Learning by Writing
The Assignment: Interviewing
To interview someone for information about something, see the Additional Writing Assignments.
Write a paper about someone who interests you and base the paper primarily on a conversation with that person. Select any acquaintance, relative, or person you have heard about whose traits, interests, activities, background, or outlook on life might intrigue your readers. Your purpose is to show this person’s character and personality—to bring your subject to life for your readers.
These students found notable people to interview:
One student wrote about a high school science teacher who had left teaching for a higher-paying job in the educational software industry, only to return three years later to the classroom.
One writer recorded the thoughts and feelings of a discouraged farmer she had known since childhood.
Another learned about adjustment to life in a new country by talking to his neighbor from Somalia.
Facing the Challenge Writing from an Interview
The major challenge writers face when writing from an interview is to find a clear focus. They must first sift through the huge amount of information generated in an interview and then decide what dominant impression of the subject to present in an essay.
To identify possible angles, jot down answers to these questions:
What did you find most interesting about the interview?
What topics did your subject talk about the most?
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What did he or she become most excited or animated about?
What topics generated the most interesting quotations?
Your answers should help you determine a dominant impression—the aspect of your interviewee’s character or personality that you want to emphasize for your readers. Once you have this focus, you can pick the details from the interview that best illustrate the points you want to make. Make sure that all quotations—long or short—are accurate. Use them strategically and sparingly to reveal the character traits that you wish to emphasize. Select colorful quotations that allow readers to “hear” your subject’s distinctive voice. To capture the dynamic of conversation, include your own observations as well as actual quotations.
Generating Ideas
For more on each strategy for generating ideas in this section or for additional strategies, see Ch. 19.
If an image of the perfect subject has flashed into your mind, consider yourself lucky, and set up an appointment with that person at once. If you have drawn a blank, you’ll need to cast about for a likely interview subject.
Brainstorm for Possible Subjects. Try brainstorming for a few minutes to see what pops into your mind. Your subject need not be spectacular or unusual; ordinary lives can make fascinating reading.
DISCOVERY CHECKLIST
Are you acquainted with anyone whose life has been unusually eventful, stressful, or successful?
Are you curious about why someone you know made a certain decision or how that person got to his or her current point in life?
Is there an expert or a leader whom you admire or are puzzled by?
Do you know someone whose job or hobby interests you?
What older person could tell you about life thirty or even fifty years ago?
Who has passionate convictions about society, politics, sex, or childrearing?
Whose background and life history would you like to know more about?
Whose lifestyle, values, or attitudes are utterly different from your own and from those of most people you know?
Tap Local Interview Resources. Investigate campus resources such as departmental or faculty Web pages, student activity officers and sponsors, recent yearbook photographs, stories from the newspaper archives, or facilities such as theater, media, or sports centers. Look on campus, at work, or in your community for people with intriguing backgrounds or experiences. Campuses and libraries often maintain databases of local authorities, researchers, and authors available for press contacts or expert advice. Identify several prospects in case your first choice isn’t available.
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Set Up an Interview. Find out whether your prospect will grant an interview, talk at length—an hour, say—and agree to appear in your paper. If you sense reluctance, find another subject.
Don’t be timid about asking for an interview. After all, your request is flattering, acknowledging that person as someone with valuable things to say. Try to schedule the interview on your subject’s own ground—his or her home or workplace. The details you observe in those surroundings can make your essay more vivid.
Prepare Questions. The interview will go better if you are an informed interviewer with prepared questions. To develop thoughtful questions, find out a bit about your subject’s life history, experience, affiliations, and interests.
Ask about the person’s background, everyday tasks, favorite activities, and hopes to encourage your subject to open up. Asking for a little imagining may elicit a revealing response. (If your house were on fire, what would you try to save? If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?) Focus on whatever aspects best reveal your subject’s personality. Good questions will help you lead the conversation where you want it to go, get it back on track when it strays, and avoid awkward silences. For example, to interview someone with an unusual job or hobby, try questions like these:
How long have you been a park ranger?
How did you get involved in this work?
How have you learned about the physical features and ecological balance in your park?
What happens in a typical day? What do you like most or least?
How has this job changed your life or your concerns?
What are your plans and hopes for the future?
One good question can get some people talking for hours, and four or five may be enough for any interview, but it’s better to prepare too many than too few.
Learning by Doing Analyzing Interview Questions
Learning by Doing
Analyzing Interview Questions
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Listen to several radio interviews on a local station or National Public Radio (which archives many types of interviews, including programs such as Fresh Air). As you listen, jot down the names of the interviewer and interviewee, the topic, and any particularly fruitful or useless questions. Working with others in person or online, discuss your conclusions about the success of the interviews you heard. Collaborate on a set of guidelines for preparing good questions and dodging bad ones.
