The Single Most Powerful Question You Can Ask

When novelists sit down to write a narrative, there is a single question they ask themselves in order to create exciting and meaningful stories, and that same question applies to life. That question is: What if?

J.R.R. Tolkien once asked the question What if there existed a place called Middle Earth, and What if Middle Earth were under threat? Every good story begins with some form of this question, and so does every life.

Whenever a novel starts to drag, the writer simply has to ask this...