Research on the Street

Solid writing requires research. Don’t groan. Research doesn’t have to sterile and boring. It can be interesting, adventurous and even a little dangerous.

I admit that surfing the Internet or digging stuff out of old books and documents in the library may bore you. However, what I like to call street-level research is exciting.

Interview the leader of a street gang, and see if you are bored. Interview someone who has just lost their job or been disgraced, and I'll bet you won't be bored.

Change the rules of the game and you create a natural experiment. Experiments provide some of the most powerful research results a writer could hope for. If the government taxes factory emissions, what will happen? Will you get fewer emissions? Or fewer factories?

If you lower the drinking age, what happens to the traffic accident rate? If you take drivers older than 80-years-old off the road, what happens to the accident rate? If the unemployment rate goes up, what happens to number of people volunteering for military service. Does a recession cause more people to sign up for Social Security at age 62?

The 2010 Yellow Pages just arrived, and I discovered that it is 88 pages shorter than last year’s directory. What happened? A little investigation suggested that a severe recession was the culprit.

I checked a few directory categories to see how they had changed. Fewer building contractors and real estate agents bought display ads for 2010, and many of the ads bought were smaller. The directory listed fewer specialty retailers and restaurants than in 2009. The ads for bankruptcy attorneys, on the other hand, were more numerous and larger.

Opportunities abound to improve your writing through research. Just don’t rely on the formal research methods alone. Get your hands dirty with street-level investigation as well.

You Guessed It: Terry Gross

My favorite interviewer is Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air, produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia. Although she is a radio journalist, her approach to interviewing would work extremely well for a writer.

Gross prepares for her interviews thoroughly. If a guest has written a book, she reads it. For actors, she sees their latest films and usually some earlier ones as well. She is known for asking off-beat questions that elicits enlightening responses. Her guests list is diverse, encompassing the worlds of the arts, entertainment and politics. Typically hard on politicians, Gross gives leeway to artists and musicians.

For all of her success as an interviewer, she has presided over several notorious interviews in which the guests balked or walked out. Her conflicts with rocker Gene Simmons and Fox News talk show host Bill O'Reilly are legendary.

If you are not familiar with her work, I suggest that you catch an episode of Fresh Air on NPR. I promise that you learn something unexpected.

DB Dewer

The Skilled Interviewer

As a writer you need to develop your interviewing skills. If you are a journalist, the need to conduct interviews is obvious. However, the fiction writer also finds interviews useful. If one of your characters is a collection agent, you will find it useful to interview some real, live debt collectors. Similarly, if one of your characters is a young soldier about to ship out to Afghanistan, perhaps you should talk to some soldiers going to and coming home from that war. Put people in your articles and stories, and your work will move, breathe and live.

When I think about conducting an interview, three interviewers come to mind: Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters and Larry King. Mike Wallace is famous for his ambush interview style. He asks the toughest questions designed to show that the interviewee is a crook of one sort or another. Wallace usually makes his point, and he always makes exciting television.

Barbara Walters takes a softer approach, starting with easy questions that build rapport and let us learn something about the interviewee. Late in her interviews, Walters asks tough questions with significant emotional impact. Frequently, her interviewees cry as they disclose things they did not intend to reveal.

Larry King displays the most low-keyed style of the three. King neither asks tough questions nor spends much time preparing for his interviews. Nonetheless, he manages to get people to reveal a great deal about themselves.

All three interviewers deliver the goods, despite their different interviewing approaches. As a writer, you should develop a style that fits both your personality and your writing objectives.

Tomorrow, I’ll write about my favorite interviewer. Guess who?

DB Dewer