Questions to Ask Writers
For a festival panel, a book club visit, a podcast, a school paper, or a coffee with a writer whose work you admire. These 20 questions are about the actual desk: what got cut, what the first draft looked like, what the editor pushed back on, and how the money works.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What did you work on this morning, and how did it go?
Why ask it
Nothing loosens a writer faster than the present tense, and the answer is usually far more specific than any account of their process. It also quietly establishes whether they are between books, which changes what the rest of the conversation should be about.
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 hours of a working day are actually writing, and what is the rest of it?
Why ask it
Most working writers spend a minority of their time on new prose and the majority on revision, correspondence, teaching, admin and promotion. The ratio is the single most misunderstood fact about the job, and hearing a real number resets expectations for anyone planning to do this.
Where did this book start: an image, a line, a person, or an argument you wanted to have?
Why ask it
Giving four options is what makes this work, because writers rarely start from plot and the honest origin is often oddly small. The answer tells you what kind of writer you are talking to, since a book that began as an argument is built very differently from one that began with a face.
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 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 does your first draft look like compared with the finished book?
Why ask it
Some writers produce clean pages slowly and some produce chaos quickly, and every beginner assumes their own mess is a defect. A specific comparison, that a draft was half the length or in the wrong tense or had no third act, is the most reassuring thing an experienced writer can offer.
How do you know a draft is finished rather than just abandoned?
Why ask it
This gets at the private test each writer uses: reading it aloud, no longer flinching at a particular page, a deadline. Nobody has a clean answer, and the honest hesitation is itself informative for anyone stuck in an endless revision.
What did your editor push you on, and did they win?
Why ask it
Editing is the part of publishing readers never see, and a specific disagreement shows how the sausage is made. The answer also reveals how the writer handles being wrong, which is more of the job than talent is.
Whose sentences do you read when you are stuck?
Why ask it
Writers reach for a particular book to restart the engine, and the choice is often surprising and unrelated to what they write. Ask what specifically it does for them, whether that is rhythm, permission or nerve, since that is the transferable part.
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.
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.
What do you do with a bad review that has a point?
Why ask it
The qualifier is what makes the question worth asking, since dismissing hostile reviews is easy and absorbing accurate criticism is not. Writers who are honest here describe carrying the note into the next book, which is a more useful model than defiance.
How do you make a living, and how much of your income comes from the writing itself?
Why ask it
Ask this plainly, because the fiction that books pay the rent does real harm to people making decisions about their lives. Most working writers combine advances with teaching, journalism, editing, speaking or an unrelated job, and hearing the mix is more valuable than hearing a figure.
What did you not understand about publishing before your first contract?
Why ask it
This produces the practical, unromantic material: how advances are paid out in installments, who controls the cover, how little marketing most books receive, what an agent actually does. It is the part of the conversation an audience of aspiring writers will remember.
What has changed in how you work since your first book?
Why ask it
Comparing then and now surfaces earned craft rather than temperament, whether that is drafting faster, outlining more, or having stopped waiting to feel ready. If they say nothing has changed, ask what they have stopped worrying about.
What are you reading now, and what are you stealing from it?
Why ask it
The word stealing gives permission for a technical answer instead of a recommendation. Writers read as practitioners, watching how a chapter opens or how time is compressed, and naming the specific theft shows an audience how reading feeds writing.
What are you working on now, and how far into it are you?
Why ask it
Save it for the end, because early on it invites a guarded non-answer about superstition. Asked last, after they have talked freely about the finished work, it usually gets an honest sentence about a book nobody has heard about yet.
Interviewing a Writer Without Boring Them
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Preparation
Read the work, and say which part
Not the jacket copy, not a summary. Naming a specific chapter, a minor character or a paragraph you reread changes the whole conversation, because writers can tell within one question whether they are talking to a reader. If you have only read part of it, say so and be specific about the part.
Find out what they have already been asked to death
Listen to one existing interview or read one profile. Every writer has three questions they have answered forty times, usually about where they get their ideas and whether the narrator is really them. Skipping those buys you the attention for the harder ones.
Ask about the book that exists, not the book you would have written
Questions that imply a different choice would have been better put a writer on the defensive for the rest of the hour. If you want to ask about a decision you disliked, ask what the alternatives were and why they lost, which is a real craft question rather than a complaint.
Bring six questions and be ready to abandon four
The best material comes from following an answer rather than working a list. Have your six, mark the two you will definitely ask, and let the rest go when something more interesting opens up.
Adjusting by Setting
Book club or library visit
- Open with the origin of the book, it gives everyone a shared starting point
- Ask what got cut, which is the answer readers most enjoy and never hear
- Save any question about the money for the end, or ask it privately
- Have one question ready for the silence after you invite the room to ask
Festival panel with several writers
- Ask the same concrete question of each writer rather than a general one of the group
- Use questions that produce difference: first drafts, endings, hours in a day
- Do not ask them to compare their books to each other, it is uncomfortable and unproductive
- Watch the quiet one and give them a direct question rather than an open invitation
You want to learn from them
- Ask about the parts of the job nobody posts about: revision, income, the waiting
- Do not ask them to read your manuscript at a first meeting
- Ask what they would do in your specific situation rather than for general advice
- Follow up months later with what you did about their answer
Questions Writers Dread
- Where do you get your ideas, which has no answer and everyone has heard
- Is the narrator you, asked as though it were a clever accusation
- How long did it take to write, which flattens years of work into a number
- Asking a novelist about their process in the abstract instead of about this book
- Asking what advice they have for aspiring writers as the opening question
- Asking whether they have been published as a way of ranking them
- Asking about sales figures or how much the advance was in front of an audience
- Pitching your own idea during their event
- Asking about a film adaptation that does not exist
- Summarizing their book back to them incorrectly and asking them to agree