Page for page, Robert Boynton’s The New New Journalism offers the best practical advice for writers anywhere. Rather than insisting on one true approach, Boynton gives room for a wide range of writers to say what works for them.
Boynton asks his subjects the same questions, so you get a useful sense of different approaches to all aspects of nonfiction narrative.
I have broken down the interviewing tips into 10 categories: (1) Approaching the Subject, (2) Getting the Story Before Getting Quotes, (3) Where to Conduct the Interview, (4) Should You Get Smart of Act Dumb? (5) Scripting Interviews, (6) Establishing Rapport, (7) Using Letters and Phone Calls, (8) Strategies for Getting the Subject to Talk, (9) Should You Record the Interview? (10) Taking Notes.
Now, without further ado, the advice of the masters:
(1) Approaching the Subject
Most authors have to develop a strong persona before they approach subjects. While respecting the people they want to interview (Jon Krakauer writes old-fashioned letters and sends along copies of his books), others focus on their own needs (Lawrence Weschler insists that “I see myself as an equal. I am not in the supplicant mode. I have the chutzpah to imagine that I am a fellow human being. And I have experiences that are potentially as interesting as theirs”).
Calvin Trillin offers the best advice for dealing with big-shot subjects. “I save the most important people for last,” he says. “I like to have talked to a lot of people, and learned more about the central characters, before I talk to them.” Why blow the most important conversation when you don’t know enough? Work around the edges—talking to all the secondary characters—before zooming in on the main target.
That’s also Ron Rosenbaum’s approach: “I often begin on the outside and move in. I start with the heretics. They are usually angrier, more outspoken, less inhibited. They are more willing to talk about the competing agendas, hostilities, and crosscurrents of any given debate. The freedom comes from being marginal. That doesn’t mean they don’t have as much, or more, of the truth as those who are in the mainstream.”
(2) Getting the Story Before Getting Quotes
To get the best quotes, you need to know the story. Gay Talese didn’t even really want to interview Frank Sinatra for his famous Esquire piece. He just wanted to practice the art of hanging around. “I got more from watching him, and the reaction of others to him, that I would have had we talked.”
Eric Schlosser strives to build a relationship before getting down to the official interview. “I want to have as natural a conversation as I can with people,” he says. Surprisingly, Schlosser doesn’t care that much about quotes. “The vast majority of my interviews are off the record and done so I can find out what’s going on,” he says.
(3) Where To Conduct the Interview
Where you interview often matters, but not always.
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc likes to interview people where they are happiest, on the theory that they’ll be less defensive and open up. “Interviewing people in a car is great because it is quiet,” she says. “Kitchen tables are warm, an easy place to talk with someone.” Susan Orlean likes to start in the home, where “I’m essentially running a lint brush over their life. I’m able to pick up a thousand little threads of who they are and how they lead their life.”
Jonathan Harr also scans the personal habitat for clues: “I notice what books are on the shelves, what paintings are on the walls, how they keep their house, what kind of car they
drive.”
Richard Preston wants to see people where they do what makes them interesting. “I want to see the person in the lab, out in the field doing research. That way I get to tag along and be introduced to everyone in that person’s world.”
Tagging along helps Michael Lewis break down the interview-subject barriers. “The first question I ask is whether they have plans to go anywhere, and whether I can come with them,” he says. “I learned this technique in college [when interviewing for a job]. He said he was in the middle of moving his furniture from one office to another and asked if I could help… The way he interviewed people was to make them do something with
him.”
Noise causes problems. “I hate interviewing people in restaurants,” Krakauer says. “The background clatter makes it hard to transcribe tapes, an the public setting can inhibit the
subject.. … I prefer to interview people in their homes, or at a place with a strong connection to the story, or while driving.”
Jonathan Harr disagrees. “I’ve had good experiences interviewing people in restaurants. They sometime reveal amazing things when they are eating and drinking. Especially drinking.”
Think of interview locations as scenes for the story, William Finnegan says. “When I was writing about Moctar, the former slave, we drove to Washington to see some friends of his. On the way down we stopped at Gettysburg, which he actually wanted to see, but which I
also wanted to see him in.”
(4) Should You Get Smart Or Act Dumb?
When it comes to showing your own cards, authors take divergent approaches—what we might call the Bum Phillips and Truman Capote approaches. Phillips was an NFL coach who hid his smarts behind a dumb-ass persona; Capote got his best material for In Cold Blood by telling his story before asking questions.
“I pose the dumbest questions in the world,” says Richard Ben Cramer. “When I go into an interview, I don’t prepare any questions. … I just look at him and say, ‘Look, here’s my situation. And I explain my problem. … And he can’t brush me off with a prepared statement, because he’s never rehearsed an answer to this kind of question.”
Talese usually doesn’t ask questions until he’s developed a working relationship with his subjects and their coteries. “In the beginning, the interview is all but meaningless,” he
says. “All I’m trying to do is see people in their setting.”
Richard Preston takes a modified Capote approach. “I tell them about my struggles as a writer,” he says. “I’ll say, ‘This book is driving me crazy. I’m having all sorts of problems.’ It
turns the interview into a participatory experience. Some of the scientists see
it as another ‘problem’ they can solve.”
Ron Rosenbaum feels the need to show his own knowledge of the subject. “People want to feel that you respect them enough to have done your homework, rather than having been scattershot and casual. The worst thing you can do is come in and pretend that you are more sophisticated, or know more than they do.”
