To start your story with clear purpose and direction (something not all writers want or need —some are more intuitive at the outset) or to reestablish focus as you get deeper into a larger text, ask yourself and answer the Three Whys and a What.

• Why are you writing this story now? This is something you want to be able to get down in the space of an index card (or say during an elevator ride). You can use it to explain your project to everyone from your mother to that famous guy you meet at a party (or see in that elevator coming down from the party?). It's for anyone who asks you what you’re working on. It should be short and simple, and remember, the index card is just an index card, not a microfiche. We’re talking one or two sentences.

• Why should your reader care? This is the part you don’t talk to people about so overtly, because no one wants to hear what you think they think… The answer may be anything from because they can relate to they want to escape reality to because they want to learn about parts of the world they don’t know about yet. I don’t believe in writing for an audience, but I do advise keeping this question in mind as you go, as a sort of lodestone of anti-onanism.

• Why does your protagonist do what they do? This part gets you back to writing. Isolate a formative moment in your character’s past that influences their present behavior. Write it out, not as a flashback, but as a scene. Once it’s down, maybe you can fit it in as a flashback, in some way that helps you reveal the present better, but for starters, just focus on that moment in the past.

• What does your character want at the outset? It could be an object, a person, a state of being. This is probably the most important question. The answer to it may vary over the span of your text, as your character changes. And they don't necessarily get it in the end. Maybe they get something else instead, perhaps the exact opposite, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.