Questions to Ask an Author
Questions for an author interview, whether it is for a podcast, a class assignment or a festival stage, about how writers actually work: the shape of a writing day, outlining and revision, how a book gets sold, where the money comes from, and what they are still not good at. The later ones turn to a single book, for a signing or a book club visit: where it started, what got cut, and what readers misread. The last five are questions to ask during an author panel, where one question goes to several writers at once.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
What does your writing day actually look like?
Why ask it
The shape of the day beats any statement about discipline: when they start, how long they last, what they do first, whether email comes before or after. Most writing days are shorter than readers assume, often two or three hours of real composition.
How many words is a good day, and how many is a bad one?
Why ask it
Two numbers tell you far more than one. The spread shows whether they work to a quota or to a session, and it makes the arithmetic of a whole book visible to anyone considering writing one.
Where do you write, and does it matter?
Why ask it
Some writers need one fixed room, others need a train, a cafe or background noise. The reason is usually practical rather than romantic: fewer interruptions, no internet, a chair that lets them stop noticing their own body.
Do you outline, or do you find out as you go?
Why ask it
The split is real, and most writers sit somewhere in between with a method built by trial. Ask what the outline physically looks like, because answers range from thirty typed pages to four words on an index card.
What do you do when you sit down and nothing comes?
Why ask it
Better than asking about writer's block, which invites a lecture. Practical answers are specific: rewriting yesterday's final paragraph, jumping to a later scene, walking with one question, or accepting a bad page to protect the habit.
How do you decide an idea is worth a year of your life?
Why ask it
Books take years, so the selection test matters more than the supply of ideas. Writers often describe one: an idea that will not go away, a question they cannot answer, a structure they want to try out.
What is different about how you write now compared with ten years ago?
Why ask it
Puts the change on the record instead of asking whether they have improved. Expect answers about cutting sooner, planning more, caring less about sentences early, or having lost the ability to start without knowing the destination.
Which of your books was hardest to sell?
Why ask it
Publishing histories are rarely smooth. The book that struggled is often not the weakest, and the reasons, an editor who left, an awkward category, bad timing, are the parts of the industry that never reach the acknowledgements.
How did you get your agent, and how many said no first?
Why ask it
Asking for the rejection count alongside the success prevents a tidy origin story. Most representation begins with a long run of no, and the specifics, where they submitted, what they changed, how long it took, are directly usable.
What do you wish someone had told you about publishing?
Why ask it
Invites the practical grievance: how slowly money arrives, how little marketing is standard, how much of a launch falls to the author. This is the answer new writers most need and least often hear said plainly.
How much of your income comes from books?
Why ask it
Most working writers hold a mix of advances, royalties, teaching, journalism, speaking and something unrelated. The proportions are more honest than any question about making a living, and they recalibrate what a published book actually pays.
What do you do with a review you think is unfair?
Why ask it
The interesting answers describe a policy rather than a feeling: never reading reviews, reading them once, a standing rule about not responding. Ask what the rule is and whether they have ever broken it.
Who reads your work before anyone else, and what do you ask them for?
Why ask it
First readers are chosen carefully, and what a writer asks of them is a craft question. Some want to know where attention dropped, some want line edits, some want only whether it works at all.
When you revise, what are you looking for on each pass?
Why ask it
Revision is where most books are actually made, and experienced writers work in passes with a target for each: structure, then character, then continuity, then sentences. This gets a usable method rather than talk of polishing.
How do you write dialogue that does not sound written?
Why ask it
The most asked-about technique, and the answers are concrete: reading aloud, cutting the first line of every exchange, letting people talk past each other, deleting the information you were trying to convey.
Which book taught you the most about writing, and what did you take from it?
Why ask it
The second half forces specificity, so you get a technique instead of a reading list. Expect answers about structure, chapter length, how a point of view moves, or how much a writer can leave out and still be understood.
What have you abandoned, and how did you know to stop?
Why ask it
The abandoned book is standard and almost never discussed. What made them stop, and how long it took to admit it, is more instructive to anyone writing than the story of a finished book ever is.
Do you reread your own work?
Why ask it
A small question that gets an honest answer. Many writers cannot read a published book of theirs without editing it, some avoid them entirely, and a few go back to remember how they solved a particular problem.
What are you still bad at?
Why ask it
Practising writers are precise about their weaknesses: plot, endings, physical description, comedy, writing children. A technical self-assessment is considerably more interesting than an account of what they do well.
What would you do differently if you were starting now?
Why ask it
The industry has changed enough that the honest answer often contains advice they did not take themselves. Expect something about audience, publishing route, or years spent on the wrong project.
Where did this book start: a scene, a line, an argument you wanted to make?
Why ask it
Giving three options gets a real answer where asking about inspiration gets the anecdote they have told forty times. Novelists often start from an image and non-fiction writers from an irritation, and both are more interesting than an origin story.
How long was it from the first notes to the finished manuscript?
Why ask it
The number is usually longer than readers assume, and the gap between drafting and publication is often another year or two on top. Ask which part of that span was actual writing, since that is where the surprise usually is.
What is the oldest sentence in the book?
Why ask it
A specific, answerable question that most writers enjoy, and the answer is rarely on the first page. It tends to lead straight into what the book was originally about before it became this.
What did an earlier draft look like that this one no longer does?
Why ask it
Almost every book lost a character, a timeline, a whole opening section or a second narrator. Hearing what was removed tells you what the final book is deliberately not, which is the part reviews never cover.
