Make your questions interesting!

[Ike]

Hey, so I'm kind of feeling better from ACF Nationals. If you want individual feedback on your packet, contact me privately, and I'll try to swing around to it. But I want to make a PSA about "interesting questions."

Interesting might be a bit of a subjective term, but there are tournaments that are definitely more interesting than others. I want to offer an example of what I mean as an interesting question. Take a look at this bonus:

2. In The Missing Pieces, Henri Lefebvre suggests that this novel was unfinished since “there is no end to human stupidity.” For 10 points each:
[10] Name this 1863 novel which Julian Barnes called a “vomitorium of pre-digested book learning.” Its title characters are a pair of Parisian clerks who “broach the origin of ideas.”
ANSWER: Bouvard and Pecuchet [or Bouvard et Pecuchet]
[10] Bouvard and Pecuchet is often published with this short nonfiction work, which humorously defines absinthe as an “extra-violent poison … that has killed more soldiers than the Bedouin.”
ANSWER: Dictionary of Received Ideas [or Dictionary of Accepted Ideas; or Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues]
[10] This French author supposedly read approximately 1,500 books to write Bouvard and Pecuchet; he used a much simpler naturalistic tone to write A Sentimental Education.
ANSWER: Gustave Flaubert

It could have easily been written like this:

The title characters of this novel attempt to conquer various fields of knowledge, including farming, archeology, history, literature, politics, philosophy, gymnastics, love, religion, teaching. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this 1863 novel named for a pair of Parisian clerks.
ANSWER: Bouvard and Pecuchet [or Bouvard et Pecuchet]
[10] Bouvard and Pecuchet is often published with this short nonfiction work, a reference work satirizing the customs of the second French Empire.
ANSWER: Dictionary of Received Ideas [or Dictionary of Accepted Ideas; or Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues]
[10] This French author wrote Bouvard and Pecuchet; his other books include A Sentimental Education.
ANSWER: Gustave Flaubert

So functionally, there is nothing different gameplay wise about the second example , but the first question is superior in just terms of interest. Even if you know nothing about Flaubert, you get an idea of his wit from the anecdote about absinthe, his intense erudition that informed Bouvard and Pecuchet, and may be tempted to check out his work now. And if somehow Bouvard and Pecuchet is your favorite book ever, you've probably never heard of Henri Lefebvre's The Missing Pieces - but your curiosity should be piqued - you'll eventually find out it is a delightful prose poem cataloging works of art that have been lost to the sands of time.

When you're volume writing, it's very easy to produce the example-2 style of questions. But I think our game would be much richer if you just take the extra time and aim for the style of question 1. After all, every bonus is seven or eight lines, and for most teams 2 of those lines are devoted to a bonus part whose answer they know or are going to get - I think it would be great if those two lines could be used to teach something fun and/or new every time. Some tournaments have done this better than others - one of the reasons why I love Westbrook's and Rob Carson's writing so much is that they produce questions that are whimsical and interesting from a "I've never heard of this" before level. As I stick around the game more, I think the tournaments that are worth playing the most are the ones that just continuously try to teach.

Here's an example of a bonus that bugged the hell out of me:

10. This novel features a group of four revolutionaries including the voodoo priest Ogé, and the cousins Sofia and Esteban. For 10 points each:
[10] Identify this novel in which Carlos declines to follow Victor Hugues in his quest to gain power.
ANSWER: Explosion in a Cathedral [or El Siglo de las Luces or The Century of Lights]
[10] This author of Explosion in a Cathedral also wrote The Lost Steps and The Kingdom of This World.
ANSWER: Alejo Carpentier y Valmont
[10] Carpentier was an author from this country which was also the home of Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Jose Marti.
ANSWER: Republic of Cuba [or Republica de Cuba]

Seriously. What the hell? This bonus teaches you nothing but titles. It pretty much ruins the beauty of Alejo Carpentier like a postcolonialist interpretation would also ruin his novels. Here's a quick and simple way of knowing when you're definitely doing something wrong: if your tossup's or bonus's sentence supplementary eponymous information can be quickly replaced with other named things and it still makes sense, you've probably written an uninteresting question, by which I mean:

[10]Carpentier was an author from this country which was also the home of Nicholas Guillen and Daína Chaviano.

is still a valid sentence construction, and it's a good sign that your bonus is definitely not interesting.

This year and last year I cut a huge amount of philosophy and other science answer lines in submissions. A lot of the reasoning was that the clues weren't great, but it's also just the case that sometimes the answerline is pretty flawed and you can't write an "interesting" question out of it. I received a TU on biotite micas this year for nationals that was workable - I chose to cut it because although biotite mica is an OK answerline for ACF Nationals, but the interest in said tossup goes to zero with a bullet - all of the clues are going to be various named processes or things that you aren't likely to learn through study. But if I receive a usable answerline - such as on Darcy's law, I'll gladly dig up all the clues that will make it into an interesting question.

Ike

[No Rules Westbrook]

Yeah, I support this post a lot.

I'd also say that it's fine to joke around a little bit, which is something that seems like it's going out of style. I enjoy that Ike puts references to being "cuckoo for Okonkwo puffs," and throws out asides like mentioning the appearance of a quote in the game The Longest Journey or the Lightning series of Louis Vuitton products, in his bonuses. Those additions really don't change the substance or gameplay of the bonuses that they appear in - but they sure are a lot more fun to listen to.

