A question about interviewing for narrative

I resist, I resist!

I do appreciate your challenging of me. But...you ask those questions. You do. And if you don't - if you don't actually know what hand he picked up the shovel with - you don't "take liberties" and say it was the left hand, you just write that he picked it up.

If I am writing, in a newspaper, about a person in my community, I am not making "a ton of assumptions" about their thoughts, their actions, their behaviours. Readers of a newspaper expect truth, interview subjects expect truth, and I, as a journalist, demand truth. If ONE of my "liberties" - about, say, my subject's thoughts at a given moment - is incorrect, I have failed...and, depending on what the nature of the "liberty" was, I might have damaged the subject's life or reputation.

I agree that it is impossible to EXACTLY recreate past events. But to not even try to get close to exact? I'm sorry: truthiness, as Colbert would call it, is insufficient. Narrative does demand a different type of thinking than inverted pyramid, but not on the pursuit of truth. So...call me shackled, or whatever, but accuracy is not something on which I'd relent, regardless of the story form.

(I'd be curious to hear the thoughts of jgmacg or Jones or some other narrative-r.)

 

You don't make up facts. Period. Even something as banal as what hand someone picked a shovel up with.

 

after reading jfs100's posts, all i can say is ...

yikes.

i have a complete library of narrative/literary nonfiction/new journalism books, and i have attended numerous conferences and lectures on the subject, never, not once, have i read or heard ...

"Narrative journalism is the interpretation of a story and the way in which the journalist portrays it, be it fictional or non-fictional" (christ almighty!!)

or

"Narrative is painting a picture with words as you see the truth represented. It is a truth based story, not necessarily stone cold facts." ... (truth-based? that should hold up well in court)

or

"The truth isn't black and white." (what?)

or, my favorite ...

"If it is a hot day, use your own experience to explain how a hot day feels." ... (oh ... my ... god.)

finally, i think gary smith would object to your interpretation of his "creative writing."

 

I have done what you talked about, but I don't know if I ever expressed it to the subject like that. I've become more dependent on my voice recorder (allows me to interact, rather than jot notes) and I'll turn it off and change my tone to a more informal one. Depending on the subject, I might throw out a one-liner that elicits an honest response, something like that.

But I don't know if I've ever quite expressed it the way you did. It's a simple, ingenious thing because it puts the subject into a position of comfort.

 

Another small trick:

After a subject is seemingly finished answering your question, leave an awkward pause before moving along to your next question.

People usually get just uncomfortable enough that they'll keep talking to fill the gap and expand on their original answer.

 

I agree the most with the second poster, Boognish, who said it's all about the amount of time you spend with the subject. If you spend enough time with them, you can tell their story well. If you don't, it's going to be hard. The precise questions you ask are much less important.

 

The "I'm not looking for quotes" and the awkward-pause thing are great pieces of advice. Thanks thanks. (And though I think we're talking about the same thing, I guess it doesn't have to be awkward - we can just not rush questions as much as many of us sometimes do.)

 

The year Curtis Strange was Ryder Cup captain, the PGA of America sent him to NY for training on dealing with the media.
He remembered one lesson: answer the question, shut up. When there's silence from the questioner, don't fill the air.
I said, "Curtis, don't spread that around. I've made my living just waiting for you guys to go on."
*****
Conversations bring out narrative details; everybody (who hasn't been interviewed to death, such as Ryder Cup captains) loves to tell stories to people who show they're interested in those stories. It's our job to guide them in the telling, to help them shape their story. On the other hand, scripted interrogations get stilted quotes.
*****
I end every interview, whatever its purpose, whatever the deadline, by saying to the subject, "When I start writing, I'll think of something I didn't ask you, so where I can find you later?"

 

Like last point, Dave - I way-too-often wish I had contact information for people I'd interviewed in person.

 

Historians are less worshipful of McCullough than we laymen are:

http://hnn.us/articles/157.html

I'm skeptical about recreating scenes. But I have a little more faith in a book that took years to research or a magazine article like Jones' that took nearly a year than I do for most newspaper narratives. Maybe it's cynicism on my part from seeing how the sausage gets made, but unless I know the newspaper is one of the rare ones that will give people the time and resources to do it right or it's very apparent from the amount of sourcing that the writer did his homework, I'm just not buying it. I'm not sure readers swallow it, either. If they care enough to buy and read a daily newspaper, they're probably savvy enough to know when it was impossible for the writer to have witnessed a scene and they deserve either attribution or explanation. Without either, the credibility factor is not going to be very high with at least a portion of the readership.

This is not the first era when narrative writing has become fashionable in newspapers. But in a time of reduced resources and, in my opinion, relaxed editing standards related and unrelated to less manpower, I am increasingly wary of it and believe ultimately it will accomplish more harm than good for newspapers. The liberties you suggest simply aren't journalism by any stretch of standards. Hollywood scriptwriting, yes. Journalism, no.

 

Don't go apeshit with getting the quote, get the info and eloborate on it.

If you listen to what the guy just said, follow up with...

How did you feel then... What was that like...Weather...Mindset...Family situation at the time...What's on your mind.

When doing narrative, I might interview three people for their take on one thing and make up my mind about what the setting was like.

And might never use a quote.

Here's a tip: Put yourself in the subject's shoes, I mean really visualize what he/she's going through in that moment.

Then, look left. What do you see?

Is it hot, cold, what do you feel?

You might not use it, but it helps paint the mental picture before I start to write a longer piece.

 

I'll respond to this more later, because it's late and I'm kinda drunk -- and because it's a good question -- but I can tell you this: Every sentence in my soldier story (and in every story written up in a magazine like Esquire) is rigorously fact-checked and there is nothing in there that is "open for interpretation." If I don't have it cold, it's not going in.

I'll talk more about the gravedigger scene when I wake up. It's not all about questions (I watched him dig a grave, and said, "Is this how it always happens?" which is where a lot of the detail came from, like how the shovel had a square blade) but it is all about fact.