The 5Ws method

 How to use the 5Ws method in writing

The 5W method are questions whose answers are considered basic in information gathering, it's not only for writing, in fact Stanislavski acting method uses this technique to prepare the actor for a certain role, as much as it's used in history and social studies and much more domains.

In brief, the 5Ws is a method used everywhere and in our case in writing it can help you outline your story. If you cannot identify what will make your story unique and interesting, chances are nobody else will either.

If you don't know what is the 5Ws questions, it's who? where? when? what? why?

1. Who ? 

First of all, who is your protagonist? Usually it's better to start of with a name, age and profession, moving on to physical appearance then his background and the given circumstances.

- Name, age and profession
- Physical appearance
- Background:

• parents
• siblings
• Relationship with his parents
• Love life
• marriage status
• etc.

- Given circumstances: social, political, religious, economical, educational environment

- Characteristics

- Way of thinking: values and ethics, desires, will, etc.

With this general study about the "who?" you can outline your caracters personalities and style, if you understand and identify them then the audience will too.

In other words, caracters analysis is a very important step in writing, because the events of your story will be based on them specifically. 

For example, if your protagonist lost their parents at a young age and have relationship issues; a break up with their partner cannot be easy to take for them. 

The "who" is much bigger than just a caracter analysis, it also used for: 

• Who is driving the story?
• Who is it about?
• Who is affected?
• Who benefits?
• Who loses?

By creating the caracters analysis we outlined the caracters then we move on to answer the more specific "who"(s) to outline the events related to the caracters.

2. When? 

For this W, we have two types of questions: the global "when" and the specific one. 

In outlining the story in general, we ask ourselves: when is this story happening? This question is very important when writing, because if the period of time changes so does the given circumstances; the environment changes with time. 

After identifying your story's time, it would be easier for you to identify each event's time, by answering for the question "when is this event happening?"

3. Where?

The "where" is very similar to the "when", we also have two types; the global one and the specific ones for each event that is happening throught the story.

First question to ask while brainstorming our story ideas is "where is the story happening?"

Once we outline our story's location, we can start locating each event of our story simply by asking "where this event took place?" 

4. What?

"What is happening in the story?", this question will help you identify what is the story about. Then you can move on to asking what is happening in this event? or what is the person doing? to identify your event, and what is it about. 

Your answer should be simple and direct not complicated, once you understand your "what" the reader will too. 

5. Why? 

The "why" is very important in understanding your own story and in creating your end goal. 

ask yourself this, why is the story happening? this will help you understand your "super objectif" for writing this story, as Stanislavski named it. 

The super objectif is your main goal for writing this story, to identify why are you writing this, your message that you want to deliver, the information you want to share, etc. 

Once you understand the main goal, you can go on to find out what is the objectif of each event. For example, Jack went to see his girlfriend at night, why did he do that ? what is the objectif of adding this event? He went to see her because he was falsely accused for a murder and he will go to jail, so his objectif was seeing her for the last time before going to jail.

Start practicing

The 5Ws method will help you outline your story, create the surroundings for the story and for each event. 

If you want to practice using this method you can read a story and answer the 5 questions to outline an existing story, and you can create your own event or short story and use this method to identify your story or event.

Once you do that and master this method, you can go ahead and use it in your own writings!