The Art of Noticing for Writers by Rob Walker

Author:Rob Walker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-10-28T16:00:00+00:00

INTERVIEW A FRIEND, LOVED ONE, STRANGER—OR EVEN AN IDEOLOGICAL NEMESIS

FOUNDED IN 2003, StoryCorps facilitates conversations between self-selecting pairs of individuals—two friends, a mother and son, a romantic couple. These are performed as interviews, often recorded at special StoryCorps booth facilities, and archived with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Some end up being broadcast on National Public Radio; you may have heard a few. More than a hundred thousand people have participated.

A StoryCorps interview—indeed, the whole intellectual construct of an interview—inspires better listening because it changes the stakes. As founder Dave Isay has maintained (and as every journalist knows), the interview structure, maybe involving a microphone or a recorder or even just a pad and pen, gives the inquisitor license to push beyond usual trivialities.

Isay learned by way of his work as a radio journalist that this often is more significant for the interviewee. “The simple act of being interviewed could mean so much to people,” he later related. “Particularly those who’d been told that their stories didn’t matter.” When he presented one of his subjects with a document of their conversations in the form of a book, the man’s reaction involved literally shouting: “I exist!” (This incident, in fact, was part of what led Isay to create StoryCorps.)

But can the interview construct help inspire better conversation and more effective listening and deepen connections? That really depends on asking good questions, which can be harder than it sounds. Celeste Headlee, a public radio host in Georgia, has offered a set of rules, drawn from her years of interviewing, for having “a better conversation.”

Ask open-ended questions, not something that can be answered with a simple yes or no. You want the basic who, what, when, where, why, and how facts, but you want to follow up to get beyond the facts. What was that like, how did that feel? If in conversation you are told something you don’t understand, then say so; don’t bullshit.

StoryCorps has published an amazing list of hundreds of potential questions, broken into multiple categories. While they are listed in no particular order, here are the first eleven. Start with these:

• Who has been the most important person in your life? Can you tell me about him or her?

• What was the happiest moment of your life? The saddest?

• Who has been the biggest influence on your life? What lessons did that person teach you?

• Who has been the kindest to you in your life? What are the most important lessons you’ve learned in life?

• What is your earliest memory?

• What is your favorite memory of me?

• Are there any funny stories your family tells about you that come to mind?

• Are there any funny stories or memories or characters from your life that you want to tell me about?

• What are you proudest of?

• When in life have you felt most alone?

“It takes some courage to have these conversations,” Isay says. StoryCorps encourages participants to speak more or less directly to the mortality of

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