How to Create High Quality Trivia Questions

COVID-19 UPDATE

In the absence of traditional trivia nights our lives do not have to be completely trivia-less. Check out QuizNightHQ’s guide to Isolation Trivia + Games. It contains plenty of ideas to get your friends, family and workplaces engaged in an online quiz night or online video fun.

 

Creating trivia questions can be your most frustrating and drawn-out process. It doesn’t have to be. Visit QuizNightHQ.com’s comprehensive Marketplace for all the resources you need.

Even better – the Quiz Night Builder will guide you through the process one step at time, providing you with EVERYTHING you need to conduct your successful fundraising event.

However, if you prefer to create your own trivia questions from scratch read on for handy tips, tricks and ideas.

Trivia Questions Criteria

  • You must know all possible answers to the questions you use.
  • Even better than that last point – use questions that only have one answer. Or if there’s multiple answers, ask for all the possibilities.
  • Vary the types of questions you ask – video, picture, text, audio.
  • Group into rounds – e.g. Sport, Music etc. See Quiz Night HQ’s guide to Trivia Rounds for more ideas and information.

Where to Find Trivia Questions

  • Quiz Night HQ’s comprehensive Marketplace
  • Newspapers
  • Magazines
  • Information websites such as Wikipedia

Questions sourced through websites/books/newspapers that provide trivia can be helpful, but they can be uninspiring or simply q&a style. It’s worth taking care to ask the trivia questions in a way that clearly articulates the answer that you’re after.

Try to word/form questions in a way so that it can’t be just ‘Googled’. Rather than ‘Who painted The Scream?’ try displaying an image of the painting and ask for the title.

Perhaps ask which song contains these lyrics: “we don’t need no education” – or even play a sample of it. It’s good to aim for questions that allow for discussion around the table – whilst everyone is aware of the topic and could offer their thoughts on it, what is the answer? E.g. “What was the title of the second Disney animated feature film?” – most people have seen a Disney film and would know a number of them but could they identify the second one that was released?

Round Structure Guide

Mixing the styles of trivia questions throughout the rounds is important too. Check out an example Trivia Round in QuizNightHQ’s comprehensive Marketplace.

Here’s a rough suggestion for the types of questions in a round:

15 points in total

  1. Easy/Medium difficulty question
  2. Medium difficulty question
  3. Multiple-choice question
  4. Hard question – but one that raises discussion
  5. Question worth two points – first part easy – second part medium/hard
  6. Visual/Audio question
  7. Easy difficulty question
  8. Medium difficulty question
  9. Question worth three points – visual – one hard – two medium/easy
  10. Question worth two points – first part easy – second part medium/hard
  11. Easy question – finishing on a question most tables know the answer to keeps people happy when they’re about to hand in their sheets to you.

Links to your Organisation

Keep in mind that not everyone at the Quiz Night will be directly affiliated with the organisation/club that you’re raising money for. Be aware to not create games/questions that are only suited to those who are ‘in-the-know.’ This will stigmatise those that have been invited along for a fun night and they’ll find themselves disengaged with parts of the trivia and Quiz Night as a whole.

The occasional question related to the charity or organisation can help raise awareness of the cause but a whole round specific to those involved will prevent guests wanting to return to a following event. If you want to run another Quiz Night in the future you want guests to invite more guests as they had such fun last time.

This or That Trivia Questions

Try to keep ‘this or that’ or ‘true or false’ questions to maybe one per round. People can get frustrated that the answers can just be guessed and then it’s not based on knowledge. It’s good to provide a few throughout the night as it mixes up the styles of questions and ways to think about the answers but just don’t over do it.

If you have your own successful ways of creating questions leave a comment below! Let us know how this guide has helped you. We’d love to hear from you.


How to use the QuizNightHQ Template to create a Trivia Round

pptx. and key. files

This is your guide to using QuizNightHQ’s extremely handy and FREE Trivia Round Template. Give yourself at least an hour per round to complete this process – it is quite time-consuming to ensure you have the correct answers and your questions are engaging.

Once you have downloaded the product follow this step-by-step guide:

Getting Started

  1. Choose the program you will be using Keynote (Mac) or PowerPoint (PC and Mac)
  2. Decide on which aspect ratio suits your projector/TV screens
  3. Make sure you use the correct Template file according to your decisions in Step 1 & 2.
  4. Decide on the topic you are going to build your trivia round about e.g. sport, movies etc.
    You may decide to be specific to suit your event e.g. Music Quiz Night – 60s, 70s, 80s etc.
    Start by saving a copy of the template as “Round Title Answers” – Trivia Rounds in the QuizNightHQ Marketplace. As you fill in the questions and answers regularly save the document to ensure you won’t lose your hard work.
  5. Decide on how many questions you want for your round. Keep in mind a round worth 15 points or so will take 10-12 minutes to run on the night.
    This can also change as you find great questions or struggles to fill-out an entire round.

