Tag Archives: book club reads

How to write discussion questions for your novel

9 August 2013 Jordan 1 Comment

A couple weeks ago, I got a phone call from my sister-in-law. Her book club read I, Spy (!), and they wondered if I could provide any discussion questions.

If you’ve never seen this before, sometimes a book will include five to ten questions at the end to prompt and guide discussions of the novel. Often you see these in general fiction aimed toward book clubs, like These is my Words and The Secret Life of Bees.

I’ve been to book club meetings where there’s kind of nothing to talk about but the facts of the book—and even those aren’t in debate—so I definitely understand the desire for that kind of help. Of course, I also could’ve used some help coming up with those questions 😉 .

I figured I wasn’t the only one, so I wrote up with some ideas on how to come up with discussion questions for your novel.

Think about your theme

I really hope you’ve done this before you published 😉 . Beyond the events of the plot, what is your book about? In reality, you probably have a major theme and some minor supporting themes. Maybe you’ve tapped into the power of because.

Contemplate your characters’ journeys

What do your characters learn along the way? How do they change and grow because of the events of the story?

Ponder the plot

Rehashing the events of a book does not a book club make. They’ve all read it. How else might the events play out? How did the plot events affect the characters, and the readers?

Consider your characters

What are their attributes and flaws? How are they like—or unlike—people around you? How do their flaws affect the story?

Now: talk about how that applies to the reader

Take those concepts you’ve brainstormed by looking at these areas, and start thinking about how they apply to your readers and their lives. What can they talk about? How can they relate?

Open-ended questions (how, why, etc.) are better at prompting discussion than questions that can be answered with a yes or no. Yes/no questions can build to bigger discussion questions, however.

If your book deals with forgiveness, perhaps you could include discussion points on how to forgive, why we forgive, what you can and can’t forgive other people for, etc. Ask if they’ve ever known someone like this character, or what aspects of themselves they saw in that character. After X event, Character Q feels like he’s been abandoned by his last hope. Have you ever felt that way?

My discussion questions

So here’s what I came up with!

Talia has to keep a secret from the man she loves. Have you ever kept a secret from someone you love? How did that affect your relationship?
Talia learns that love can be a source of strength. How has love made you stronger? How else has love changed you?
Danny feels betrayed by Talia. How have you dealt with someone you love lying to you?
After months of training in DC, and several months of more in-depth instruction far away from family and friends, CIA trainees are allowed to bring their closest family members for a family weekend. As part of the weekend, family members are loaded onto a bus for a tour of the Farm facility.
One year, the instructor-turned-tour guide clapped his hands and welcomed the family members to the CIA.

One woman leapt to her feet. (In some stories, she’s even holding a young child.) “The CIA?” she exclaimed. “My husband works for the CIA?!” Could you forgive someone for something like that?
Elliott has a hard time keeping his work and family priorities straight. (Don’t we all?) What would your priority be in his situation? Could you balance better than he does?
Talia is afraid of commitment partially because of her family history, especially her parents’ failed marriage. How have you seen the effects of relationships across generations?
Do you think you would make a good spy? Why or why not?

What do you think? How have you or would you come up with discussion questions?

Photo credit: Valerie Everett

Reading

TBR Tuesday: The Light Between Oceans by ML Steadman

16 July 2013 Jordan 3 Comments

I read The Light Between Oceans by ML Steadman for a long-distance book club with my mom, sisters & best friend!

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

SPOILER ALERT: that one other person so devastated by their choice is the baby’s surviving relative. (Um, duh.) You can see right away that this is leading up to an emotional trainwreck, right?

I liked the book: it was interesting and compelling. I enjoyed the writing and the imagery (though sometimes there were too many images too close together, too incongruous: let them breathe! Let them resonate! Sheesh), and I found the plot very interesting. I liked how the past influenced the present, and the reverberations of the war and the loss of children echoed through so many characters.

The book is (about 98%) a tragedy. I like tragedies. However, I’m not totally convinced this is a great tragedy. Take a Shakespearean tragedy: Hamlet shows us how he who hesitates is lost. Macbeth shows us the consequences of “vaulting ambition.” Romeo and Juliet shows us the folly of feuding.

And The Light Between Oceans? It might want to show us that honesty is the best policy (yay aphorisms), but I’m not quite sure it achieves that, since even the honest and innocent characters reap negative consequences as shown on the pages. So to me it felt like rather than reaching for some sort of overarching, universal truth, the novel seems to point toward only a specific solution for these particular characters in this particular situation.

To quote one Amazon reviewer:

I do not feel enlightened, or that I have understood a moral quandary any better. I just feel terribly sad about what happens to all the main characters . . .

According to Aristotle, the point of tragedy is catharsis, right? An emotional release and a lesson learned through vicarious pain, basically. But if the lesson isn’t learned, then is the tragedy working? What do you think?

Jordan McCollum