Heavens knows that I love titles and "qb clues," but I always try to surround them with new, weird, and interesting supplemental information. At its worst, this can sometimes make bonuses a little longer than you'd like, but that's a small price to pay in my opinion if those bonuses don't end up sounding rote and routine.


**And it's not just bonuses necessarily - I see a lot of tossups where it's like eating your vegetables. (i.e. Tossup on Thing X that comes up all the time, done in paint-by-numbers fashion). I understand this when writing for ACF Fall, but if you're writing for a higher-level tournament, you should have some room to spice and dice. It doesn't have to be by choosing harder answerlines necessarily (thought it can be...hip hip hooray, hard questions!) - it can also be in the substance of the clues in the first 5 or 6 lines.

[vinteuil]

I like this post a lot, and I liked how this year's Nats was chock full of interesting questions (not just from Ike). On the other hand, I'd hate for anyone to think that Ike's ideas are the only ways to make questions interesting (not that I think he's actually implying that).

One problem with this style (something I noticed playing Nats, and, to be honest, reading my own questions from MYSTERIUM), is that it can get a little tiring as a player to have all that extra length (I'll try to be more judicious in my own writing in the future).

Moreover the "interesting" wording is sometimes less easily parsable than a "straight" ("boring") description. For easy parts and giveaways, clarity is crucial: I definitely saw some missed easy and middle parts at Nats that seemed at least partially due to a focus on interest at the expense of clarity.

[grapesmoker]

As someone who has been banging on this drum for years, I endorse Ike's post.

[Cheynem]

It's a really hard skill to master the art of being concise ("pithy") and interesting, as well as clear.

One thing to also keep in mind that is someone has to read what you wrote. Out loud. This is an argument in favor of all of the above traits--you want it to be interesting (God knows I've botched reading lots of those boring bonus parts because I zone out while reading), concise (have mercy on the readers, massa Chris Ray!), and clear (the reader shouldn't have to do too much parsing to figure out what's your actual money clue).

In regards to the latter, I think it's important to keep in mind that not every reader is going to know what actually is the "easy" clue buried among your interesting sandwich. At one Minnesota Open, a particularly non salubrious reader completely buried the actual important clue amid trying laboriously to stress the misadventures of Michael Arnold. I'm not saying you need to write bonus parts with neon signs reading STRESS THIS PART, but just use some good sense.

[touchpack]

This definitely also applies to science questions! My personal philosophy is that a good question should not only tell you what something is, it should also communicate why you should care about it. This is, as others have mentioned, much easier to do in bonuses than tossups, but it's certainly possible in tossups. Here's an example:

Because this man’s number doesn’t depend on length scale, the Peclet number is often divided by the Reynolds number to give this number in dimensional analysis of forced convection, which yields the result that the Nusselt number is a function of the Reynolds number and this number. For 10 points, name this German physicist who introduced a region of fluid in which viscosity is significant, called the boundary layer.
ANSWER: Ludwig Prandtl

Here's what this clues looked like in the original submission.

He is the namesake of a quantity equal to the Rayleigh Number divided by the Grashof Number that is the heat transfer analog of the Schmidt Number. He may be best known for formulating a concept that describes the region of a fluid in which viscosity effects are significant. For 10 points, name this German physicist who introduced the concept of boundary layers, whose namesake number equals the ratio of momentum diffusivity to thermal diffusivity.
ANSWER: Ludwig Prandtl

As you can see, I managed to trim the clues down, while explaining more clearly WHY the Prandtl number is something you should care about. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the original submission; the clues are useful, good, and pyramidal, but I think we can agree that my version is more interesting to listen to, especially if you don't know what the answer is! One of the reasons I (we?) play quizbowl is to learn new things, and questions should try to feed this intellectual curiosity whenever possible.

[Auks Ran Ova]

I very much endorse Ike's post (and strive to achieve its goals in my writing, as Ike has kindly mentioned), but I'd like to point out one thing, especially regarding situations where you're submitting questions to be edited by someone else: especially if you're not a super-experienced writer, it's okay to make a solid, non-lazy question your first goal and worry about spicing it up after that. If you submit to me a boring but well-structured question, I can worry about making it amusing myself (especially since I'm saving time not restructuring a shit question).

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

I very much endorse Ike's post (and strive to achieve its goals in my writing, as Ike has kindly mentioned), but I'd like to point out one thing, especially regarding situations where you're submitting questions to be edited by someone else: especially if you're not a super-experienced writer, it's okay to make a solid, non-lazy question your first goal and worry about spicing it up after that. If you submit to me a boring but well-structured question, I can worry about making it amusing myself (especially since I'm saving time not restructuring a shit question).

I'll add that writers should strive to grasp Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping's words on the black cat, and find alternative ways to write interesting questions. If your tossup or bonus tells a story, you're good. That means that you don't necessarily need to overload your bonus with quirky facts and anecdotes. It's okay to be George Orwell and not David Foster Wallace.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

I'll add that I find "interesting" questions much more enjoyable to write than the alternative. Back when I was writing hundreds of questions a year, I probably would have gone insane if all I was writing was the boring ones. Inserting interesting clues, "amusing" commentary, etc., was a life-affirming act of rebellion against an inherently dull task.

[Cody]

I love reading and playing this type of interesting question and I always want to see more of it. 2015 BISB, in particular, excels at this.