How to Prepare for an Author Interview: 10 Questions That Go Beyond the Book

The first question a reader asks an author is usually about the book. The tenth question is where the interview gets interesting. Preparation is what buys you the room to ask that tenth question — a prompt the author has not answered eleven times that week, and which gives them something to think about on the way home. What follows is a working method: how to read, what to ask, how to record it properly, and how to handle the moments that need a gentler hand.

Read the book twice, and read around it

One read is not enough. Skimming the jacket copy and the first chapter is worse than not reading at all, because the author will notice within a minute and start giving you the answers they give everybody.

The first read: as a reader

Read it the way a customer would. Note where you lost track of time and where you got impatient. Those two reactions are worth more than any compliment, and both make fair questions. If you were bored in chapter nine, say so politely and ask what that chapter was doing — the answer is often the best thing you will hear all day.

The second read: with a pencil

Now go back and mark it up. Flag the passage you did not understand, the character who changed, the sentence you would have cut. Write page numbers in the margin and a three-word note beside each one. By the end you want four or five specific anchors you can quote back: not "your sense of place is wonderful", but "the description of the bus shelter on page 84 does something the rest of the chapter doesn't — was that deliberate?"

Then read around the book

Look up interviews the author has already given and read them properly, so you can avoid repeating what they have said ten times. Check the acknowledgements, the author's note and any essay they have written about the book's origins. These are where the honest material usually hides. One caution: if a detail is in the first paragraph of the publisher's press release, it is not a question, it is a warm-up.

Ten questions that go beyond the book

Treat these as a bank rather than a script. Four or five good ones will carry an hour, and several will fold into a single conversation.

1. What did you leave out? The cut chapter, the abandoned ending, the character who quietly vanished. Ask what the book would have been if they had kept it.
2. Where do you disagree with your narrator or protagonist? A question about craft and conscience at once, and almost never asked.
3. Which part was hardest to get onto the page, and why? The answer tells you more about process than any question about inspiration.
4. What did you have to learn to write this? A trade, a dialect, a period, a legal procedure. Follow it: how did you know when you had learned enough?
5. Which book do you wish you had written, and what would you have done differently with it? Better than asking for favourite authors, which produces a list.
6. Who did you imagine reading it? And did that reader change between the first draft and the last?
7. What has this book cost you? Time, sleep, a quieter year than you planned. Ask it plainly and let them choose how far to go.
8. What would you tell yourself at the start of the first draft? Invites practical advice rather than reflection for its own sake.
9. What is the question you are tired of being asked? Then ask what nobody asks. Authors usually have an answer ready, and it is often generous.
10. What are you deliberately not writing next? More revealing than the usual "what's next", and it opens up the choices behind the work.

Test the recording before you test your guest's patience

Technical failure is the most common reason an interview cannot be used. Give yourself fifteen minutes alone in the room first.

• Ask permission to record, and say what it is for and how long you will keep it. Get this on the recording itself.
• Use two devices. A phone as backup is fine, but put it in aeroplane mode so a call cannot interrupt it.
• Set levels by asking the author a real question and listening on headphones. Aim for peaks well below the top of the meter.
• Choose the room carefully. Kitchens hum, cafés swallow consonants, and a ticking clock will be the loudest thing in the edit.
• Clap once at the start of the recording. It gives you a spike to align two tracks later.
• Check battery and storage before you sit down, then check again.
• Note the time when a good answer starts. You will thank yourself when you are working through ninety minutes of audio.

Asking the difficult question without an ambush

You can ask hard things. You cannot spring them. If the book touches on bereavement, illness, addiction or a legal dispute, say so before the interview begins and offer to keep that part off the record if they would rather. Then, when you ask, keep it factual and specific rather than broad and emotional: "You write about the year after the diagnosis. What did you need people to stop saying?" gives the author control. Silence after the question is not a problem to be filled; count to five before you say anything else. Where a subject touches legal or medical matters, stick to what the author has chosen to publish, and if you are unsure whether something can safely be printed, take advice before you publish rather than after.

Listen well enough to follow up

The best follow-up is usually three words: "Why that one?" or "Say more about that." Most interviewers lose good material because they were already reading the next question. Keep your list in front of you, but let the author's last sentence decide where you go next. If they mention something unexpected — a job, a town, a rejected draft — that is your interview, and your prepared questions can wait.

After the recording stops

Leave the recorder running for a moment. People often say the most useful thing once they think the interview has finished, and it is fair to ask whether you can use it. Back the files up to two places the same day, before you do anything else. Write a one-page summary while it is fresh: the three strongest answers, the page numbers mentioned, and anything you need to check — titles, dates, the spelling of names.

Then send a short thank-you with a note of when the piece is likely to appear, and honour it. If you promised to send a copy before publication, do that, and correct anything you got wrong. Authors remember the interviewers who were accurate and kind, which is a much better reason to be asked back than a clever question.

Photo: janeannpeters / Pixabay