Quotes from “The Craft of Interviewing” by John Brady, First Vintage Books Edition. Page numbers follow each quote.
“The beginning interviewer, who is perhaps more comfortable with books than conversation, may feel that the social craft of interviewing is well beyond him. It isn’t. It only requires an uncommon blend of common abilities - to overcome nervousness, draw the other person out, and be a good listener.
Still, a grain of stage fright is natural when meeting new people. ‘Try the actor’s trick,’ suggests author Hayes Jacob’s. ‘Before entering the room where you must meet someone, stand tall and take several very deep breaths. Some tension, and nervousness, will vanish. When you go in, smile, and don’t be in a rush to ‘get down to business.’ Engage in some chit-chat - even if it’s about the weather.” 51
“As a rule, it’s best to treat the subject as someone worthy of respect but not idolatry. If praise seems to be due, aim it at the dee, not the doer. … The interviewer’s interest … should be professional, not personal.” 56
“No talking reporter ever held a decent interview.” 59
“Don’t interrupt when the subject is talking; and on most occasions, it is probably best to show neither signs of approval or disapproval, regardless of what the subject says. Neutral expressions such as ‘uh-huh,’ ‘Yes, I see,’ or a simple nod of the head are usually sufficient to prod the subject along. One researcher has even found that an interviewer who says ‘mm-hmm’ got longer responses - up to twice as long as the replies given to interviewers who gave no “mm-hmms.” So: mmm’s the word.” 59
“Above all, the interviewer should strive to make the subject feel he can be himself. That is the aim of rapport: to engender honesty in the subject, not phoniness in the writer.” 64
“It is absolutely essential that the principals in a story feel that they can trust you, that you genuinely care about them, that you will not hurt them.” 64
“Interviewing is the modest, immediate science of gaining trust, then gaining information.” 68
“Don’t strip mine in an interview - dig deep. The temptation to cover everything yields only a blurry interview studded with intriguing, but isolated, tidbits. Devise your angle, and build your interview around it.” 72
“Sherlock Holmes would have been fond of the inverted-funnel interview; it opens with hard, fast, specific questions, then ascends to more general ground.” 73
“In nonfiction, generalities whet the reader’s appetite; he must be sated with anecdotes, details, hearty facts. So the interviewer must follow up an open question with closed questions - ‘Could you give me an example of that?’ ‘What do you mean by …?”
“If everything goes well, the starter questions wind him up like a clock, and I quietly fall back from the status of questioning to that of listener. If he omits some area of subject matter that I want to hear about, or if he explains something inadequately, I resist the temptation to interrupt him. I wait until he winds down, then wind him up again by asking the questions he has left unanswered.” 75
“When a subject rambles or is unclear in his answers, draw him out by putting the onus on yourself: ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand’; ‘That’s not quite clear to me. Could you give me an example?’ If he still fumbles, move on to another topic, and try the original question later, from a different direction. Don’t make the subject feel he is unable to get his point across, no matter how hard he tries.” 77
“One of the most potent follow-up questions is a nonquestion: the Sympathetic Noise. ‘You feel very strongly about that, don’t you?’ … The Sympathetic Noise may seem to do little but stall the subject until the interviewer can think up a real question. Actually, it takes account of the fact that subjects, like human beings at large, are cautious soul-barers; they are reluctant to confess until they have proof positive that their interviewer is sympathetic. (Then they are all too willing.) The Sympathetic Noise - which is often simply reinforcement, or a gengle rephrasing of what the subject has just said - can unlatch a torrent of anecdotes and naked quotes.” 82
“Silence by omission can elicit information perhaps impervious to the most pointed query.” 83
“Five foolproof questions for the over-interviewed:
If you were recuperating in a hospital, who would you want in the bed next to you, excluding relatives?
What was your first job?
When was the last time you cried?
Who was the first person you ever loved?