Be Flexible and Observant. Sometimes a question won’t interest your subject. Or the person may seem reluctant to answer, especially if you’re unwittingly trespassing into private territory, such as someone’s love life. Don’t badger. If you wait silently for a bit, you might be rewarded. If not, just go on to the next question. Should the conversation drift, steer it back: “But to get back to what you were saying about . . .”
For more on using observation, see Ch. 5.
Sometimes the most rewarding question simply grows out of what the subject says or an item you note in the environment. Observing your subject’s clothing, expressions, mannerisms, or equipment may also suggest unexpected facets of personality. For example, Ryan-Hines describes Joan Gilmore’s appearance as she introduces her character.
Peer Response Preparing Questions for an Interview
Peer Response
Preparing Questions for an Interview
Ask a classmate to read the questions you plan to use in your interview. Then interview your classmate, asking the following:
Are the questions appropriate for the person who will be interviewed?
Will the questions help gather the information I am seeking?
Are any of the questions unclear? How could I rephrase them?
Do any of the questions seem redundant? Irrelevant?
What additional questions would you suggest that I ask?
Decide How to Record the Interview. Many interviewers use only paper and pen to take notes unobtrusively. Even though they can’t write down everything the person says, they want to look the subject in the eye and keep the conversation lively. As you take notes, be sure to record or sketch details on the scene—names and dates, numbers, addresses, surroundings, physical appearance. Also jot down memorable words exactly as the speaker says them, and put quotation marks around them. When you transcribe your notes, you will know that they are quoted directly.
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A telephone or an e-mail interview sounds easy but lacks the interplay you can achieve face-to-face. You’ll miss observing possessions that reveal personality or seeing smiles, frowns, or other body language. Meet in person if possible, or set up an online video chat.
Many professionals advise against using a recorder because it may inhibit the subject and make the interviewer lazy about concentrating on the subject’s responses. Too often, the objections go, it tempts the interviewer simply to quote rambling conversation without shaping it into good writing. If you do bring a recorder to your interview, be sure that the person you’re talking with has no objections. Arm yourself with paper and pen in case the recorder malfunctions. Perhaps the best practice is to combine both methods. Write down the main points, and use your recording to check quotations for accuracy or add more words from the interview.
As soon as the interview ends, write down everything you recall but couldn’t record. The questions you prepared for the interview will guide your memory, as will notes you took while talking.
Learning by Doing Interviewing a Classmate
Learning by Doing
Interviewing a Classmate
Interview a classmate to learn more about him or her. Record specific details about that person’s life, identifying commonalities between the two of you. Perhaps you both attended the same school or share a birthday month. Look for differences, too. For example, your interview partner might have talent in a specific sport or knowledge about a subject that is unfamiliar to you. Does your interview partner have any unique skills or any memories that he or she considers especially significant? Use your notes to write a one-paragraph “spotlight” feature on your classmate.
Planning, Drafting, and Developing
For more strategies for planning, drafting, and developing, see Chs. 20, 21, and 22.
After your interview, you may have a good notion of what to include in your first draft, what to emphasize, what to quote directly, what to summarize. But if your notes seem a confused jumble, what should you do?
Evaluate Your Material. Remember your purpose: to reveal your subject’s character and personality through conversation. Start by listing details you’re likely to include. Photographs, sketches, or your doodles also may help you find a focus. As you sift your material, try these questions:
What part of the conversation gave you the most insight into your subject’s character and circumstances?
Which direct quotations reveal the most about your subject? Which are the most amusing, pithy, witty, surprising, or outrageous?
Which objects in the subject’s environment provide you with valuable clues about his or her interests?
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What, if anything, did your subject’s body language reveal? Did it suggest discomfort, pride, self-confidence, shyness, pomposity?
What did tone or gestures tell you about the person’s state of mind?
How can you summarize your subject’s character or personality?
Does one theme run through your material? If so, what is it?
For more on stating a thesis, see Stating and Using a Thesis in Ch. 20.
Focus Your Thesis on a Dominant Impression. Most successful portraits focus on a single dominant impression of the interview subject.
| DOMINANT IMPRESSION | Del talked a lot about freedom of the press. |
| WORKING THESIS | Del Sampat is a true believer in freedom of the press. |
If you are writing your interview essay in the first person, as Ryan-Hines did, you may personalize thesis statement by including yourself as the observer:
| RYAN-HINES’S THESIS | During our conversation, I discovered how much history, wisdom, and advice Joan has to share. |
If you have lots of material and if, as often happens, your conversation rambled, you may want to develop the dominant impression by emphasizing just a few things about your subject—personality traits, views on particular topics, or shaping influences. To find such a focus, try grouping your details in three layers of notes, following the pattern below:
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Learning by Doing Stating a Dominant Impression
Learning by Doing
Stating a Dominant Impression
How would you characterize in one sentence the person you interviewed? What single main impression do you want to convey? Specify your ideas by completing this sentence: My dominant impression of ________ is ________. Share your sentence with a classmate or small group, either in person or online. Respond to each other’s sentences to help each writer achieve a sentence that is both thoughtful and clear.
