Questions to Ask a Writer
Questions for a conversation with someone who writes, whether at a reading, in an interview, or over coffee with a friend who is deep in a manuscript. Weighted toward the practical: hours, drafts, cuts, readers, money, and what the work has cost them.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
What are you working on right now?
Why ask it
The standard opener, and how they answer matters more than the answer. Fluent, specific description usually means the work is going well, while a change of subject often means it is stuck, which is worth noting before you ask anything harder.
When do you actually write, and for how long?
Why ask it
You want the real schedule: the hour, the length of the session, which days do not happen. Most working writers have a small, unglamorous window rather than the long free days people imagine, and the specifics are more useful to a beginner than any advice about discipline.
How much did you write today, and is that typical?
Why ask it
The second half stops a good day being mistaken for a normal one. Some writers count words, some count hours, and some count a single paragraph they will keep, and which unit they use tells you how they judge their own output.
How different is your first draft from what gets published?
Why ask it
The gap is usually enormous and almost always reassuring to hear about. Ask whether the first draft is a fast sketch or something laboured over, since those two habits lead to completely different revision problems later.
Do you outline, or do you find out as you go?
Why ask it
Both work and most writers are somewhere in between, so push for what they do at the point the middle sags. That is where the method actually shows, rather than in what they plan before starting.
Where does a piece usually start for you: a line, an image, a character, an argument?
Why ask it
The starting point tends to be consistent across a career and explains the shape of the finished work. It also gives a beginner permission to start from whatever they actually have rather than from a premise.
How do you know when a sentence is wrong?
Why ask it
This is the most technical question you can ask and it gets the most specific answers: rhythm, a word doing two jobs, reading aloud, a feeling of speeding up. Anyone who has written seriously has a private test, and hearing it is worth more than a general remark about style.
What is your rule for cutting something you like?
Why ask it
The good line that does not belong is one of the hardest problems in writing, and most working writers have a system, often a file where cuts are kept. Watch whether they cut for the reader or wait for an editor to make them.
Who reads your work before anyone else, and what do you ask them to look for?
Why ask it
The instruction matters more than the reader. Writers who ask a specific question, whether the middle drags, whether the ending is earned, get usable answers, and those who ask whether it is good get reassurance that helps nobody.
What is the most useful edit anyone has made to your work?
Why ask it
The answer is usually structural rather than a line change: a chapter removed, an opening moved, a subject the writer was avoiding. It also tells you whether they have had a real editor, which shapes everything else about how they revise.
What do you do on a day when nothing comes?
Why ask it
More useful than asking about writer's block, because it asks for behaviour. Answers range from writing badly on purpose to reading, walking, or going to a different project, and the honest ones usually admit some of the day is lost.
How do you handle the gap between how the piece felt in your head and how it reads on the page?
Why ask it
This describes an experience nearly every writer knows and few get asked about directly, so it often produces the most candid part of the conversation. Listen for whether they treat the gap as a signal to revise or as a reason to abandon work.
How long did the piece you are best known for take, from first note to publication?
Why ask it
Ask for both the writing time and the time spent trying to place it, because the second number is usually longer and rarely mentioned. It is the single most deflating and most useful fact for someone impatient about their own progress.
What did you do for money while you were getting started?
Why ask it
Teaching, copywriting, bar work, a full time job entirely unrelated to writing. Writers are generally willing to answer this plainly, and it corrects the impression that publication arrived before rent was solved.
How much of your income comes from the writing itself?
Why ask it
Sensitive but reasonable if the conversation has earned it, and the honest answer is often a small fraction, topped up by teaching, editing or speaking. Ask about the mix rather than for a figure if you want a comfortable answer.
What do you read while you are drafting, and what do you avoid?
Why ask it
Many writers deliberately avoid work close to their own subject or voice while drafting, and the avoidance list is often more revealing than the reading list. It also gives you a genuine recommendation to follow up on.
Is there a technique you learned from another writer, and what was it exactly?
Why ask it
Push past naming an influence to the mechanics: how they handle time, how they enter a scene, how they end a chapter. That specific transferable trick is the most useful thing a writer can hand another writer.
Is there anything you have published that you would take back?
Why ask it
This asks for a real answer at some cost, so it belongs late in a conversation. Responses range from an early book they have outgrown to a piece about someone who read it, and the reasoning matters more than the item.
What has writing cost you?
Why ask it
Time, income, relationships, a more stable career. Asked plainly and without sympathy in the voice, this tends to be answered seriously, and the answer explains why the work matters to them more than any question about inspiration would.
What do you say to people who tell you they want to write but never do?
Why ask it
A better closing question than asking for advice for beginners, because it aims at the specific gap between wanting and doing. The answers tend to be short, unsentimental, and the most quotable thing in the conversation.
How did you get started, and when did writing stop being a hobby?
Why ask it
Look for the specific hinge: a commission, a redundancy, a course, a first cheque. Most writers can name the moment, and the answer is usually less romantic and more financial than the version in author bios.
How do you decide an idea is worth a year of your life?
Why ask it
Reveals the filter they use to say no, which is a harder skill than generating ideas. Some test an idea by writing a paragraph of it, some by whether it still nags after six months.
Where do you actually write, and what does the setup look like?
Why ask it
The honest answer is often a kitchen table, a library, a parked car or a shed, and it deflates the myth of the study with the view. Writers also tend to have one non-negotiable condition, silence, a particular chair, a laptop with the internet off, and naming it is more useful to an aspiring writer than any encouragement.
