Questions for book clubs, readers and writers

A book club lives or dies by its questions, and so does a reading lesson. These sets are for book groups, classrooms and readers talking over a book, and for interviewing an author, a poet or a playwright. Others are for writers with a draft, beta readers, an editor or a publisher to question.

48 sets · 2,401 questions · each with a note on why

A few to start with

What will I do about relevant studies that appear after the review is drafted?
A thesis review written in the first year can be well behind by submission. Put a date in the calendar a few weeks before the deadline to rerun the logged searches, and work what turns up into the sections where it belongs, not into a paragraph bolted on the end.
From: Questions to Ask When Writing a Literature Review
Do you need to like the main character to enjoy a book?
Readers split cleanly here. Those who say yes want someone to root for, and those who say no are usually reading for voice or ideas. Knowing the side they are on saves you from recommending a brilliant book about someone unbearable.
From: Questions to Ask a Reader
What do you do when an actor keeps stumbling on the same line?
Working playwrights treat a repeatedly fumbled line as evidence rather than as the actor's problem. Whether they cut it, rewrite it, or defend it is a real window into how they collaborate.
From: Questions to Ask a Playwright
Which editors and imprints would you take this to, and in what order?
Two or three named editors, with a reason for each, show real thinking; a general answer about the big houses does not. Some agents hold the full list back until you sign, which is fair. The order tells you how they see the book: literary, commercial, or pitched across both.
From: Questions to Ask Literary Agents
Have I defined my key terms and used each one the same way throughout?
Search the document for your two or three central terms. If "globalization" means trade on page two and culture on page six, the argument has shifted without telling the reader. A sentence of definition near the start usually fixes it.
From: Questions to Ask When Writing a Research Paper
How much time does the story cover, and what gets a single line?
Some short stories last twenty minutes of a character's life and others pass over ten years in a sentence. What is summarized and what is slowed to the minute shows where the writer thought the story really was.
From: Questions to Ask About a Story

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