Asking questions to tell a story

I approach my work from a storytelling perspective; I let my story dictate the work, not the other way around. For instance, if I am starting a project, I’ll ponder or even write down a series of who, what, where, when, why, and how questions:

• What data do we have? Is it enough?
• Where do we get more?
• How do we get more?
• What blockers prevent us from getting more?
• How often will we need more?

But this is a different kind of project. We want to gain deeper insights into a piece of text than we might gather through reading. Even after reading a whole book, most people can’t memorize the relationships that are described in the text, and it would likely be a faulty recollection anyway. But we should have questions such as these:

• Who is mentioned in the text?
• Who do they know?
• Who are their adversaries?
• What are the themes of this text?
• What emotions are present?
• What places are mentioned...