You will be given a summary of a story. You need to create a question that can be answered from the story. You can create a question about characters, events, facts and beliefs, etc. Your question should be specific, try not to use pronouns instead of full names. As the stories are sometimes movie plots, they will contain actor names in parentheses. You should not use those names. Only use character names. Try to ask a question about all parts of the plot, not just the beginning.

[EX Q]:  The novel is written largely from the point of view of the narrator, who is first introduced to Strickland through the latter's wife. Strickland strikes him (the narrator) as unremarkable. Certain chapters entirely comprise stories or narrations of others, which the narrator recalls from memory (selectively editing or elaborating on certain aspects of dialogue, particularly Strickland's, as Strickland is said by the narrator to be limited in his use of verbiage and tended to use gestures in his expression).
Strickland is a well-off, middle-class stockbroker in London sometime in late 19th or early 20th century. Early in the novel, he leaves his wife and children and goes to Paris. He lives a destitute but defiantly content life there as an artist (specifically a painter), lodging in run-down hotels and falling prey to both illness and hunger. Strickland, in his drive to express through his art what appears to continually possess and compel him on the inside, cares nothing for physical discomfort and is indifferent to his surroundings. He is generously supported, while in Paris, by a commercially successful but hackneyed Dutch painter, Dirk Stroeve, a friend of the narrator's, who immediately recognises Strickland's genius. After helping Strickland recover from a life-threatening condition, Stroeve is repaid by having his wife, Blanche, abandon him for Strickland. Strickland later discards the wife; all he really sought from Blanche was a model to paint, not serious companionship, and it is hinted in the novel's dialogue that he indicated this to her and she took the risk anyway. Blanche then commits suicide   yet another human casualty in Strickland's single-minded pursuit of art and beauty; the first ones being his own established life and those of his wife and children.
After the Paris episode, the story continues in Tahiti. Strickland has already died, and the narrator attempts to piece together his life there from recollections of others. He finds that Strickland had taken up a native woman, had two children by her, one of whom dies, and started painting profusely. We learn that Strickland had settled for a short while in the French port of Marseilles before traveling to Tahiti, where he lived for a few years before finally dying of leprosy. Strickland left behind numerous paintings, but his magnum opus, which he painted on the walls of his hut before losing his sight to leprosy, was burnt after his death by his wife per his dying orders.
[EX A]: Where did Strickland live at the end of his life?

[EX Q]:  The plot revolves around Sylvia Barrett, an idealistic English language teacher at an inner-city high school who hopes to nurture her students' interest in classic literature (especially Chaucer and writing). She quickly becomes discouraged during her first year of teaching, frustrated by bureaucracy, the indifference of her students, and the incompetence of many of her colleagues. The title of the book is taken from a memo telling her why a student was being punished: he had gone "up the down staircase". She decides to leave the public school (government funded) system to work in a smaller private setting. She changes her mind, though, when she realizes that she has, indeed, touched the lives of her students.
The novel is epistolary; aside from opening and closing chapters consisting entirely of dialogue the story is told through memos from the office, fragments of notes dropped in the trash can, essays handed in to be graded, lesson plans, suggestions dropped in the class suggestion box, and most often by inter-classroom notes that are a dialogue between Sylvia and an older teacher. Sylvia also writes letters to a friend from college who chose to get married and start a family rather than pursuing a career. The letters serve as a recap and summary of key events in the book, and offer a portrait of women's roles and responsibilities in American society in the mid-1960s.
An inter-classroom note in which the older teacher is translating the jargon of the memos from the office includes the memorable epigram "'Let it be a challenge to you' means you're stuck with it." Calling a trash can a circular file comes from the same memo: "'Keep on file in numerical order' means throw in waste-basket."
[EX A]: What type of neighborhood surrounds the school?

