Questions for Authors

“I want to make videos, but what do I talk about?” That was a question that plagued me for years. The answer was always the same. I want to talk about my books. I want to talk about my work. I’m also into politics and history. I also ALSO love etymology and grammar. Trying to figure out what I want to focus on, what I want my brand and name to be associated with has been a time.

Being a black woman in the publishing industry and fantasy/sci fi space, lends itself to a lot of overlap in the aforementioned topics. But then I have to decide what I want the main focus of my platform to be. I’m happy to speak on politics (and I do on most of my socials,) but do I want to a political career or an author career:? While you can have both eventually, it’s difficult to build both at the same time. As much as I could fantasize about side-eyeing the white supremacists on Fox News and CNN to their faces, I would also fantasize about sitting on panels at various comic conventions, answering questions about my work or about ideas and topics in fantasy and sci fi.

I decided that’s where I want to find myself most of the time. So, that’s what I want to build by brand around. Once I decided that, I needed to figure out how to fluid it. I remember a quote from John C. Maxwell. “Great leaders ask great questions.” And I think about a directive I read that “great authors are great community members.” I started searching social media, looking for questions to answer, to join conversations and contribute to. But I wasn’t seeing enough questions that were relative to me and my work. I started writing a list of questions. At first, they were real specific to my story, but then I realized that I could be more useful to my community by tailoring the questions to be useful to more authors.

My goal is to have at least 365 questions listed that authors can use to create videos and build their platform. Some of the questions are genre specific. There’s a lot about MC and antagonist. Some are about the author, writing technique and tools, and publishing. Maybe a few will inspire your own questions.

Feel free to use these questions to make videos, write articles, and various other media. Happy building.

 

 Questions for Authors

What advice would you give to new novelists?