Interview Tips

Conducting an interview can be tricky. Writing an interesting piece that revolves around an interview (and not having it sound like a script) can be even trickier. Here are a few tips and tricks to help you along:

1. When possible, conduct your interview in person. Interviews that are conducted over the phone or via IM or email are much, much more difficult to turn into a vivid and engaging piece than those that are done in person. Why? Because you lose a very crucial element - the visual description of the person that you're interviewing and their mannerisms. Believe it or not, describing the little nuances of a person's behavior can be more telling than even their own words.
2. Indulge the comforts of your interviewee. This doesn't mean feed them grapes by the fireplace. What it does mean is, find out what makes them comfortable, in an interview setting, and accomodate that. Find out, before the interview, what location would be most comfortable for them, whether or not it would be okay to record the interview, etc. Then, when it's time to get the interview started, you know that you've done everything to make your interviewee as comfortable as possible.
3. Ask open-ended questions. Open-ended questions are questions that cannot be answered with "yes" or "no." For instance, "Did you wear your yellow shoes today?" is a yes or no question, but "What shoes did you wear today?" is open-ended, requiring more than one word to sufficiently answer the question. The reason that you want to ask open-ended questions is, simply, that "yes" or "no" doesn't exactly make a great quote and the quotes are what your entire piece will be built around.
4. Probe. When someone answers a question, follow up with a probing question or statement, such as:

• "What else?"
• "Anything else?"
• "What happened next?"
• "Tell me more."
• "Is there anything you'd like to add to that?"
• "Why?"
• "How did you manage that?"

Above all else, remember to conduct yourself in a professional manner. Be discreet and courteous and advise your interviewee of when the interview is beginning and when things are "off the record."

Once you've finished your interview, the task of turning the information that you have into a workable story begins. Peruse through your quotes and look for a common theme. What impression did the interviewee leave on you? Design your piece around that central theme, using the interviewee's quotes to illustrate it for you. Be as descriptive as possible about your respondent's inflections, nuances, and so forth, making the respondent come to life on every page. You'll want your readers to feel as though they, themselves, are sitting down for a one-to-one conversation with the respondent. Last, but certainly not least, try to anticipate questions that your readers may have and do your best to answer them in the piece. You have no way of knowing every single question that a reader might have, but start with the ones that are most obvious to you and work from there.

Not all interview subjects make good interview subjects, but a good writer can make all the difference in the literary value of an interview piece, despite the quality of the responses.