Q&A: How To Hone Your Skills As An Interviewer
Why is it that late night talk-show hosts can make their conversations with guests sound so effortless? How are news commentators able to cut to the chase on controversial topics? If you found yourself in an elevator with a celebrity you admire, what’s the one question you could ask to leave an indelible impression?
The fact of the matter is that a lot of people don’t know how to conduct a smart interview. I know this because, as an author, I frequently find myself on the receiving end of boilerplate questions which demonstrate not a smidge of effort was put into research. “Do you like writing?” “Have you been published yet?” and “Is Hamlett really your last name?” The answers—yes, yes, and yes—would constitute the shortest interview on record and likely not satisfy anyone’s curiosity. This, of course, defeats the entire objective of plumbing the depths and coming away with something entertaining and/or useful.
I was fortunate to have a journalism professor in college who instilled the importance of not only putting an interviewee at ease but also encouraging him/her to reveal something not generally known. A case in point has been the number of times I’ve attended political dinners with my husband and found myself seated next to an elected official. Two of my husband’s lobbyists issued the highest praise when they revealed, “We always lean in a little closer whenever you casually start chatting because we know we’ll learn things we never knew about our own candidates.” Most memorable was when I asked a member of the Legislature, “So what was your dream when you were 10?” He smiled, his face melted into fond recollection, and he didn’t stop sharing anecdotes all the way to dessert.
Do Your Homework
My professor’s first tip on becoming a savvy interviewer is to already know 90 percent of the answers when you first go in. It’s the remaining 10 percent—the mystery—which will constitute a great interview and cause someone to say, “Wow! No one has ever asked me that before!” Read your subject’s bio. Read his/her interviews that have already been published. Ask yourself what the interviewer could/should have pursued; I.e., “What were you thinking when you smuggled a moose into your college dorm room?”
One of my favorite exercises at the start of each class was when he wrote the names of three famous dead people on the chalkboard and told us we had 10 minutes to come up with one excellent question to ask each one. (I was quite good at this.) Here is your own list for practice:
Agatha Christie
Oscar Wilde
Jesse Owens
Jane Austen
Teddy Roosevelt
Margaret Keane
Booker T. Washington
Queen Liliuokalani
Alexander Dumas
Edith Wilson
Nix The “Yes” And “No”
If an interview question can be answered with a “yes” or a “no,” it is, quite frankly, a lame question. For instance, instead of asking, “Do you like golfing?” a better question would be, “What aspects of golfing are the most challenging for you?”
Let’s try your rephrasing skills on the following:
Is homeschooling a good idea?
Should the voting age be lowered to 16?
Did you have a happy childhood?
Would you like to own a self-driving car?
Should everyone go to college?
Would your life make a good movie?
What Would You Like To Talk About?
One of the most successful models I’ve used in my author website, YOU READ IT HERE FIRST (fromtheauthors.wordpress.com), is to invite prospective interviewees to provide some of their own questions. The strategy behind this is that they are generally more excited to participate if they know they’ll get to talk about subjects dear to their hearts as well as personal experiences which might not otherwise come up. One of our authors, for example, donates proceeds from her historical novels to the rescue of dogs in kill-shelters. Others have had quirky first jobs and intriguing professions we’d never have guessed.
By the way, I am always looking to add new literary associates to the mix. If it’s a format which appeals to you and you’d like to pick the brains of successful authors in a wide range of genres, feel free to drop me an email via my website at www.authorhamlett.com.
Do You Walk To School Or Make Your Lunch?
Beginning interviewers often err in combining two (sometimes unrelated) queries into one. My lawyer husband points out that compound questions can be misleading in depositions and courtrooms because the person being asked can say “yes” to the first part of the question yet have it inferred that the second question was a “yes” as well. Example: “Were you at Gelson’s on July 19th at 10am?” S/he may have indeed been at Gelson’s but the actual date was July 20th at 4:30pm. The respondent was being truthful with the first yes but not the rest. For accuracy, this should have been broken into three separate questions.
For a humorous example of the confusion which compound questions can create, the scene between Captain Jack Sparrow and dimwitted soldiers Murtogg and Mullroy in Pirates of the Caribbean examines whether the Black Pearl is real or just a myth:
“A ship with black sails that's crewed by the damned and captained by a man so evil that Hell itself spat him back out." Was it just a ship with black sails or was it all of these elements combined? No wonder Murtogg was so easily flummoxed by Mullroy’s interrogation.
Keep To The Message
What do your readers and your audience members want to know about the interviewee? Before you even ask your first question, you need to have a road map and know how to keep to it. Interviews—especially live ones—can lose the plot and go off the rails. Half of that is on the interviewee if s/he decides to veer off topic and use this opportunity as a platform to talk about something totally unrelated (i.e., politics). The other half of the responsibility is on you, the interviewer. Unless you’re a commentator for Fox News, CNN, 60 Minutes, etc. and have a reputation for asking brutally invasive and off-putting questions, your goal is to draw out as much as you can in a positive, empowering and respectful manner. If an interviewee feels threatened/cornered, the response will almost always be to retreat, get defensive or clam up. Once you lose them, you are not going to get them back.
Last but not least, it’s incumbent upon you to actually listen to the answers being given rather than chomp at the bit to ask your next question. In my own experience, it’s the active listening which has often yielded opportunities to ask additional questions I might not have previously considered.
Meet the Author, Christina Hamlett
Former actress and theatre director Christina Hamlett is an award-winning author whose credits to date include 43 books, 209 stage plays, and squillions of articles and interviews. She is also a script consultant for stage and screen and a professional ghostwriter.