Good Questions to Ask an Author About Their Book
For whoever is holding the microphone: an interviewer at a festival, a host on a podcast, or the person chairing a bookshop event. These twenty assume you have read the book closely and want answers the room will remember, so they work through where the idea began, the chapter that fought back, what was cut, and the editorial notes the author refused. If you have thirty seconds in a signing queue rather than forty minutes on a stage, ask something shorter than these.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Where did this start: an image, a line, a person, a question?
Why ask it
More answerable than asking what inspired it, because it asks for the first concrete thing rather than a motive. Authors usually remember the specific fragment, and it is often unrelated to what the book became.
How long did it take, and how much of that was before you started writing?
Why ask it
The gap between the two numbers is where most of the work happens: reading, note-taking, abandoning an earlier version. It also corrects the assumption that a book takes as long as the drafting did.
How different is the finished book from the one you set out to write?
Why ask it
Nearly always very different, and the specifics are the interesting part: a subplot that took over, a narrator who was originally minor, an ending that reversed. Authors who say it came out exactly as planned are usually describing a proposal rather than a draft.
How did you decide where to begin?
Why ask it
Opening chapters are frequently written last or cut entirely, and asking about it gets a technical answer about how much a reader needs before they will follow you. Ask what the original first chapter was.
Which chapter fought back hardest?
Why ask it
A specific, physical way of asking about difficulty, and it gets a specific answer. What made it hard is usually structural rather than emotional: a scene where two things had to happen at once, or a passage of necessary information.
What got cut that you still miss?
Why ask it
Authors remember these in detail, and the reason it went is instructive: it slowed the middle, it belonged to a different book, an editor was right about it. This is one of the few questions that reliably produces something they have not said elsewhere.
Why this voice, and did you try it another way?
Why ask it
Point of view is usually the largest decision in a book and often the last one to settle. Ask what the abandoned version sounded like, because the comparison explains what the final choice bought them.
Which character surprised you?
Why ask it
Avoids asking which is their favourite, which gets a diplomatic answer. Surprise points at a character who resisted their plan, and that resistance usually explains something about the book's shape.
What research went in, and what did you have to leave out?
Why ask it
The second half is the craft question. Almost every author over-researches and then has to sacrifice material they found fascinating, and how they decided what stayed shows their judgement about pace.
How did the title arrive?
Why ask it
Titles are frequently chosen late, by committee, or against the author's preference. It is a small question that often opens up an honest account of how much of a published book the writer actually controls.
What did your editor push you on?
Why ask it
Concrete and answerable, and it shows what the book needed rather than what it has. Ask which push they resisted first, because the answer they came round to is generally the most useful thing they learned.
Was there a note you refused?
Why ask it
The counterpart to the previous question, and it reveals what the author considered non-negotiable. Watch for whether they can articulate why, which distinguishes a considered position from stubbornness.
If any of this is close to your own life, how did you handle that?
Why ask it
Phrased so they can decline it, which matters, because the alternative version of this question puts an author on the spot about family. What you learn is how they think about writing people who did not consent to being written.
What did you get right by accident?
Why ask it
Almost nobody is asked this and most authors have an example: a detail planted early that turned out to matter, a repetition they did not notice until a copyeditor pointed at it. It is an honest counterweight to the impression of total design.
Has anyone read it in a way that had not occurred to you?
Why ask it
Gets past the intended reading to what the book has actually been doing in the world. Some authors welcome this and some find it uncomfortable, and both reactions are informative.
What do readers ask about that you did not expect?
Why ask it
Reveals which part of the book is doing the most work for people, and it is usually not the part the author considers central. It also spares you asking something they have answered forty times this month.
What would you change if you could open it again now?
Why ask it
Ask it plainly and most authors will answer, often about a chapter length or a character they now think is thin. An author who says nothing at all would change it either finished recently or is on a difficult publicity day.
What did writing it cost you?
Why ask it
Best asked late in a conversation and best asked quietly. Answers range from years of income to a relationship with the subject matter, and the question makes room for something more truthful than an account of discipline.
What do you hope someone is left with after the last page?
Why ask it
Works better as a closer than an opener, because by then the answer is grounded in everything already said. Some authors will refuse on the grounds that it is not theirs to decide, which is a real position.
What is next, and does it come out of this book or away from it?
Why ask it
The second clause turns a routine question into something worth answering. Writers often describe the next book as a reaction against the one just finished, which tells you what the last few years felt like.
Author events and book club visits
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before the event
- Finish the book. Authors can tell within one question, and every answer you get afterwards will be a general one.
- Read one existing interview so you can skip the questions they have already answered repeatedly, particularly about where the idea came from.
- Pick two questions and hold a third in reserve. Long lists produce rushed answers and eat the time of the other people in the room.
- Note a page number for anything you want to ask about. Being able to say where it happens turns a vague question into a specific one.
If the author is joining a book club
- Send three or four questions in advance and tell them how long you have. It lets them prepare something better than a first response.
- Agree in advance who is chairing. Author visits go wrong when eleven people ask at once or when nobody asks anything at all.
- Ask the group to have read it. An author fielding questions from people halfway through cannot say anything without spoiling it.
- Decide beforehand how to handle disagreement. It is fine to tell an author a section did not work for you; it is not fine to spend twenty minutes on it.
- Offer to buy copies or to say where the book is available. Authors visit clubs largely for this and it is easy to forget.
What not to ask
- "What is your book about?" in a room where everyone has read it. It puts the author into publicity mode for the rest of the hour.
- "Is the narrator you?" or which relative a character is based on, unless the book invites it.
- How much they earned, or what their advance was.
- Publishing advice for your own manuscript during a public event. Ask afterwards, briefly, and accept a short answer.
- A question that is really a speech. If you have not asked anything within twenty seconds, you are not going to.
Getting past the rehearsed answer
Authors on tour have said the same eight things for weeks, and the way past that is specificity. Name the chapter. Quote a line and ask what it was doing. Ask what the earlier version of a scene looked like, or what an editor wanted changed about it. If an answer arrives smoothly and completely, it is the tour answer; follow it with "what was harder about that than it sounds?" and wait. The pause is usually where the real answer comes from, and letting a silence sit for three seconds is the most underused technique in any interview.