For more on selecting and presenting quotations, see section D in the Quick Research Guide. For more on visuals, see Brochures and Presentation Visuals in Ch. 17.
Bring Your Subject to Life. A quotation, a physical description, a portrait of your subject at home or at work can bring the person instantly to life in your reader’s mind. If your instructor approves adding an image, place it so that it supplements but does not overshadow your essay.
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When you quote directly, be as accurate as possible, and don’t put into quotation marks anything your subject didn’t say. Sometimes you may quote a whole sentence or more, sometimes just a phrase.
Double-Check Important Information. Maybe you can’t read your hasty handwriting or some crucial information escaped your notes. In such a case, telephone or e-mail the person you interviewed to ask specific questions without taking much time. You might also read back any direct quotations you plan to use so your subject can confirm their accuracy.
Revising and Editing
For more revising and editing strategies, see Ch. 23.
As you read over your first draft, keep in mind that your purpose was to make the person you interviewed come alive for your reader.
For general questions for a peer editor, see Re-viewing and Revising in Ch. 23.
Peer Response Interviewing a Subject
Peer Response
Interviewing a Subject
Have a classmate or friend read your draft and suggest how to make the portrait more vivid, complete, and clear. Ask your peer editor to answer questions such as these about writing from an interview:
Does the opening make you want to know the person portrayed? If so, how has the writer interested you? If not, what gets in your way?
What makes the interviewee interesting to the writer?
What is the writer’s dominant impression of the person interviewed?
Does the writer include any quotations or details that contradict or are unrelated to the dominant impression or insight?
Do the quoted words or reported speech “sound” real to you? Would you drop any conversation the writer used? If so, mark it.
Do you have questions about the subject that aren’t answered?
If this paper were yours, what is the one thing you would be sure to work on before handing it in?
Focus on Your Main Idea or Thesis. Once you have finished a draft, you may still feel swamped by too much information. Will readers find your essay overloaded? Will they understand the dominant impression you want to convey? To be certain that they will, first polish and refine your thesis.
| WORKING THESIS | Del Sampat is a true believer in freedom of the press. |
| REVISED THESIS | Del Sampat, news editor for the Campus Times, sees every story he writes as an opportunity to exercise and defend the freedom of the press. |
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THESIS CHECKLIST
Does thesis get across a dominant impression of your subject?
Does thesis convey this dominant impression as specifically as possible?
Could you make thesis more vivid based on details or insights you gathered from your interview or from planning, drafting, or developing your essay?
Learning by Doing Detailing with Color
Learning by Doing
Detailing with Color
Examining an essay you wrote for this class or another, write your thesis on a separate piece of paper. Below this, write one or two key words that describe each of the claims you make in your essay. Assign each claim or piece of support a distinct color. Then, using highlighters or colored pencils—or the highlighting feature of your word-processing program—go through the essay and highlight each claim and the support for it in the assigned color. Afterward, examine your essay. Are any colors misplaced or underrepresented? Also, check for balance. There should be approximately the same amount of discussion for each color. Reflect on the benefits of color coding support or evidence. How might this strategy help with writing a longer essay?
REVISION CHECKLIST
Are the details focused on a dominant impression you want to emphasize? Are all of them relevant? How do you convey the impression to readers?
How do the parts of the conversation you’ve reported reveal the subject’s unique personality, character, mood, or concerns?
Does your paper need a stronger beginning? Is your ending satisfactory?
Should some quotations be summarized or indirectly quoted? Should some explanation be enlivened by adding specific quotations?
When the direct quotations are read out loud, do they sound as if they’re from the mouth of the person you’re portraying?
Where might you need to add revealing details about the person’s surroundings, personal appearance, or mannerisms?
Have you included your own pertinent observations and insights?
Does any of your material strike you now as irrelevant or dull?
For more on editing and proofreading strategies, see Editing and Proofreading in Ch. 23.
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After you have revised your essay, edit and proofread it. Carefully check the grammar, word choice, punctuation, and mechanics—and then correct any problems you find.
For more help, find the relevant checklist sections in the Quick Editing Guide and Quick Format Guide.
EDITING CHECKLIST
A6Is it clear what each he, she, they, or other pronoun refers to? Does each pronoun agree with (match) its antecedent?
A5Have you used the correct case (he or him) for all your pronouns?
A1, A2Is your sentence structure correct? Have you avoided writing fragments, comma splices, or fused sentences?
C3Have you used quotation marks, ellipses (to show the omission of words), and other punctuation correctly in all quotations?