Fifteen Questions to Ask an Author at Your Book Club Event

A book club evening with an author can go one of two ways. In the first, everyone leaves still talking about the book. In the second, the author gives polite, general answers for forty minutes and everyone leaves talking about the biscuits. The difference is almost always the questions. Authors answer what they are asked, and most of them have fielded "where do you get your ideas?" more times than they can count. Give them something specific — a scene, a decision, a stubborn character — and the room gets something worth hearing. What follows is a bank of fifteen questions, grouped by what they are really about, with notes on which ones work best live.

Questions About Craft

Start here if your group has read closely and wants to talk about how the book was made. These questions suit an author who enjoys talking shop, and they tend to produce answers members quote back at each other months later.

1. Which scene did you rewrite the most, and what was wrong with the early versions?
2. How much of your first draft is still in the finished book?
3. How did you find the voice? Was it there on page one, or did it take a few chapters to settle?
4. What did you cut that you are still slightly sorry about?
5. Which writers do you learn from, even when you are not trying to?

That last one is a useful lever. If the author names someone unexpected, ask which of their books they return to and what it teaches them. That follow-up often produces the most interesting five minutes of the night.

Questions About Research

Research questions suit historical fiction, narrative non-fiction, and any novel set inside a world the author had to learn from scratch — a hospital ward, a shipyard, a monastery, a county court. They work less well for a book drawn entirely from lived experience, where the honest answer is often "I already knew it". Ask about the moment research changed something, rather than for a list of sources.

1. What was the first thing you had to look up, and what surprised you once you started digging?
2. Did a piece of research change the plot, or a character, in a way you had not planned?
3. How do you know when you have done enough research and should start inventing?
4. What did you learn that you had to leave out because it did not serve the story?
5. Which single detail did you get right that most readers will never notice?

Notice how many of these invite an admission rather than a boast. Authors are usually more interesting when they are describing what went wrong, or what they could not fit in.

Questions About Characters

Characters are where a room of readers becomes animated, because everyone has a private relationship with them. One member will adore the sister everyone else finds unbearable. Another will insist the ending was cruel. The best character questions ask the author to think on their feet rather than summarise a book they finished talking about a year ago.

1. Which character took the longest to become a real person to you?
2. How do you write someone you do not like without turning them into a cartoon?
3. Did any character go off-plan and surprise you?
4. What do you know about your characters' lives that never made it onto the page?
5. If you had to rewrite one scene from another character's point of view, which scene, and whose?

Question fifteen is a strong note to finish on. It flatters the room's attention, gives the author somewhere new to go, and often reveals how much thinking sits behind a passage that reads simply.

Which Questions Land Best in a Live Room

The best questions ask for a story, not a verdict. "Did you mean the ending to be hopeful?" invites a yes or no. "What were you trying to leave the reader with in that last chapter?" invites a scene, a difficulty, a decision. A few practical habits make the difference between an interview and a conversation:

• Ask one thing at a time. Stack three questions together and the author will answer only the last one.
• Follow up. The follow-up is the actual interview. If an answer mentions a difficult week, ask what made it difficult.
• Keep a spare question. Someone will always ask yours first, and a good chair never leaves a silence hanging.
• Let disagreement in. A member who says "I read that scene completely differently" is more useful than applause.
• Save "what are you working on next?" for last. It is a natural closer, not an opener.
• Watch the clock. Eight to ten questions with real answers fills an hour comfortably.

Two things are worth avoiding. Questions that test whether the author remembers their own book rarely go anywhere, and questions about real people the characters might be based on can put a guest on the defensive in front of strangers. If a member genuinely wants to know, the chair can offer to pass on a note afterwards.

Before the Night: A Short Checklist

Send the author three or four questions in advance, and say plainly that the rest will come from the floor. Most guests appreciate knowing the shape of the evening, and it gives them a chance to think of a good answer rather than a safe one. Ask members to bring one written question each; people who insist they have nothing to ask usually do, once they have had a week to think.

Agree who chairs before the event, not on the night. The chair's job is to open with something easy, keep answers from running long, and make sure the quiet end of the room gets a turn. Mark two passages in the book — one you loved, one you found difficult — so you can bring the discussion back to the text when it drifts.

Then leave twenty minutes at the end for signing, and put someone by the door with a pen and a stack of the author's other titles. A well-run evening ends with people pressing books on each other in the car park, which is exactly the point.

Photo: cottonbro studio / Pexels