What did you cut that you still miss?
Why ask it
Writers usually have one specific answer here and it comes with real feeling. It also reveals who made the call, which opens the question of how much the editor shaped the book.
Which section gave you the most trouble?
Why ask it
Almost always a transition, a technical explanation or a scene the writer did not want to write. If they name a passage readers praise, that mismatch is worth asking about directly.
Did the ending change?
Why ask it
Short, easy to answer, and it opens the most interesting territory in the book. Note whether the change came from the writer's own dissatisfaction or from an editor's note, since those produce different kinds of ending.
What did you have to research, and what did you get wrong at first?
Why ask it
The second half is where the good material is. Writers remember the correction they got from a reader with actual expertise, and those stories say more about the book's subject than a list of sources would.
Whose voice was hardest to get right?
Why ask it
For fiction this is often a character unlike the author; for memoir it is usually a family member. Either way, ask what they did about it, because the fix is usually a concrete technique rather than inspiration.
What did your editor push you hardest on?
Why ask it
One of the few questions that gets at the invisible labour behind a book. Answers are usually structural: cut the first three chapters, move this to the front, choose one of these two books you are trying to write.
Was the title yours?
Why ask it
Often it was not, and writers are usually candid about it once asked. The original title, when it exists, tells you what the writer thought the book was before marketing had a view.
How much say did you have over the cover?
Why ask it
Most authors have less than readers imagine, sometimes none. It is a small question that opens up how much of a published book is decided by the publisher rather than the writer.
What do readers ask about that you did not expect?
Why ask it
Books acquire a second life once people read them, and the recurring question is often about a minor character or a two-line detail. This tends to be the answer an author has not yet worn smooth.
Is there anything in the book people consistently misread?
Why ask it
Gives them permission to correct a misreading they have been quietly enduring on tour. Watch whether they defend the reading or accept it, since some writers conclude the misreading is the book's fault.
What are you working on now, and how is it different?
Why ask it
Standard closing question, and the comparison is what makes it worth asking. If they are deliberately writing against the last book, that tells you what they think its limitation was.
Which common piece of writing advice does one of you follow and another ignore?
Why ask it
Panels go flat when everyone nods along, so this one looks for the split. It tends to fall on rules like writing every day or finishing a draft before fixing anything, and the author who ignores the rule is usually the one with a story about it.
What have you read by someone else on this stage, and what stayed with you?
Why ask it
Works only where the panelists know each other's books, so a moderator should check beforehand. Authors praise a colleague in more detail than they will ever describe their own work, and the colleague's reaction is half the answer.
What does your genre take for granted that would surprise the writers next to you?
Why ask it
Mixed panels seat a crime novelist beside a poet or a memoirist, and their working assumptions about length, deadlines, series and what readers will forgive are far apart. The comparison is something a one-to-one author interview cannot produce.
What do authors talk about with each other that never comes up in front of an audience?
Why ask it
An invitation to shop talk: contracts, deadlines, tours, the email nobody answers. Once one panelist starts, a second tends to add to it, and that back and forth is the reason to put several writers at one table.
If you could borrow one skill from another writer on this panel, which would it be?
Why ask it
A generous way to ask about weaknesses in public, because the answer is a compliment with a confession inside it. Aim it at the whole table and let whoever is ready go first.
Talking to writers about writing
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
If you are interviewing an author
Read something, and say which
One book, read properly, is enough. Implying broad familiarity collapses within two questions, and most authors would rather be asked closely about one thing than loosely about everything they have published.
Ask about method, not about magic
Process questions get concrete answers because writers spend their working lives on exactly those problems. Questions about inspiration get the same three anecdotes they have already given to everyone else.
Skip the questions their publicist already answered
Anything in the press material is public. Use it to work out what has not been asked, then take one question further than the last interview you read did.
Ask about the last book and the next one
Writers are usually bored of the current book by the time it publishes and actively thinking about the next. The comparison between the two is where the live thinking is.
At an author panel, say who the question is for
A question thrown to the whole table gets a pause and then the most confident voice. Name one panelist first, or ask each for a one-line answer, and keep your own part short so the moderator can reach the other raised hands.
If you write yourself
Ask for numbers, not philosophy
Words a day, number of drafts, months in revision, how long the last book took to sell. Figures are answerable and honest, and they tell you more about a working life than advice does.
Do not ask them to read your manuscript
It is the most common request they receive and it is impossible to decline gracefully in public. If you want help, ask what they wish they had understood five years earlier, which they can answer generously.
Ask about failure specifically
Abandoned books, rejected books, the bad years. Writers are generally willing to talk about these and are hardly ever asked, and it is the part of the conversation most likely to be useful to you.
Check their conditions before adopting their routine
Writing advice is autobiography. Someone with no job and no children has solved different problems from someone writing at five in the morning before a shift, so ask what their day contains before copying it.
What not to ask
- "Where do you get your ideas?" is the least answerable question in the field, and every writer carries a prepared reply to it.
- Avoid asking whether the characters are real people as a general question. Ask about one character and you will get a real answer.
- Do not open with a request for advice to aspiring writers. Ask something specific first and the advice will be better when it arrives.
- Asking about the income mix is fine. Asking what they earned is not.
- Do not explain their own book back to them.
- Avoid asking why they do not write something more commercial. They have heard it, and there is no version of the question that is not rude.