If you’ve never done an interview with someone else, the thought can be frightening. I want to take away the fright factor and give you some ideas how to get this information and where to begin.
For your first interview, I recommend you use a family member or good friend. These interviews do not happen on the fly. One of the most important steps is to prepare a list of questions ahead of time. With your questions, you can be confident that you will gather information and add spontaneous and follow-up questions during the session. The skill of interviewing others and asking good questions is something you can develop and improve as you do it over and over. Understand that everyone feels a little awkward the first few times and then like any other skill, it will seem natural and easy.
I’ve been interviewing others for many years—since I started writing sports for my high school newspaper. You can learn the skill of writing quotations from others, asking good questions and gathering the information you will need to write your story.
Sources for Your Magazine Article
Where do you locate experts to interview? Who has the information that you need to write your article? You can use Google to find experts on a particular topic. Also, understand that many companies have a public relations department or a publicist who is eager for you to interview their experts. The PR people will work with you if you are writing an article on speculation but they definitely prefer writers who have a definite assignment. You get an assignment with a magazine when you write a a query letter which gets their attention.
These publicists and PR people will be able to provide you with background information, press releases, books and other research material to help you pull together the information for your interview and eventually for your article.
Has this “expert” written a book? Then your best course of action is to set up an interview through their publisher. Call the publisher and ask to speak to someone in publicity. It’s one of the few times I recommend people call the publisher. Tell the publicist about your assignment and ask for background materials (review copies of the books, other articles, etc.). Then ask the publicist to set up your interview and give the person the times when you are available. Wise authors who want to sell books take advantage of these interview possibilities. You will quote this “expert” and mention their book in the article and get to tap their expertise and quotes for your article. It works as a package and everyone has something to gain from the experience—you, the expert and the publisher.
With increased publishing experience, you can expect to write more on assignment and less on speculation (spec). Even an assigned piece can sometimes not work out for a particular publication. Maybe the editor sees it and thought the query was a good idea—but the execution is wrong for their publication. I’ve not had this experience often but it does happen. In these cases, the magazine will often pay a “kill fee.” It’s a token payment for the writing work you poured into the article. Believe me, it’s better than nothing but pretty disappointing.
Many years ago, I interviewed Dan Quayle on a magazine cover story. It was a challenge to reach the then-Vice President but the article was perfect—a November cover story during an election year. (This publication doesn’t exist any longer—another common occurrence in the magazine world.) Unfortunately, the Vice President was running late and crammed my 30 to 45 minute scheduled interview into about 15 minutes. My assigned format was a Q & A — which means the interview has to have something worthy of his actual words appearing as the main text of the article. I got nothing but clichés and pat answers in the crammed time frame. I wrote my article, turned it in—even turned in my transcribed interview. It resulted in a kill fee for vast amounts of time and energy.
Just remember, on the road to publication there are many possible junctures where it can fail. Some are in your control and others are completely outside of your control. You control what you can and you work with the other details. It never gets published until you hold the finished magazine article or book in your hand.
Terry Whalin, a writer and acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing, lives in Colorado. A former magazine editor, Whalin has written for more than 50 publications including Christianity Today and Writer’s Digest. He has written more than 60 nonfiction books including Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams. His latest book is Billy Graham, A Biography of America’s Greatest Evangelist and the book website is at: http://BillyGrahamBio.com Watch the short book trailer for Billy Graham at: http://bit.ly/BillyGrahamBT His website is located at: www.terrywhalin.com. Follow him on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/terrywhalin
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1 Comment
Thank you for the helpful advice in this article. Another idea for interview practice is to build a storyfile for a local non-profit. These organizations need to keep on hand stories of their clients’ changed lives to use in mailings, promo pieces, blogs, and videos. You can offer to do the initial interviews and write out the long story, then the organization will have it in the file to use when they need it. It’s a great way to help a good cause, too.