Writing an interview

Annex 5.

The Golden Rules of Writing a Great Interview

To start with … INTERVIEWS ARE TO BE PUBLISHED/RELEASED ON TV OR RADIO

1.     Picture

Get a picture with the famous person you interview. It doesn’t have to be only the face, a serious expression but ask the person to make a goofy face or if it’s a more serious publication ask for a picture with the family or a full body photograph.

2.     Questions

Avoid typical interview questions. Instead, ask questions that are intriguing, or revealing for the interviewee, like: “Do you always walk your dog dressed in green?”, “So, I’ve heard you play a lot of bowling. Is it something connected to your childhood…?” 

3.     Answers

Getting good, interesting answers from the person you are interviewing is something that makes the readers/viewers/listeners want to follow it up to the end. Boring questions lead to dull answers. However, if you ask interesting questions and still get mundane answers, keep asking the same question a different number of ways until you get an interesting bit of information. For example:

Interviewer: “Besides bungee-jumping, what other hobbies do you have?”

Interviewee: “Well, mountain climbing and … jogging I guess.”

Not very interesting so far, but let’s try again

Interviewer: “What would you do if you won 1 million dollars at the lottery?”

Interviewee: “Riding in a Porsche 911 Turbo, listening to music while on my way to Formula 1.”

4.     Structure

The order in which you publish: the picture, questions, and answers. Don’t do this in a logical sequence. To have the strongest interview possible, you need to start and end strong. Pick the most provocative questions and answers at the beginning and at the end. Then, let your emotions guide you.