What the What?

I find myself pondering the lost art of asking a question. After attending countless Q&A sessions for work, workshops, conferences, town hall meetings and most recently bestselling author events, I have become fed up with the inarticulate way that people ask questions.

Am I the only who thinks that a question should not take twice as long to vocalize as it does for the person answering the questions to come up with and deliver a response? Why do people feel it is necessary to ramble on and on in the voicing of their question? Wouldn't it make more sense to spit it out? I can not speak for everyone else, but when I attend a lecture, I am interested in what the speaker has to say and want to make the most out of the allotted time they have to speak. As a result, there is nothing that bothers me more than listening to people fumble around in asking their questions and providing long explanations to why they are asking the question.

Yesterday, I attended an event that featured two authors including Charlaine Harris. I am a big fan of her books and for those who are not familiar with her work, she writes the Southern Vampire Series (the basis for the hit HBO program True Blood) among other things. She was a very interesting and articulate speaker. Unfortunately, the 45 minutes allotted for her Q&A session were spent listening to people ask questions instead of listening to her responses. Only one person in the audience had the foresight to write down a list of questions she wanted to ask. As a result, only one clear and concise question was asked during the entire 45 minute event. I felt it was a sad waste of a great experience as Charlaine was very entertaining in the few minutes the audience gave her to respond in between their rambling questions.

The worst part is that in their need to provide lengthy explanations to their questions or maybe in an attempt to make their questions sound more informed and intelligent, people actually came across as more than a little insulting with questions that sounded like they were asking her if she stole ideas from other books, was bothered by Stephenie Meyer’s success, if she consciously made Sookie such a strong female character in response to the weaker Bella, etc.

In one case, the girl had a valid question, the problem was it got so lost in her ramblings that instead of responding to a question that would have no doubt had an interesting answer, Charlaine was forced to defend the fact that her books were written before Stephenie Meyer’s books, so her characters were developed that way out of creativity not out of a wish to differentiate them from the Twilight characters. If the girl had just taking the time to think about her question, things would have gone much better.

Now while it might not be wholly unexpected for the two authors to be compared since they both are bestselling authors in the fantasy/paranormal genre, despite the fact that one writes for a young adult audience and one clearly for an adult audience, it is just rude to make it sound like Charlaine was jumping on a bandwagon when she was making a mark for herself in the genre long before Stephenie came along. Her responses were gracious, but firmly defended her own established position. I must add that she was very vocal about the fact that she is always extremely happy to see a new writer, especially a female writer succeed, and she wished Stephenie all the best.