What has given you the most pleasure in the last year?” 86
“Above all: ask. Pursue the blind alleys; voice your human - as well as professional - curiosities. Ask intriguing, innumerable questions, with enthusiasm and only civil restraint. In the end, interviewing is less a technique than an instinct. An interview is simply a lively and thoughtful conversation. The more life and thought you invest in your questions, the more answers you’ll get.” 88
“Most interviews are conversations, not inquisitions, and rarely call for hard questions.” 89
“An interviewer should only get tough when he thinks he can get somewhere - or get an answer that the subject wasn’t prepared to give.” 92
“Tough Techniques … Blame someone else for the question. Indicate that other people have what might be a frowned-upon opinion, and serve up the question as though it were an opportunity for the subject to answer his critics.” 100
“Don’t be too sympathetic, at the risk of seeming obsequious. If the interviewer merely nods and accepts anything, the subject soon feels, understandably, that he need only gloss over his stand on a topic, oblivious to differing points of view: he has a captive audience.” 104
“If you find yourself in disagreement with your subject, a good rule to observe is to speak only after you have clearly restated your subject’s ideas to the subject’s satisfaction. This leads to give-and-take rather than to argument.” 104
“Don’t hang back. … If a subject has a mind not to answer, he’ll let you know.” 107
“Even the toughest of subjects is likely to be softened by an interviewer who remembers his face in a crowd.” 124
“Interview Fatigue. Boredom, tedium, and ennui on the part of the subject are usually tipped off by stale replies and restless eyes. When this happens, take five - or call it quits until another day. 155
“Whether an interview is a minute or a month, let the subject talk on for as long as he wants. Don’t ever begin an interview by deadlining it. … People are generally more relaxed in the evening; their time not so inflexibly scheduled as during the average day. … I simply make time for a long, leisurely interview in case it turns out that way.” 156
“You will definitely do harm to the interview if you do not have questions prepared for quick delivery, if you aren’t able to adjust to unexpected developments in the conversation, or if you haven’t done the proper background research that allows you to fill in things that your subject is taking for granted.” 180
“While the written interview may be precise, but canned, the phone interview is often spontaneous, but inexact. Use the two formats to complement one another. … Neither the written nor the phone interview can approach the sparkle of an in-person interview; but when the two are skillfully orchestrated, they will yield precise and colorful material.”
“Keep in Touch. Don’t cut off your source - cultivate him. Send him copies of the published article. … Don’t forget your subject once the assignment is in… Cultivate him.” 184
“Beware of the subject who wants to be interviewed.” 192
“Checking quotes with the quotee can be hazardous to your writing. … Submitting a manuscript to a source for approval can be like sticking your hand in Pandora’s box to see if anything bites.” 199
“We speak in fits; we plague our sentences with grade-school interjections, grammatical wreckage, aborted half-thoughts. To commit a man’s inconstant speech to permanent print without allowing him to tidy up his syntax is cruel punishment.” 200
“After a long process of trial and error, it’s become clear to me that the eye is much more critical than the ear and that the conversation that sounded fine while you conducted it (and would probably sound fine if it were broadcast on radio or television) is redundant, digressive, undisciplined, self-indulgent, and boring in print. The ear passes over all these flaws and retains only the interesting parts; the eye, however, perceives everything. So what I try to do is to cut off the fat, like a butcher, and shape the meat.” 203
“When I’m line editing an interview, I always have to clarify and distill, make what the subject says less undisciplined. This doesn’t distort what a person is saying, nor does it make someone any more intelligent or articulate than he is. It just squeezes that water out of a conversation.” 203
“You can’t do orthographic dialogue, the way people actually talk, because it’s just too difficult to read. You are dealing in a different medium.” 209
“Play with the quotes by all means - selecting, rejecting, thinning, transposing their order, saving a good one for the end. Just make sure that the play is fair. Don’t change any words or let the cutting of a sentence distor the proper context of what remains.” 209
“Writing can only be learned by writing, not by reading about writing.” 216
“[The interviewer] must write as carefully as he frames questions - let the truth and color of his material leak away before reaching print. For when he writes with clarity and fire and light - with a piece of himself - he will not merely inform the reader, as any amount of research would. He will move him.” 219
By:
Scott Snelling, P.E.
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