Finding the Trivia Questions

  1. Start by doing some basic Google searches on your topic.
    Even adding words like “trivia” or “quiz questions” to your search request can help.
    There are plenty of websites out there that offer free quizzes but they may not suit your needs. It’s worth pulling out the questions you like and compiling them in your quiz template.
  2. When you find a suitable question copy and paste the question into the template and change the yellow ‘Answer’ text to the actual answer. Keep in mind that this is the Answers file. See step 10 for creating the Question file.
    All the yellow text is automatically set to be animated when presenting the round.
  3. Any time you use an existing trivia question from a website, check the answer from two other sources to ensure you have the correct answer. Answers can change over time or they may be wrong. This is a time-consuming process which is why we provide high-quality Trivia Rounds in the QuizNightHQ Marketplace.
  4. Ensure that your Trivia Round has a mix of question types – visual, audio, multiple choice, true or false etc. See above ‘Round Structure Guide’ for a perfect example.
  5. Once you have filled-out your round and you’re satisfied with the questions find some copyright free images that can enhance the visuals of the round. Using images stimulate the mind of the crowd. You may even find some humorous images that create an entertainment factor for the round.

Final Steps

  1. Once the Round Answers file is checked and finished, duplicate it.
  2. Save the duplicated file as ‘Round Title Questions’.
  3. Open the ‘Round Title Questions’ file.
  4. Delete all the yellow ‘Answers’ on each of the slides ensuring that any clues (including images, as required) are deleted. Save as you go.
  5. Check the Questions file

You now have two files – Questions & Answers to present at your event. Your round is now complete!

However, you will need to create a question sheet for teams to fill in. Another sheet required is the all-important answer sheet for the QuizMaster to refer to throughout the night. This Trivia Round Question Sheet Template can be found in the QuizNightHQ Marketplace.

How to use the QuizNightHQ Template to create a Question Sheet for your Trivia Round

This is your guide to using QuizNightHQ’s FREE Trivia Round Question Sheet Template. Once you have completed the Trivia Round from QuizNightHQ’s Trivia Round Template you should be able to complete this process relatively quickly. Shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes. This is based on the fact that all your questions have been sourced and your answers triple checked for accuracy.

Once you have downloaded the product follow this step-by-step guide:

Trivia Question Sheet

  1. Open the downloaded Trivia Round Question Sheet Template in Microsoft Word (if you have an alternative program that you prefer it still should work).
  2. Open the Trivia Round ‘Answers’ file in Keynote or PowerPoint. You will be consistently referring back to this throughout this process.
  3. Start by matching the number of questions in the presentation to the number of lines on the answer sheet. Record the number and subset accordingly e.g. 1, 2, 3 A B C D, 4.
    Allocate one line for each point given. E.g. For questions worth 3 points (requiring 3 answers), provide 3 lines.
    Each line is created by using SHIFT + Hyphen on the keyboard – this will give it an underline look without anything on the line.
    Ensure that it fits nicely all on one page.
  4. If there’s a large blank space this is ideal for an image, perhaps a sponsor‘s logo, your organisation’s logo or even just an interesting/funny image.

Trivia Answer Sheet

  1. Once the ‘Question Sheet’ is completed, copy everything on that page to the adjacent ‘Answer Sheet’ in the same document.
  2. Try to match the formatting – size, orientation, layout. This will make the correcting much simpler as everything will line up precisely.
  3. Whilst having the presentation document open, replace each of the question lines (e.g. ‘____’) with the written answer.
    For multiple choice a suggested way of identifying the answer is underlining and changing the colour of the letter. Similar for True or False questions.
  4. If an answer contains a lot of text it may be worth shrinking the text size to ensure it still matches the layout of the ‘Question Sheet’.
  5. You are complete!
  6. Make sure when you print the document that you print enough of the ‘Question Sheet’ for each team plus a couple more spares.
    Keeping in mind, that you will only need one or two copies of the ‘Answer Sheet’ depending on the number of correctors you have.

Please comment below with any questions regarding this process. Or even contact us if you’ve created a round you would like to sell in QuizNightHQ’s Marketplace. Contact us and we can chat about you becoming a vendor.