The What Happened Next Prompt
Launch library · evergreen read
Few prompts do as much work as the plain request to continue. A subject who has just described the start of an event, offered without much detail, will often keep going with real specificity the moment they are asked what happened next, because the question asks for narrative rather than judgement. It rarely needs to be dressed up further, since its plainness is exactly what makes it effective.
It works because it carries no evaluation. It does not ask whether the choice was right, or how the subject felt about it in hindsight; it simply asks for the next beat of the story, which is usually the easiest thing for a person to give honestly and in sequence. Subjects rarely feel cornered by it, since it reads as genuine interest rather than any kind of test.
Interviewers who lean on this prompt find it useful precisely because it is so plain. It rarely needs rewording, it rarely triggers defensiveness, and it reliably produces the concrete detail that a more elaborate question, dressed up with analysis built in, would have talked its way past. Many interviewers keep it in reserve precisely because it so reliably breaks a stalled or guarded exchange.