[EX Q]:  The story is narrated by Sir George Vernon's 35-year-old cousin, Malcolm Fran ois de Lorraine Vernon. Raised in France, he became enamored of Mary, Queen of Scots, when she was a youth there, and followed her to Scotland. Historically speaking, Mary was captured, imprisoned, and forced to abdicate the Scottish throne in July 1567, but in the novel, Malcolm receives word of Mary's capture in the Fall. He immediately flees to England, and heads to Haddon Hall to take refuge with Sir George. On the way, he meets and becomes friends with John Manners, son of Sir George's hated enemy Thomas Manners (Lord Rutland).
Years earlier, Sir George had suggested that Malcolm marry George's daughter Dorothy as a way to keep the Vernon properties held by Vernons. Dorothy at the time had been an awkward adolescent; she now is a mature, strong-willed, red-headed beauty. On his way to Haddon Hall, Malcolm (still in the company of John Manners) encounters Dorothy, her aunt, and her friend Madge, all of whom live at Haddon Hall. Catching glimpses of each other, John Manners and Dorothy instantly begin to be attracted to each other. Malcolm, by contrast, sees his cousin as too beautiful and strong-willed to make a good wife.
As the book progresses, Dorothy and John develop a secret romance, aided by Malcolm and hidden from her father, who first presses her to marry Malcolm, and then the son of the Earl of Derby. Various dramatic elements include a chapter in which Dorothy is imprisoned in her bedroom, but manages to disguise herself as Malcolm to escape and meet John; John fails to recognize her, thinking her a male stranger, and makes some embarrassing remarks about his previous love affairs, and then when he realizes she is a woman, fails to recognize her as Dorothy, but attempts to kiss her, causing her to reveal herself. Later, John disguises himself and takes a job as a household servant at Haddon Hall to be able to spend time with Dorothy; she fails to recognize him for days until he reveals himself.
This ruse ends when Dorothy quarrels with her father, who attempts to strike her. John jumps in the way and is struck unconscious, and a distraught Dorothy reveals that this is the lover her father suspected her of having. Her father orders him imprisoned in the dungeon, to be hanged the next day if the blow to his head does not kill him, but Malcolm, aided by Dorothy's Aunt (also named Dorothy), arrange for his escape.
Subsequently, Queen Mary escapes from Scotland and takes secret refuge at Lord Rutland's estate.
Queen Elizabeth arrives to visit Haddon Hall. Sir George brings the Stanlys (the Earl of Derby and his oafish son) to ratify the marriage contract before the Queen, but Dorothy publicly humiliates the Stanlys, ruining the arrangements and amusing the Queen. Meanwhile, her father has already begun to nurse a hope she might marry the Queen's favorite, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester.
Unable to see John for an extended period of time, and knowing that the seductive Queen Mary is staying at his home, Dorothy becomes crazed with jealousy and tells Queen Elizabeth of Queen Mary's location. Elizabeth rouses a troop of soldiers to arrest Mary. Remorse-stricken, Dorothy attempts to arrive at Lord Rutland's before the troops, but fails, and John, his father, and Queen Mary are all arrested, and Dorothy's father finds out John's identity.
Malcolm shares a carriage with Queen Mary and a sleeping, exhausted, Dorothy for the return to Haddon Hall, and during the trip Mary manages to regain his allegiance and romantic interest (despite his being engaged to Madge) and he promises to help her escape to France. Mary also attempts to gain the allegiance of the Earl of Leicester, but he betrays her to Elizabeth, resulting in Malcolm's arrest.
Queen Elizabeth tells Dorothy she will free John and Lord Rutland if Dorothy can prove that they planned only to get Mary out of Scotland, and had no part in any conspiracy to place Mary on the throne of England. By speaking with him in the dungeon, which is equipped with a speaking tube for eavesdropping, Dorothy exonerates John and his father, and they are set free. Elizabeth decides Malcolm may go free as well, provided he leaves England and returns to France.
Sir George, furious at Malcolm's part in aiding Dorothy and John's romance, tells him to leave Haddon Hall, so Malcolm gathers his belongings and apologizes to Madge and prepares to head to Lord Rutland's estate, where he will await the passport allowing him to leave England. As he leaves, Madge joins him, forgiving him, and they plan that she will accompany him to France as his wife.
In the final chapter of the novel, during a party in Queen Elizabeth's honor, Dorothy tricks her father into letting her steal away for a few crucial minutes, supposedly to court the Earl of Leicester's affections. Instead, she is met by John, who literally carries her off despite her last-minute uncertainty, and they elope to his father's hall where they bid farewell to Malcolm and Madge, who move to France and don't see them again (as of the close of the novel, forty years later).
[EX A]:
Who betrayed Mary to Queen Elizabeth?