Questions to Ask About Writing
Questions to put to a writer about how they actually work: the routine, the first draft, revision, readers and rejection. Useful in a workshop, an interview, or as a set to answer about your own practice.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What are you working on now, and how far into it are you?
Why ask it
Better than asking what they write, because it gets a specific project instead of a category. The how far part also tells you whether to expect enthusiasm or the flat middle stretch, which shapes everything else they will say.
When in the day do you write, and what happens when you miss it?
Why ask it
The missing is the useful half. Some writers lose a day and shrug, others lose a week and describe it as falling off a ladder. That difference predicts how they will handle a deadline and whether their routine is a habit or a fragile arrangement.
How much do you know about a piece before you start?
Why ask it
Writers split fairly cleanly into those who outline and those who find out by writing, and both think their method is the sensible one. Ask what happens when the plan fails, which is where the real technique shows.
What does your first draft look like: fast and rough, or slow and nearly final?
Why ask it
This explains almost everything about someone's revision process. Fast drafters do the real work in the rewrite; slow drafters may never write a second draft at all, and struggle badly when a piece has to be restructured.
Where do your ideas usually arrive from: something overheard, something read, something remembered?
Why ask it
Giving three concrete options avoids the vague answer that the general question always produces. Writers who work mostly from memory and writers who work from research need different kinds of help and different kinds of question next.
How do you know when a sentence isn't working?
Why ask it
The answer is usually physical rather than analytical: reading aloud, a stumble in the rhythm, a word they keep skipping. This is the closest thing to a description of craft you will get from anyone, and it is very specific to each writer.
What's the habit you cut on every single pass?
Why ask it
Everyone has one: too many adverbs, characters nodding, every scene opening with weather, a favorite construction repeated eleven times. That someone can name theirs is evidence they revise seriously rather than tidy.
What have you abandoned, and do you think you'll go back to it?
Why ask it
Abandoned work is where writers learned the most and talk the most freely, since nothing is at stake. Listen for whether they know why it failed, because a writer who has no theory about it will probably fail the same way again.
Who reads your drafts first, and what do you ask them to look for?
Why ask it
The instruction matters more than the reader. Asking someone to say where they got bored produces usable notes; asking whether they liked it produces reassurance. If nobody reads their drafts, ask what they do instead of a reader.
What piece of feedback changed how you write?
Why ask it
Almost always one blunt sentence from years ago, remembered word for word. It is also a quiet way to learn what their weakness was, since nobody remembers praise this precisely.
What do you do in the stretch where you think the whole thing is bad?
Why ask it
This happens to nearly everyone somewhere past the middle, and hearing another writer describe it is genuinely useful. Watch for whether their remedy is to keep going, to go back, or to start something new, since the last one is how work stays unfinished.
What are you reading, and is it leaking into your prose?
Why ask it
The leaking part is the interesting bit and most writers will admit it. Some avoid strong voices while drafting for exactly this reason, which is a practical technique you can borrow.
Which writer did you imitate before you sounded like yourself?
Why ask it
Imitation is how most people learn and few volunteer it unasked. The answer dates their apprenticeship and often explains a tic in their current work that they no longer notice.
How do you decide something is finished rather than just abandoned?
Why ask it
Nobody has a clean answer, which is why the question is worth asking. Look for whether they have any external test, a deadline, a reader, a submission date, or whether pieces simply stop when they lose patience.
How much of your writing time is actually spent writing?
Why ask it
For most working writers the answer is a fraction, with the rest going to research, editing other people's work, invoices and email. It is a good corrective for anyone imagining the job as uninterrupted composition.
Do you have a particular reader in mind while you write?
Why ask it
Some writers picture one person, sometimes a friend, sometimes someone they want to convince or annoy. Writers with no reader in mind often produce prose that explains too much or too little, and this is where that habit starts.
What's the hardest thing you've had to cut?
Why ask it
Cutting well is the skill most writers rate highest and find most painful, so this gets a real story: the chapter that was the reason they started, the joke that four readers stumbled over. It also shows whether they can put the piece above their own favorites.
How do you handle rejection, and how long before you send it out again?
Why ask it
The interval is the number that matters, and experienced writers often quote it proudly in days. Long gaps usually mean the rejection is being read as a verdict on the writer rather than a decision about one piece and one editor.
What has writing cost you that you did not expect?
Why ask it
Money, evenings, a friendship with someone who recognized themselves, the pleasure of reading without noticing technique. Asked plainly, this gets an honest answer, and it is more informative than any question about discipline.
What do you want to have written in five years that you can't write yet?
Why ask it
This asks them to name a gap in their own ability, which most writers can do precisely: dialogue, plot, endings, writing about their own family. A writer who cannot name one has usually stopped stretching.
Talking to writers about their work
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Asking in a way that gets a real answer
- Ask about process rather than meaning. How something was made is answerable; what it means is the reader's job and most writers dislike being asked to do it for you.
- Ask about one specific choice you noticed: a shift in tense, a chapter that ends early, a character who never speaks. Precision flatters and unlocks.
- If you have read their work, say which part and why. If you have not, say so and ask what it is about rather than bluffing.
- Give them room to be unimpressive. Questions that assume a disciplined routine make honest answers harder to give.
Questions that land badly
- Where do you get your ideas. Too broad to answer, and it has been asked of every writer a hundred times.
- Is the narrator you. Ask instead how close the material is to their own life, which lets them choose how much to say.
- When is it coming out, asked of someone unpublished. Ask what they are hoping to do with it.
- How much do you earn from it. If the money matters to the conversation, ask whether writing pays their bills or sits alongside other work.
- Have you thought about writing something more commercial. This is heard as a judgment, whatever the intent.
If you are in a workshop or reading a draft
- 1Ask the writer what kind of note they want before you give any. Structural notes on a draft that only needs a line edit waste everyone's afternoon.
- 2Report your experience as a reader rather than issuing instructions: where you were confused, where you skimmed, where you stopped believing it.
- 3Mark the places that worked, specifically. Writers cut good pages by accident when nobody tells them which ones landed.
- 4Separate the piece they wrote from the piece you would have written. Only the first one is your business.
- 5Say the difficult note plainly and once. Softening it across four paragraphs makes it easier to miss than to hear.
Using these on yourself
- Answer them in writing, not in your head. The vague answers are the ones worth attention.
- Keep the answer about your first draft speed next to your revision plan. Most stalled projects are a mismatch between the two.
- Note the habit you cut every time, then look for it in your current draft before you send it to anyone.
- Set the interval you will wait after a rejection before resubmitting, and write it down while you are not yet upset.