Back in that post I wrote about putting together a good trivia night, I made it a point to bring up question quality, but I didn’t really get into HOW to write a good question. Hopefully I can do that here.
Before I get too far, if you’re only planning to run one trivia night (ever), by all means write the questions yourself, without regard for difficulty or quality. If you plan to run a series of events and you want players to keep coming back, you should either hire the services of a good trivia writer, or at the very least WORK at putting together a good set of questions.
If you do take on the task of writing questions for a trivia night, plan on writing 110-120 questions. You’ll need 100 for the game itself, plus 10-20 extras for replacements or tie breakers. If you don’t plan to run a trivia night with 10 full rounds, make sure you include that information when you advertise your event. Players expect 10 rounds of 10 questions when they sign up.
Of course you’re free to write questions on any subject, but if you want to keep your crowd happy (and coming back for future events) focus more on pop culture and less on the humanities and minutiae. The vast majority of the people showing up for your events are going to enjoy playing rounds on movies, music, tv, and sports. Sure, sprinkle in a few questions only your players with advanced degrees will know…but not entire categories.
Remember, your goal is to entertain – not frustrate. Don’t ask impossible questions. When in doubt, ask yourself if your questions would be asked on any TV gameshow. If you can’t imagine Alex Trebek getting a correct answer from Ken Jennings using your questions, how do you expect the average Joe from Springfield to have fun at your event?
Here’s the catch – you also don’t want your questions to be too easy. It can be just as frustrating for a good team in 2nd place when the questions are so easy that there are no opportunities to catch up to the leader. Tricky, huh?
So with the generalities out of the way, if you STILL want to write the questions for your event, here are a few tips to make them entertaining enough to keep players coming back:
- No trick questions.
- No multiple choice. If a question requires choices, it’s a bad question for a trivia night. Reword it.
- No True or False questions. “What is ‘False’, Alex?” has never been said on Jeopardy!
- Avoid dates. This isn’t History 101, and your players likely aren’t up on the exact day that Charles Howard, the 10th Earl of Carlisle was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Cumberland. I still look back in horror at a trivia night a few years ago where the audience was expected to know the birthdate of James Joyce. Don’t do that.
- Limit the number of questions that require multiple answers… preferably to zero. If you do, for some reason, need to ask for more than one answer for a question, give credit per part.
- Never ask a question that requires a 52 word answer. Never. Ever. Even if it’s a good question, THINK of your judges who will have to look at each of those answer sheets.
- Make your questions fun and/or interesting. Don’t just ask, “What is the capital of Vermont?” when you can ask ”What city in the Green Mountain State is the only state capital without a McDonald’s?” Don’t mistake creative question writing for including a ton of hints in the questions. If your hints give away the answer, it’s just as bad as a boring question.
- Don’t ask questions so specific to the organizing group that only its employees will know the answers.
- Don’t force it. If you have to struggle to come up with ten GOOD questions for a round, scrap it. This happens a lot when people try to shoehorn categories to fit a theme associated with the fundraising group.
- KNOW that the answer you are expecting from the players is the RIGHT answer. Double and triple check with different sources if you have any doubts. And don’t use cheesy trivia websites as your sources.
- If all of this seems like more work than it’s worth, contact somebody who has experience running successful trivia events.
If you’ve already written 100 questions and after reading this you think you may have goofed on a few of the Do’s and Try-not-to-do’s, fear not. Even really bad questions can be made great with a little work. Sharpen your pencil (and more importantly, your eraser) and rewrite anything you would be bored with, confused, or embarrassed by. If you’ve heard any bad ones lately, post them here and we’ll rework them into good questions.
There are 3 Cardinal sins:
1) No inside questions (you covered that) I will NEVER play your trivia again! I played at a local school (across from Indian Hills) that had pictures of the teachers as children; we were supposed to guess who was who. I couldn’t have named the teachers if they had walked in the room and said who am I?
2) No questions longer than a team is able to write (you covered that) I say a max of 15 words per question. Usually MUCH less! You had me at Hello!
3) Don’t be unbending in the answers you will accept. Question: In the song “Old Man River” why does he go to jail? Our answer: He got drunk. That was marked wrong so I protested. They said we didn’t give the exact lyrics “Tote dat barge! Lif’ dat bale! Git a little drunk, An’ you land in jail.” When I pointed out that they didn’t AX for the lyrics, she said “You’re right, that’s our mistake.” But, it is still incorrect.
Probably twice a night I realize that a question is worded stupidly or I can see the confused look on the faces. I will go out of my way to clarify what I am looking for. Personally, I don’t mind the multiple choice questions. I will use them on questions that might have more than one answer.
Why in the world would a good question have more than one right answer? Example?
Last month I used choices for the St. Brides Church question. Obviously, I was looking for the one in London. But, I really didn’t want to be bombarded by people who knew of another St Brides Church in Pigsknuckle, Oklahoma. Plus, that was a pretty hard question. Even with choices only about 20% of the room got it correct. A fair (but tough) question in my humble opinion! You know my trivia, I use very few multiple choice questions and almost NEVER have 50/50 shots. What year questions are right out. 52 word answers, well, you get my point.
Following up on the comments above, make sure that the questions aren’t ambiguously worded and leave the possibility for more than one correct answer. For example, don’t write “the Village People are best remembered for this song,” which is subjective, especially for our boys who’ve served in the Navy. Instead write, “this was the Village People’s biggest U.S. hit, reaching number two on the singles chart in 1978.” Then everyone can do that ridiculous thing with their arms when you reveal the answer.
I went to a trivia night locally where several answers were wrong. When I went up and politely corrected, I was laughed at. When I pulled up several sources on my cell phone, they conceded, but still told me that I was incorrect. I doubt I’ll go back. We ended up winning, but we weren’t well liked that evening.
Trick questions, no. But I love things that seem obvious that aren’t. I recently had a category where teams had to name the first actress to appear in the opening credits of a popular sitcom. One was the Dick Van Dyke Show and every single team said Mary Tyler Moore. In fact, it was Rose Marie–MTM was ALWAYS listed last in the show’s opening credits. The captain of the team that won told me afterwards he was furious at himself because he didn’t think the question through–he just ran with the obvious, which of course, was what I had anticipated.
I agree, Roger. Questions with obvious answers don’t make for good trivia anyway. It’s only when the writer stretches into questions like “How many pairs of animals did Moses bring on the ark?” that I call foul.
…and I really like the top-billed actor idea for a category!
I went to a trivia night locally where several answers were wrong. When I went up and politely corrected, I was laughed at. When I pulled up several sources on my cell phone, they conceded, but still told me that I was incorrect. I doubt I’ll go back. We ended up winning, but we weren’t well liked that evening.
I think you need to put in who is doing the questions for the particular event. If I ever know that the person who did the one for the RMHC is doing the questions for another – I certainly won’t go to it!!
Hi Eleanor,
All events added to the calendar from now on will have the emcee and writer listed. Thanks for the suggestion!
A slight fleshing out of one of your points to a specific: do not trust Wikipedia. My cat could get on that website and edit it and suddenly the answer to every question is I WANT FOOD! There is a lot of good info on Wiki but never use that as an only source.