Tips on Saving the Interview from the Mundane
This is one of the sidebars in Ronnie Polaneczky’s excellent piece on “Empathetic Interviewing.” The article appears in the spring 2023 print issue of the Society of Professional Journalists’ [SPJ] Quill magazine.
Whether you’re working in daily meet-the-deadline journalism, its long form, or narrative non-fiction, particularly biographies, these are great questions to raise the appeal of all stories.
“What were your goals [or trying to do], what were the obstacles you met to achieving those goals [or attempting], how did you adjust, and what happened then” works for the “quick” piece.
But even throwing in some of these questions in should make it better.