Once upon a time, I’d have a question, and go about solving it.
But mathematics demonstrates that some questions have more than one correct answer.
For example, for equations of the form ax2 + bx + c = 0, the variable x can be found by using the quadratic formula.
Due to the +/-, this formula generates two correct answers for variable x.
A question, therefore, doesn’t always have only one correct answer.
But recently, I’ve also learned that the way a question is asked guides thought along certain channels, tending toward certain answers and that if the question is formulated differently, different answers arise.
For example, you might ask yourself: “How do I write an eight-hundred-page novel?”
Before answering that question, reformulate it.
Each new way of asking the question points toward different possible answers.
General
How is anything made larger?
Specific
How did Proust make In Search of Lost Time one of the longest novels ever written?
How did Joyce expand Ulysses beyond eight hundred pages?
How did Musil expand A Man Without Qualities?
How did Tolstoy expand War and Peace?
How did Dickens expand David Copperfield?
Did these writers use the same methods to lengthen their novels?
Part
How to expand a chapter?
How to expand a character arc?
How to expand an outline?
Wordplay
How might an eight-hundred-page novel write me?
A man ate an eight-hundred-page novel before writing it. What was the result?
Perspective
If I were a novel, how would I wish to expand?
How could a novel be made shorter? Does this tell me anything about how it could be made longer?
If I were a chapter that ought to be added to a novel, how could I convince the author to include me?
Playful Questions
How is an eight-hundred-page novel like an alligator?
Couldn’t I make the novel longer by just using bigger font? Adding blank pages?
How does a long novel taste?
If you were a short novel’s adviser, what would the novel confess to you about what it misses?
In Sum
These reformulations of the question (“How to write an eight-hundred-page novel?”) expand the mental space in which answers might be found.
It’s an exciting way to approach every question!
* Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical & surreal novel about a man who finds yet another woman he never knew, usually available on Amazon for $4.91.