Two Key Questions Every Story Should Answer

Two key questions that every story should answer is, “what happened?”, and “why do I care?”. It’s important to think of these questions as the core as what you’re trying to do for your story.

So what happened? To help answer this question, you want to focus on the main aspects of the story by using some noun-verb-object construction. Once that is figured out, you want to start figuring out the who, what, where, when, why and how within the story. This is to help the audience see more of what happened within the story.

Why do I care? A great way to help answer this question is to understand that something “being important” isn’t self-evident. It’s also extremely important to understand that not everyone sees everything the same way that you do. A skill that every journalist should have is to understand their audience well, understand the topic well at hand and find a way to pair the two successfully.