Why Preparation Is Only Half the Battle

Interviewing an author well begins long before you press record. But preparation is not the same as having a list of questions you intend to march through regardless of what the writer actually says. The best interviews feel like conversations that happen to have a purpose — and that only works when you have done enough groundwork to be genuinely interested in the answers, rather than merely ticking off topics.

Read the book. Not the blurb, not the reviews, not the publisher's press release — the actual book. If you cannot manage the whole thing, read enough to have a real opinion about at least one passage. Authors can tell within about ninety seconds whether you have read their work, and the conversation changes shape entirely when they realise you have.

Read Around the Book, Not Just Through It

Context gives you better questions. If the novel is set in a particular period, know roughly what was happening then. If it is the author's fourth book, know how it differs from the third. If they have spoken publicly about a recurring theme, you can skip the obvious and go somewhere more interesting.

Make a short list of things you genuinely want to know, then mark the three you would be happiest to spend the whole interview on. Everything else is backup. This stops you from panicking halfway through and reaching for the question you did not really want to ask.

Ask About Craft, Not the Marketing Copy

Authors spend months — sometimes years — being asked the same handful of questions by publicists, festival hosts and podcasters. "Where do you get your ideas?" and "What's your writing routine?" are fine as warm-ups, but they rarely produce anything a reader has not heard before.

Craft questions go deeper, and they are almost always rewarding:

• Structural choices: "Why did you decide to tell this section out of chronological order?" or "What made you choose two narrators rather than one?"
• Sentences and scenes: "There's a scene near the middle that surprised me. How did that come about — was it planned, or did it emerge in the drafting?"
• Decisions and cuts: "What did you take out that you were sad to lose?" Readers love this one — it makes the book feel like a made thing rather than a delivered object.
• Research and uncertainty: "What did you have to guess at?" This works especially well with historical fiction and narrative non-fiction.

Routine, Influences and the Unglamorous Bits

Routine questions are only dull when they are asked lazily. Instead of "Do you write every day?", try: "What does a bad writing day look like for you?" or "Where do you write, and does anyone else know you're there?" Specificity is what makes the answer usable.

Influences are fertile ground if you come prepared. Rather than "Who are your influences?", name a writer whose echoes you noticed and ask whether you are right. Authors enjoy being read closely, even when they disagree — and the disagreement is often more interesting than the agreement. Ask also about the writers they have moved away from, and about the books they reread.

Do not neglect the practical side. Ask about deadlines, editors, and what they do when a draft goes badly wrong. These details make an interview memorable because they are the parts readers rarely hear.

Listen Properly, and Follow the Thread

This is where most interviews are won or lost. Listening is not waiting for your turn to speak. It is noticing the half-sentence that sounds like it has more behind it, and asking about that instead of moving down your list.

Useful habits:

• Pause before your next question. A second of silence often produces the sentence the author was about to add.
• Use their words. If they say the book "resisted" them, ask what that resistance looked like. Mirroring language invites elaboration.
• Ask "why that?" rather than "why?" The second sounds like an interrogation; the first sounds like interest.
• Abandon the plan when something better appears. You can always return to the list. You cannot always get the moment back.

Turning the Conversation into Something Worth Reading

When you write it up, do not simply transcribe the chat. Choose the two or three exchanges that were most alive, and build the piece around them. Quote the author accurately, and paraphrase the parts where they rambled — most of us ramble, and no one benefits from seeing it laid out in full.

Your own curiosity is the thing you cannot fake, so trust it. If a particular answer made you want to pick the book back up, say so, and say why. That moment — where genuine interest meets genuine reading — is what turns an interview into a recommendation, and what makes a reader decide to seek out the book for themselves.