would have happened. Maybe the
ship would have crashed. Maybe the island would never have been found.
Maybe they would have never fallen in love. If your character isn't
instigating changes in the story, are they really the main protagonist?
## POV
Once you've decided whose story it is, now we must decide who your
narrator will be? Are they the same character or not? Who tells your
story? Perhaps it makes more sense to have someone else relaying the
information. It might give you a stylistic ability to describe action
more narratively in that way, but you may also trade some interior
insight by going in that direction. Is this a Jane Eyre story told from
the main character's perspective, or maybe you are Ishmael telling us
the story of Ahab?
One of my greatest criticisms of the Hunger Games trilogy is that while
Katniss Everdeen is clearly the protagonist in book one, the author's
choice to keep her as the point-of-view character in book 3 left us away
from the action for most of the book. We read about the other characters
off doing things while we are stuck back at base. Was this really the
best way to convey the story?
In our science fiction stories on Cosmic this is a regular challenge for
all writers as the form of the QEC suggests that our stories need to be
told from the POV of the person logging the messages. It railroads us
toward epistaltory fiction that is first-person. But some authors have
been very creative in their ways around this. In one story a ship-board
AI is designed with narrative code to colorize the story happening
aboard as if it were a reality TV show. In another, the ship's monitors
report back what is heard in script form.
## Voice
Point of view also brings with it a second dimension, that of the
character voice. In life every individual has their own way of
expressing themselves, both inwardly and outwardly. How does that come
through in your story's prose, and in the way the story is told?
How omniscient is this narrator, and how reliable? Do we understand the
motivations of the characters and report on them, or is this strictly a
reporting of events and action? Can we trust their word?
Some of the greatest fiction plays with these aspects and uses them to
create suspense or surprise, from Fight Club to The Raven Tower.
## Who is it for?
Finally, I want to round out the "who" questions by asking who this
story is for. Is this meant for young adults just dipping their toe into
genre fiction or is this meant to challenge a seasoned reader's
expectations? Perhaps this is the hardest thing to codify and the
answer is often not black & white. You want your story to be enjoyed by
a wide audience, right? Give this a little thought regardless and we'll
see the question in a new light in the days ahead.
