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Writing Book Club Questions for Your Novel
Even if you haven’t finished yet! Warning: it might be useful!
Some time in the spring, my novel BLUE HOURS will be released. I’d like to include Unschool reader-writers in useful pieces of the last steps of writing process.
A Dozen Questions
One of the first tasks on my growing list of “To do for sending-out-to-the-world” is to come up with a dozen questions for book clubs. I’ve been part of a book club since covid, and one member of the group always manages to find such a list of questions somewhere. I think this — considering book clubs — has become a piece of launching a book, or at least books that by their nature lend themselves to conversation (and shouldn’t all?) Reading is solitary (or not necessarily!) but talking about stories is community-building.
In part what sold this novel was that the acquisitions team spent an afternoon discussing the story, asking questions and wondering. They had conversation about it — long and meandering conversation. This in itself — more than anything — convinced them it would be a good read; the story and characters got people talking.
When the managing editor shared this with me, I knew that coming up with rich questions for book clubs would be key, and a good challenge. (And…