My aim is that this blog will contain behind-the-scenes insights into how this site is put together: what’s forthcoming; what I’m reading; who I hope to have as guests on future editions of the podcast. And also that it should feature news about what’s going on in the wider university press world, including guest posts from other blogs and sites, and additional insights into the titles covered.
But as preparing this site entailed going back and re-editing some of my interviews from several years ago, it made me think about some of the things I’ve learned along the way about interviewing authors, so I thought I’d kick off with a post about that.
I’m by no means suggesting that I don’t still have plenty to learn and some of the points below may strike you as blindingly obvious, but for what it’s worth, here is the list I came up with:
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1. Don’t say ‘mmm’ to signal agreement when your interviewee is speaking. You’ll never get rid of the sound and it quickly becomes irritating for the listener. I learned this one quickly, but it’s still embarrassing to listen to early interviews and hear myself going ‘mmm’, ‘mmm’ as the guest is speaking. It wasn’t in fact too hard to learn to make eye contact and give feedback silently. (Phone interviews are a different matter and may be worth a post in their own right.)
2. Always put in fresh batteries for every interview. Of course, if your interviews are typically ten minutes long, this piece of advice can be ignored, but I often record with an author for up to an hour, so the only way of being sure you’ll not run out of power towards the end is to crack open a new pack of Duracell Ultra for every interview. I always make a point of inserting them just before the interview so that I don’t have to remember whether I did it before leaving home. The batteries that are removed can go into LED video lights, so they don’t get wasted.
3. Know the controls and settings on your recorder backwards so that you can fine-tune them, even when conducting a conversation to put your interviewee at ease. There’s nothing worse than finding yourself on an unfamiliar screen, struggling to remember to undo some setting you have inadvertently triggered.
4. Put your interviewee at ease before you begin by explaining what you are after in terms of the approximate length and level of detail of their answers. Say how long you intend to record for (I usually underestimate this by about ten minutes. That way, if the interview has been a bit laboured and I want to draw it to a close, the guest won’t feel they have let me down. If it’s going well, they don’t usually mind that you have recorded for longer than you originally estimated.) If they seem especially anxious, it may be worth giving some indication of the topics you would like to cover (though when interviewing an author about their book, that is generally fairly self-evident). Going into too much detail beforehand is best avoided, though, as there’s a danger of the recording feeling less fresh and more pre-arranged.
5. Authors who are regularly interviewed can get into a rut and give you their stock answers to stock questions, which may be perfectly serviceable, but you’re not getting their best stuff. So, without being quirky for the sake of it, it’s much better if you can ask questions that make them think, possibly come at an issue obliquely. This may be simply a matter of how the question is framed. It’s not a recommendation that you try to catch them out by asking off-beat questions.
6. Don’t be afraid to keep questions short. (In the edit, I often find I can abbreviate my questions, a clear sign that I could have asked them more succinctly in the first place.)
7. But do remember that, although you will have read the book recently, the listener probably won’t have. So think about what they will want to know and think how much background information your question has to contain.
8. Two or three questions in, it’s a good idea to give the interviewee some feedback: are the answers coming out just right? Would you like to encourage them to go into more detail? Or tactfully signal that you might have to sacrifice some detail in order to cover all the ground you would like to? Don’t overwhelm them with this feedback. The main purpose is to reassure them that they are doing fine and make sure they relax.
9. One of the hardest skills to master, I found, was listening to the interviewee sufficiently closely to be able to change the next question if their answer took an unexpected or interesting new turn, while at the same time planning your next question if no bifurcation in the path presented itself, while retaining a sense of where you wanted the whole interview to go, how much longer you wanted it to last (therefore how many more questions you could ask), and what would make a strong ending. And all the while monitoring the sound quality, ambient noise, elapsed time. In the early years I found trying to keep tabs on all of these simultaneously enormously demanding.
10. At the end, be sure to thank the interviewee properly and reassure them, if they are worried they may have garbled their answers (many people worry about this, most of them needlessly), that they’ve given you plenty of good material to work with. And then, if your schedule permits it, let the interview rest for at least a few days so that you can come back to it with fresh ears. Something you may have thought was a bit bumpy immediately after can often be smoothed out in the edit. Occasionally an interview you thought went well turns out to have a bit less substance in reality than in your memory of it. In either scenario, a bit of time away from it helps give perspective.
Reading this list back, I see that I didn’t include ‘Be prepared/do your homework’. I think the reason for this is that it is so fundamental to the whole process, that I don’t think it’s worth even turning on your recorder unless you are well-prepared. It’s a waste of everyone’s time. So that’s the golden rule. Do your prep and know what the purpose of the encounter is, whether that is set by a client or by you. It’ll make the whole thing much more satisfactory for you, the interviewee, and the listener.
In future posts, I’ll write about things I’ve learned in editing interviews, and what I’ve learned from listening to other people conducting them.