Executing Great Interviews

Photography: Paste Party - Interview 12 by Oscalito

In the first part of this mini post-series I offered tips on getting great interviews. This week, we’ll look at how to execute them.

Any interview, regardless of the profile of the interviewed person, can be dead boring if the wrong questions are asked, or in the wrong way. Here are some tips to ensure your interviews crackle with life.

Research

There are a few things you should do before you even think about opening up an e-mail to compose the questions. The first is research. Spend time learning interesting facts about your subject. These will provide fodder for interesting questions while also ensuring you don’t make any embarrassing assumptions or mistakes in your questioning.

The interviews you will most likely be doing are the kind journalists call ‘profiles’. There are plenty of profiles you can read in magazines and newspapers for inspiration, and I strongly recommend that you read several to get a firm idea of how they’re done.

Brainstorming

As much as you might have burning questions about your subject, try to approach the questions as if you’re speaking with the collective voice of your readers. What would they ask if they could? What are most of them likely to be interested in? Concentrate on simply writing down topics first, rather than fully formed questions.

With interviews, it really is a matter of trying to ask on behalf of the majority. You might be interested in a musician’s first album, but everyone wants to know about her latest release. Don’t indulge your own curiosity at the expense of your readers.

Forming questions

Stick to the earlier agreed upon number of questions. If you say you’re going to be asking around 5 questions, don’t ask 10.

Look at the topics your readers are most likely to be interested in and try to loosely rank them in order of importance. You want to make sure you cover the most important topics within your allowed number of questions.

When forming questions, keep two factors in mind:

Ask open questions — don’t phrase anything in a way that could be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Questions like “How did you feel when…”, “What do you think about…”, “Could you explain…”, are all examples of good beginnings for open-ended questions. If in doubt, stick with the Whats, Wheres, Hows and Whys.

Think about answers as well as questions — the way you phrase questions will affect the kind of answers you get. For example: “How was your time in Amsterdam?” as opposed to “What did you get up to in Amsterdam?” They’re both broadly the same question, but the first encourages an evaluative answer of the experience as a whole, while the second encourages the interviewee to go into more detail about their own actions. It’s no surprise which answer your readers would rather hear.

Asking the questions

Last week, we discussed in detail what you should include in your first email. Here are some rules to follow for the second:

• Remind the interviewee who you are and that you previously contacted them about an interview.
• You don’t want short answers. Tell them they’re free to write a few paragraphs for each answer. If you want the interview to be as long as possible, tell them they’re free to write as much as they want.
• Thank them again for their time.
• Lay out the questions in the body of the email and try to format them neatly.
• Inform them that you might ask one or two follow-up questions after receiving the answers, either if you’re unclear about something or if a new question springs up as a result of the answer.
• Ask them to send the photo or representational image they’d like to appear with the piece.

The follow-up questions

If this were a phone or face-to-face interview you would be able to ask the interviewee to expand on answers that pique your interest, or ask new questions that spring from a previous answer. Let’s say your interviewee reveals they’re working on a new, unannounced project. If this were a phone interview, you’d immediately ask for more information. But since this is an e-mail interview, they move on to the next question: a completely unrelated one.

Sending one or two follow-up questions (if necessary) allows you to expand upon juicy tidbits of information. Some interviewees will not want to answer these questions, feeling the interview is over. If you’re polite, however, many will.

Some final tips

You may interview someone who chooses not to (or is unable to) use fluent spelling and grammar. In this situation I’d recommend asking whether you have permission to make spelling and grammar edits to the overall piece (including your own questions) or if they’d prefer the interview to stay exactly as it is.

Emphasizing that you want to go over the entire piece (not just their answers) means you do not seem to be singling them out for their mistakes. If they wish the piece to remain as it is you should respect their wishes to avoid ending on a sour note.

Introduce the interviewee to your readers. This is a good opportunity to emphasize why readers should take an interest in what they have to say — particularly if they are not widely known. Highlight what is interesting and intriguing about them.

Don’t forget to include a photo if you can.

Insert follow-up questions in places that seem natural. If you asked a follow up question based on one of their answers, insert the follow-up after that answer. This compliments the logical flow of the piece and also makes the interview seem more like a face-to-face one, giving it some level of interplay.