How many drafts does something take before you let anyone read it?
Why ask it
Writers rarely give a small number, and hearing a real one is useful for anyone who assumes published prose arrives close to final. Ask what changes between draft two and draft five specifically.
How much did you know about the ending before you reached it?
Why ask it
This is the outliner-versus-discoverer question asked in a way that cannot be answered with a label. Watch for the middle position, which is where most working writers actually live: knowing the final image but not how anyone gets there.
Which character or section gave you the most trouble, and what fixed it?
Why ask it
The fix is the useful half, and it is often structural rather than inspirational: moving a scene, cutting a viewpoint, giving someone a job. If they say nothing was difficult, ask which part they rewrote most, which gets to the same place.
What did you have to research, and what did you get wrong in the first draft?
Why ask it
Writers usually enjoy this question and it produces concrete detail rather than method. Listen for how they handle the balance between accuracy and readability, since the interesting answers involve knowing something and deliberately leaving it out.
What did you cut that you still miss?
Why ask it
This gets past the finished object to the decisions inside it, and almost every writer has a chapter, a character or a favorite sentence that had to go. What they say about why it went, usually pace or that it was there for them rather than the reader, is a craft lesson in one line.
How do you know a piece is finished rather than just abandoned?
Why ask it
Deadlines answer this for a lot of professional work, and saying so is more honest than talking about a sense of rightness. Ask what they would still change in the last thing they published.
Is there a rule or habit you follow that you would not recommend to anyone else?
Why ask it
This is the antidote to writing advice, and it usually produces something idiosyncratic: never rereading yesterday's pages, working at four in the morning, writing longhand. It makes the point that method is personal, which most craft talk obscures.
Which part of the job do you like least?
Why ask it
Most writers name something outside the writing: promotion, invoicing, reading their own audiobook, being asked about the last book while trying to start the next. The answer sets expectations for anyone considering the career.
How did you find an agent or publisher, and what did you misunderstand about it at the time?
Why ask it
The second half is the valuable half. First-time authors typically misjudge timelines, advance structures or how much marketing they will be expected to do themselves.
How do you handle the gap between finishing a book and it coming out?
Why ask it
Publishing schedules commonly leave a year or more of waiting, and writers rarely talk about it. The answer, usually starting the next thing before the current one lands, is practical advice about surviving a career rather than writing a book.
How do you handle a review or a reaction that stings?
Why ask it
Watch for whether they read reviews at all and whether they can separate a fair criticism from a hostile one. The honest answers tend to admit a bad review lands for longer than it should.
What have you written that never got published, and what happened to it?
Why ask it
Almost every working writer has an abandoned book or a killed commission, and the account of why is usually more instructive than the story of a success.
How is your writing different from ten years ago?
Why ask it
Gets at direction rather than habit. Writers often describe cutting more, explaining less, or abandoning a device they once relied on, and that is a description of learning you can borrow.
Is there advice about writing you think is simply wrong?
Why ask it
Invites disagreement with received wisdom, which is where experienced writers are most interesting. Expect targets like writing every day, never using adverbs, or writing what you know.
What would you tell someone who wants to do this for a living?
Why ask it
Worth asking last, once the practical answers are on the table, because it will be shaped by everything they have already said rather than by the encouraging line they usually give.
Talking to Writers About the Work
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before the Conversation
Read something of theirs, even a short piece
One essay, one story, or the opening chapter is enough, and it changes every question you can ask. Being able to refer to a specific paragraph moves you out of the category of person who wants advice and into the category of person who has read the work.
Decide whether you want craft or career
These are different conversations and you rarely get both. Craft means drafting, cutting, sentences and structure. Career means agents, money, editors and time. Pick one and go deep rather than alternating and staying shallow in both.
Do not open by asking them to read your manuscript
It is the most common thing writers are asked and the most costly thing to grant, since a careful read is many hours of unpaid work. If you want that, earn the conversation first and ask at the end, briefly, with an easy way to decline.
At a reading or a festival, budget one question
The queue is long and they are tired. One specific question about something in the work, asked in under fifteen seconds, gets a better answer than three general ones. Save the rest for a follow up if a real conversation opens.
Follow Ups That Get Past the Stock Answer
- Ask for the example. If they say the middle was hard, ask which chapter and what was wrong with it.
- Ask what changed between drafts. Writers remember specific structural fixes far more clearly than they remember general lessons.
- Ask for the number: hours, drafts, months, rejections. Concrete figures make the answer usable and stop it drifting into philosophy.
- Ask who told them. Most technical habits trace back to one editor, teacher or writer friend, and the story is better than the rule.
- Ask what they would do differently now, rather than what advice they would give. It produces a more honest answer.
- Leave a pause after a short answer. Writers are used to being interrupted at events and will often add the interesting half if you wait.
What to Skip
- Asking where they get their ideas. It is the question every writer has answered a hundred times and it has no useful answer.
- Asking whether characters are based on real people, unless they raise it themselves.
- Asking how much they earn as an opener. Ask about the mix of income sources instead, later.
- Comparing them to a more famous writer in the same sentence as a compliment.
- Asking why they have not written anything lately. There is often a reason and it is rarely comfortable.
- Pitching your own project. If you want feedback, that is a separate request made at a separate time.