Chapter 162: The Questions We Ask

It is all well and good to issue a call for journalists to fan out across the land and begin asking people to tell them all about their lives. It is quite another to know how to start.

One of the biggest challenges young journalists encounter is talking to strangers; it is certainly the case at my school, and the bane of many of my colleagues' existence – just talk to them for cryinoutloud.!!! In truth, talking to strangers can be intimidating – what if they say no, or are mean to me, or heaven forbid launch into a tirade about the lame stream media? All three will happen, again and again and again.

Some reporters love talking to strangers, some cower in their presence, and some just avoid it altogether and retreat to the comforting glow of their screens, sending out emails and DMs in the hope that somehow the work can be done without having to encounter an actual living, breathing person.

There are ways to overcome these fears because, in the end, you must. You can begin, say, by asking many people the same question – a mini-survey of sorts on, say, their views on this issue or that. You can try talking to people who appear to have nothing much to do – sitting on a park bench, say, or waiting for a train that’s been delayed. These are two of the many ways to trick your brain into doing something it tells you’d rather avoid. 

So acknowledge your fears. Find a way to take the first step. And recognize that that discomfort will abate but may never disappear. You are allowed to be shy and awkward; many terrific reporters are. You just have to find ways to ask the first question. The second is always easier. 

The fact is most people like to talk about themselves. Push a little and you will discover they love it. After all, what can be more flattering than having someone you barely know so fascinated by what you have to say that they feel compelled to record your every word? 

The best interviews – and here I mean the non-adversarial sort – feel like a conversation. Just two people talking. Except that one person is asking the questions in such a way as to draw out the second. 

Very few reporters are immediately good at this. It takes a while to know how to listen for the opening to a conversational pathway that might lead to something illuminating. So too does it take time and practice to know when you’ve hit a dry well in the back and forth, or, alas, when the interview subject may just be unreflective and dull. Not everyone is interesting. You know that to be so because you have sat next to that person on a long flight or at a wedding where you hardly knew anyone.

But there are many times when, often quite by surprise, you encounter someone who draws you in with their willingness to talk, as well as by their candor. That is when the work begins, and also when many young – and not so young – journalists discover that they are not fully prepared for the moment. Why? Because the work of reporting is too often a process of asking questions designed to elicit quotes. 

Our notebooks are filled with quotes that we then transcribe – if we haven’t recorded them onto an app that transcribes them for us – and maybe print out and read over, choosing the ones that will appear in our stories.

But it is too often the case that the quotes we seek offer opinions, or perhaps something snarky or pithy. The questions we ask are not designed to get people to talk about themselves. The result is that while we may learn a lot about what people believe or how they reacted to an event, they remain strangers to us and to readers, known only by their name, age, occupation and perhaps voting preferences. 

There are, however, other ways to do this. Among the best approaches I’ve ever heard comes from Robert Kolker, the author of, among other terrific work, “Hidden Valley Road.” Bob is among the best nonfiction writers I know and every year I invite him to speak to my students about reporting. Specifically for narrative. 

Bob has given this a lot of thought and has come up with a way to approach his work that I find as helpful to my students as it has been for me, a decidedly non-linear thinker and interviewer.

I wrote to Bob the other day, asking if he would explain how he does this.

He replied: 

“Some of the best nonfiction narratives are about people who have never talked with the media. Some of those people have been traumatized, and any effort to interview them risks only aggravating how hurt they already feel. Many of those people are convinced that they have always been misunderstood, and that no one will ever really see things the way they do. The last thing they might want is to be interviewed by a stranger — particularly a reporter who wants to write something long and ambitious. How on earth can you convince someone so guarded to speak candidly and openly? How do you build trust? 

“For these people, I often start by saying something like, ‘Let’s make a rule. My first question will be ‘Where were you born?’ And we’ll move forward in time from there. I promise to go fast through the years that might be boring, or not relevant to the reason we’re talking. But the rule for both of us will be the same: No jumping backward or forward in time. If I ever hear you say something like ‘What I didn’t know at the time was…’ or ‘Years later I learned that… or ‘I didn’t realize how wrong I was…’ I’ll stop you, because I really want to move through your experiences the way you experienced them.

“Some amazing things happen when you do this. First, the interview subject relaxes a little, because they realize that this interview isn’t going to be like being on a witness stand or in an interrogation. As the interview proceeds, they might develop a huge amount of trust in you; you may be the first reporter who has really tried to see their world the way they’ve seen it. As they go on, they mention things they might never have otherwise remembered, and they draw associations between events in a way that might never have happened in a traditional interview. You’ll learn, for instance, that the events of the story took place just a short time after the subject’s mother was in the hospital, or they lost their job, or they got into a huge argument with someone they loved. 

“I try to ask them what they were thinking and feeling during every major moment. And when I get to the period just before the critical events of the story, I slow down. Sometimes I’ll ask, ‘If I met you for the first time one week before the robbery, can you describe to me the person I’d be meeting? Your home, your family, your job, your health, your worries, your hopes, etc.?’ 

“Doesn’t all this take too long? Surprisingly, no. I’ve had the best results with this approach in interviews that have a time limit — visits to a jail or prison, or meetings in a lawyer’s office where the lawyer says I only have an hour with his client. By the end, it’s almost as if the subject has helped you build the narrative, or at least give you a sense of the major story beats. And the subject will feel understood.”

* * *

If you have a question, a problem in your work, if you are feeling lost, stuck, confused, at sea, searching, grappling, or baffled, email me at Michaelshapiro808@gmail.com and tell me what you’re confronting and what help you need.

It is seldom, if ever, the case that one student’s problem or question is their’s alone.

Please indicate if you want to remain anonymous, have your name or just first name included. I will include the question and then answer it as best I can.

* * *

Nothing good ever came from writers punishing themselves. We know writing is hard. We’re here to show that it doesn’t have to be torture