Aspects of a Writer Project: The Writing Life Plan

Author Interviews

In a book review, you participate in a literary conversation about an author’s work; in an interview, you hold that conversation with the author. Such discussions can be immensely gratifying and can lead to new insights about the writer’s process that you may not have discovered by yourself. That said, interview opportunities can be a little tricky to access. Because many publications prefer pitches over completed interviews, more weight is placed on a writer’s established credibility, which can be hard to prove when you are just starting out. Hard, but not impossible. Here’s a plan that can work.

Become an Expert 

Read the work(s) of the author you wish to interview and write down every question and observation you have in regard to structure, language, techniques, themes, or anything else you believe could be interesting to discuss. Once you finish these notes, review them and identify any overarching patterns or themes. Consider larger contexts too and how the book and author connect with readers who are not writers.

Find Your Outlet 

Browse outlets that publish author interviews and locate ones that publish work on themes similar to what you’ve touched upon in your reading notes and questions. For example, if most of your questions are related to writing techniques, you might pitch somewhere like AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, as that magazine is interested in the craft of writing. Or, if you are interested in the cultural critique of an author’s work, you might pitch somewhere like Electric Literature which seeks out interviews that connect to a larger cultural conversation. You may also want to weigh whether it is a paying outlet. Find where your interview fits and then locate that outlet’s guidelines for interview submissions, taking note of the name and email address of that section’s editor.

Write Your Pitch

What to put in your pitch will depend on the outlet you select, and you should always tailor your pitch to their submission guidelines. That said, all pitches tend to be based around three fundamental questions:

1) What is the interview about?

Identify the central topic of your interview and provide examples that demonstrate the writer’s unique stance on it. For instance, if you wish to discuss the environmental concerns of a poet’s collection, you might quote a stanza that you found to be particularly effective in conveying this theme. This section should serve as your hook, and you will want to draw the editor in with the language you use. Just because an editor likes the author you are interviewing doesn’t mean they will like your interview of them. Don’t blow your chance to demonstrate your writing chops because you thought you could rest on the author’s name recognition alone.

2) Why does it belong at this outlet?

Why did you choose to pitch this outlet? Were there other interviews they published that addressed similar topics? Does your interview satisfy the goals outlined by their mission statement? Although you don’t need to explicitly state “I chose [this publication] because…”, you do want to show that your selection was done intentionally, which you can demonstrate by incorporating language pulled from the magazine’s website and by describing how your interviews adds to the conversation of their other published works.

3) Why should you be the one to conduct this interview?

If you answered the two questions listed above, you have already completed most of the leg work for question three. Editors want to see you are capable of conducting an engaging interview, and two-thirds of proving yourself capable is done by writing a well-researched and compelling pitch. The last third is where your bio comes in.

At the end of the pitch, you generally want to include one-to-two relevant writing samples and a writer’s bio. While this bio is largely used to show you are an experienced writer, you can also use it to further strengthen your connection to your interview topic. For instance, maybe you are interviewing an author who writes about the geographical region where you were raised—that might be information you choose to include. Just like every piece of writing, the pitch is all about finding that balance of show and tell, and if you can show editors why you are the one to conduct this interview, your initial lack of an illustrious publication record yourself is overridden by an particular angle or expertise that you bring.

Write Your Questions

Read interviews published by your selected outlet carefully for style and tone. How long are the questions? What sort of language do they use? Does the interviewer contribute substantial commentary or is the spotlight solely on the author? Is there narrative set-up, does the piece read like an essay with quotes, or is it formatted as Q&A? Use your answers to these questions to inform your interview questions. Doing so can help ensure your work will align with the outlet’s established aesthetic.

Next, organize your questions in a way that feels like it would lead to a natural conversation. While you can’t predict where an interview will go, having a guide can prevent you from drifting too far off from your initial plan.

Record

Whether it is over Zoom or in-person, plan to record the interview—making sure you have the author’s permission first. Although recording sounds stressful, unless you are pitching an audio interview, don’t worry about it being perfect: most (if not all) publications expect you to clean up the copy. You don’t have to include um. Instead of concerning yourself with a perfect delivery, focus on being an active listener. Show the author you care about what they have to say through body language and by asking follow-up questions. This might mean moving off-script; that’s okay. Sometimes those spur-of-the-moment questions will be the best ones you ask all day.

Transcribe 

The first thing to remember is that transcription takes time. Even if you use a subscription service, these services are not perfect, and you will need to go back and carefully review each word to make sure it aligns with the word that was said. If you aren’t sure/the recording isn’t clear, ask the author. It is much better to ask for clarification than make assumptions that turn out to be wrong. Avoid misquoting; the point of an interview is to share the author’s own words.

Revise

While everyone has their own revision process, I start by removing excess ums, uhs, likes, etc. as well as any non-sequiturs from the transcript. Because my interviews tend to run much longer than my allotted word counts, this means I spend quite a lot of time editing material that I will end up deleting. I am okay with this. While it may be more time-efficient to start with large-scale revisions, I start at the sentence-level because it familiarizes me with the transcripts. By the time I’ve completed all these small changes, not only do I have a more solid understanding of what was said, I also have a better sense of how the author said it.

Understanding the author’s voice is essential to making large-scale revisions. Unlike a story where you can craft a character’s dialogue to convey a specific meaning, with an interview, you cannot simply line-edit as you please: what was said was said. Think of the interview like playing a game of Jenga: you have to figure out what to remove without jeopardizing the integrity of the stack. In general, it’s okay to reorganize and to remove sentences or questions from a transcript, but outlets can vary with how much revision they are willing to see done. If you are unsure about how much wiggle room you have, ask the editor. Again, it is always better to ask than to discover too late you assumed wrong.

Like book reviews, most of the work that goes into an author interview is not visible on the page. It goes into researching outlets, drafting pitches, revising a conversation until you practically have it memorized. The interview is a form that requires patience and persistence—two skills that just so happen to come in handy when it’s time to send your own manuscript out.

Content by Sam Risak

Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0


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