Questions to Ask Authors About Their Book
For writers asking other writers, at a craft panel, a workshop visit, or an interview aimed at people trying to finish something of their own. The questions stay on process: the working day, what had to be learned along the way, how the drafts moved, which edit notes were worth arguing with, and what to do when a draft stops working. If you want to talk about the story rather than how it was built, ask about the book itself instead.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What did you have to change about your working life to get this written?
Why ask it
Every finished book costs something in hours, and the answer is more useful to another writer than any advice about inspiration. Ask it first, because it sets the register for everything after.
What was the first thing you wrote of it, and is it still in the book?
Why ask it
Almost nobody starts at page one, and the first fragment is often cut or buried in the middle. Authors like this question because it lets them talk about craft rather than themes.
How long did it sit before it worked?
Why ask it
This gets the honest timeline, including the abandoned years. Writers are often relieved to say a book took six years, since publicity tends to compress it into a tidier story.
Which chapter came out nearly finished, and which one did you rewrite most?
Why ask it
The heavily rewritten section is usually the one carrying the most weight, and it is rarely the one readers single out. The contrast also tells you where the book's difficulty actually lived.
How much did you throw away before the shape of it appeared?
Why ask it
Word counts that never made the book are the part nobody posts about, and hearing a real number is steadying. Follow up on whether the discarded work was wasted or necessary.
Did you outline, and did the outline survive contact with the draft?
Why ask it
The second half is the useful half, since almost everyone plans and almost every plan bends. It gets past the tired argument about plotting against improvising.
What did you do on the days it would not come?
Why ask it
Practical and specific, and the answers range from walking to switching scenes to simply sitting there. Anyone stuck in a draft can use whatever they hear.
What did you have to learn to write this, and how did you learn it?
Why ask it
Research questions get vague answers, so ask about learning instead. You tend to get the archive, the expert who returned their calls, the year of reading, or the trip that changed the book's shape.
What did an early reader catch that you had missed?
Why ask it
This gets at the part of writing that is collaborative without asking them to praise their editor. The answers are often structural: a timeline that did not work, a character nobody believed.
What does your writing day actually look like?
Why ask it
Ask for the real one, including the job, the childcare, and the hours that are not writing. It is far more useful to other writers in the room than any answer about discipline.
How did you know a draft was finished rather than abandoned?
Why ask it
This is the question writers cannot answer for themselves and love being asked. Expect something about diminishing returns rather than a moment of certainty.
How do you decide which edit notes to take and which to argue with?
Why ask it
Moves past complaining about editors and into the judgement that separates a workable revision from a mangled one. Ask for an example of each if the answer stays general.
Did you show it to anyone while it was still bad, and would you do that again?
Why ask it
Timing on early readers is one of the few process decisions that genuinely differs between writers. The regret in the answer is usually more instructive than the practice.
What do you wish you had known when you started this one?
Why ask it
Aimed squarely at whoever in the room is at the start of theirs. It also tends to produce the honest version of the origin story.
How did the deadline change the writing, if there was one?
Why ask it
A book written to contract and a book written on speculation are made differently, and few interviews say so. The answer tells you what pressure did to the prose.
How do you handle the gap between the book in your head and the one on the page?
Why ask it
Every writer lives with that gap and most assume they are alone in it. Naming it out loud is worth more to an audience of drafters than any craft tip.
What were you reading while you wrote this, and did any of it get in?
Why ask it
More specific than asking about influences, which produces a list of the respectable dead. What was on the desk during those months usually shows up in the sentences.
How did you protect the time to write it?
Why ask it
Concrete and repeatable, unlike questions about discipline. Ask what they said no to, since that is where the real answer is.
What would you tell someone two years into a draft that is not working?
Why ask it
The most useful question if there are writers in the audience, and better than asking for general advice. Answers usually involve cutting, changing the point of view, or admitting the book is a different book.
What are you writing now, and what makes it different from this one?
Why ask it
A natural closing question, and the comparison is the substance of it. Authors often describe deliberately avoiding what they just did, which tells you what the last book took out of them.
Interviewing an author about one book
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Preparation that shows
Read it, and mark four passages
Nothing else substitutes. Two or three page references you can read aloud change the conversation immediately, because the author knows they are talking to someone who has been inside the book.
Read one earlier interview to find out what to skip
If they have answered the origin story fifty times, ask a narrower version of it. Repeating the standard press question wastes the one chance you have for something new.
Know what the book is not
Getting the genre, the setting, or the argument slightly wrong loses an author quickly, especially with nonfiction. One paragraph of checking prevents it.
In the room
Open with craft, not with themes
Questions about process are easy to answer and warm people up. Big questions about meaning tend to produce careful, general replies until the writer has settled.
Ask about a sentence
Naming one line and asking how it arrived is the single fastest way past prepared answers. Writers remember individual sentences, particularly the ones that took longest.
Follow their energy
Where they slow down, lean in, or start correcting themselves is where the real material sits. Abandon your list when that happens, and come back to it later.
What authors dread
Where do you get your ideas
There is no answer, and every writer has been asked it hundreds of times. Ask about this book's idea and where they were when it arrived instead.
Assuming the narrator is them
Treating fiction as autobiography, particularly with first-person novels, makes writers defensive. Ask whether anything is drawn from their own life and let them draw the line.
Sales, advances, and rankings
Most authors will not discuss money, and the question changes the temperature of the room. If the business side interests you, ask about the process rather than the numbers.
Using the question to talk about your own book
Common at events and immediately obvious to everyone. Ask about their work, and speak to them afterwards about yours.