I seldom blog links, but this one is well worth a read. Charles Baxter says that there are five questions all writers need to ask themselves about their writing:
…One is, what do these characters want? Second is, what are they afraid of? Third is, what’s at stake in this story? Fourth is, what are the consequences of these scenes or these actions? And the last one is, how does the language of this story reflect the world of the story itself?Whether you are writing romance, or sci-fi, or detective fiction or erotica, I think these are extremely important questions to be able to answer. They guarantee a depth and breadth and ensure a credible sense of tension in a story that makes it compelling to read.
You can find the rest of this article here.