(5) Scripting Interviews
Even when you don’t know a subject very well, you know the realms of people’s lives. That’s where Leon Dash starts. “I divide the initial interviews into four sections—home life, school, church life, and social life.” Looking at their different roles in life opens many subjects’ eyes, Dash says: “This is the first time in their lives that they understand that they themselves are the products of multiple influences by many people and experiences over a long period of time.”
Jonathan Harr goes from general to specific, like he’s zooming in on a scene in a movie. That approach allows him to test the subjects.
“I begin by asking some general questions, the answers to which I already know. … Just to get the motor turning over. Plus, they serve to triangulate the answers against the answers I’ve been getting hearing from other people.
“I always prepare about a dozen questions, which I type up in advance. I never want to be at a loss for where to go next. But that doesn’t mean it’s a script that I stick to. I usually list them in order of importance and I always try to keep it to a single page.”
(6) Establishing Rapport
Sir Laurence Olivier once said that he goal as a performer was to seduce every woman in the theater. Janet Malcolm wrotes that she woos her subject with friendship and understanding, then turns around and uses them for her own purposes. Most writers try to find a middle ground.
“Being someone’s companion, that is my ultimate goal,” says Gay Talese.
“One of my gifts as a journalist is that, for some reason, people see me as innocuous and harmless,” says Krakauer. “So people tell me all kinds of stuff that isn’t in their best interest. A lot of people I write about have been marginalized in some way.”
Disagreeing shows respect, Krakauer says. “I’ll sometimes engage in good-natured debate. I’ll say, ‘Oh, really? Do you really believe that?’ I won’t outright argue with someone. In my experience, people don’t generally need to be provoked.”
(7) Using Letters and Phone Calls
When you can get people to write about their experiences, you can get especially rich material. First of all, the writing process is so creative that subjects discover things that they did not know themselves—or forgot. Jon Krakauer: “Letters are a great way to conduct interviews. After I interviewed him in prison, Dan Lafferty and I had an extensive correspondence.” Plus, you don’t have to transcribe recordings.
Writing is also just practical. Lawrence Wright says: “ I do a lot of my corresponding with sources via email. It’s an easy way to fire off queries to factual questions.”
Some avoid the telephone as lacking intimacy, but Ron Rosenbaum disagrees. He says the phone helps break down barriers. “People are actually more forthcoming over the phone because they are not distracted by looking at you and seeing how you are reacting to what they say.”
William Langewiseche: “Never by letter or email. Sometimes by phone, but that works only if I already know the person.”
(8) Strategies for Getting the Subject to Talk
Just shut up, says Willam Langewiesche.
Too often researchers are so eager to establish their own bona fides that they don’t stop talking long enough for the subject to get in a groove.
“The secret is: Let the guy talk,” Langewiesche says. “You never know where they’re going, and it really gets interesting when you let people run on. Every once in a while they say something that makes me want to stop them, but I resist the impulse, because I might lose the jewels that are about to fall from their lips.”
When you let people talk, you can start to connect the scattered dots in their lives. Their lives often have an order that no one else—the subjects included—do not realize.
“The interview is an organic process. I let the interviewee take over the interview and decide, essentially, what questions will be asked,” says Richard Preston. “This is extremely time consuming. … It’s a little bit like fishing. I’m there with a line in the water, pulling something out once in a while.”
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc sometimes did not even attend her own interviews. She gave her subjects tape recorders and told them to talk whenever they wanted. She caught her subjects in more real situations than standard interviews allow.
(9) Should You Record the Interview?
Writers also disagree, sometimes violently, about recording interviews. “I like to tape as much as possible,” Gay Talese says. Eric Shlosser agrees. “I like to tape as much as possible. If I’m only taking notes, I’ll always get back in touch with someone to make sure the quite I’ve written down matches with what they said.”
Transcribing recordings can consume months for a book. Willam Langewiesche tries to cut down on transciption time by simply noting the times when people address different topics. Lawrence Weschler also looks for ways to avoid transcription: “If I use a tape recorder, I also take notes. I don’t want to have to transcribe interviews. If I take notes while I tape, I can consult my notes to learn where a quote is on the tape. Then I can look it up and get the exact quote.”
Jon Krakauer takes notes while recording conversation. That way he can soak up the whole scene while the interviewee holds forth.
“When I take and take notes, the person I’m interviewing usually thinks I’m using the tape as backup,” he says. “In fact, most of what I’m writing down are observations: what they guy is wearing, the way his eyes dart, the nervous way he pulls his earlobes. … I grew up admiring writers who could render landscape well, so I full my notebooks with observations of the weather, the scent of the wind, what plants are growing in the vicinity.”
(10) Taking Notes
Some reporters still rely on scribbles on pads. “So much of the time I spend with people is just blabbing,” Susan Orlean says. “Do I really want to transcribe hours and hours of tape of that?”
Notetaking is its own art form. William Langewiesche uses the right side of his notebook for notetaking, and the left side for notes about the notes.
Jonathan Harr types up his notes right away, so he can remember words, expressions, mood. Typed notes also help him stay organized. “I always print a copy of the typed notes and put them into a physical file. … The hard copy is important to me. I annotate it, cover it with marginalia.”
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