One of my favorite things to do for this blog is interview creative types whose work has made a significant impression on me. I think I'm pretty good at it. Those posts tend to get nice comments and linkage. And I have the sense it's usually quite a positive experience for the subjects.
Before I start writing my questions, I always make a point to look around the internets for any previous interviews with that particular creator. I hate to say it, but most interviewers--even some who probably get paid to do it--don't seem to know quite how to go about it. The sad thing about that isn't only that it leaves readers with something boring and uninformative, but that it cheats interviewer and subject out of a conversation that could be much more enjoyable and yield real insight for both. In the interest of raising the quality of such interviews, I thought I'd share a few thoughts about how I approach them.
The first thing I'd suggest is throwing away the boilerplate. I always shake my head when I find multiple interviews asking the same questions and receiving copy-and-paste answers. What's more, some of these questions elicit basic information that is already available online before anyone even asks about it--in a bio-blurb on the creator's website, for example. I guess the thinking goes that these are The Basics and they need to be covered. Well, they really don't. If someone has already asked about them, they certainly don't need to be covered again. Even if you're the first one to interview this creator, I'd strongly urge you to skip these kinds of questions, because someone else will ask them whether you do or not. And even if nobody does, so what? The kinds of questions I have in mind elicit answers that always read like they've been filled out on some government bureaucracy's triplicate form.
To get a sense of what counts as "boilerplate" to be avoided, I'd recommend the step I say I always take above, of looking into previous interviews. No question that anyone has asked already needs to be repeated. Link to those interviews, if you want to share those questions and answers with your readers. As you do this, you'll quickly notice the kinds of questions that get repeated, both those that are specific to a particular creator, and those that seem to have ossified into some kind of all-purpose, standardized interview script. Eventually, your sense of this will become more intuitive, and you'll increasingly stop thinking in terms of those questions as a matter of course. Your starting point for questions will grow increasingly fresh and individual; you'll start to develop your own style.
One of the most unfortunate things about boilerplate questions is that they go nowhere near the heart of why you (or anyone) would want to interview this particular subject. Now we come to a more positive understanding of what makes for a good interview: going to that heart. My starting point for every creator interview is that this person has made an impression on me or affected me in some way or pushed my buttons, and here's an opportunity for me to gain a better understanding of how they've done it. The best questions formed with that in mind may also help the creators better understand how they've done it; such questions can focus their attention on aspects of their art they hadn't yet considered, or throw new, unfamiliar light on aspects they thought they understood well.
These questions basically concern the creative process. "Where do you get your ideas from?" is a bad question, but a pretty good general point of departure in your thinking. It can be made very good indeed if sharpened correctly and delivered with an interesting angle. How do you go about sharpening this into a good question? Well, take a hard, honest look at what affects you, positively and negatively, in this creator's work. Those are the places you'll want to dig into to find the specific ideas worth asking about. And you're not only interested in where the creator got those ideas from, but how she processed and interacted with them.
Here's another way to look at these kinds of questions. In contrast to scientists and mathematicians, who
must show their work, there's actually a fairly strong taboo against creators yakking about the creative process unless someone specifically asks them to do so. There's a very good reason for this taboo--who cares how someone came up with drivel or crap? However much they may be dying to tell their "The Making of . . ." story, creators have to
earn the right to "show their work" by producing something interesting enough that someone cares to ask them about it. A large part of your job, as interviewer, is to release them from that taboo in a controlled, selective way that's ideally rewarding for both of you.
It's hard to give general guidelines for this, because in principle there shouldn't be a formula. You're an individual with personal concerns and an evolving viewpoint, and so is the creator, and ideally your questions and her answers will reflect that particularity in a way that's illuminating and fascinating to a broader audience.
I'll see what I can do here by way of a hypothetical example. Suppose I'm going to interview someone who's obviously and unabashedly been influenced by Frank Miller. Not all the questions should deal with Miller, of course, but I really do need to address it. The boilerplate questions are, "So why do you like Frank Miller so much?" or "How has Frank Miller influenced you?" or anything like that. What else can we do with this? Well, has the Miller influence grown more or less pronounced in the course of this creator's work? If so, then it's worth exploring what prior tendencies the Miller influence displaced, or what new tendencies are coming to the fore, and how those relate in either harmony or discord with the Miller influence. Any tensions are worth a look as possible starting-points for questions. Even if the creator has too small a body of work for such trends to be discerned, unless he's aspiring to be an absolute Miller clone, any personal or individual touch can be considered a departure in some sense, and therefore interpreted as a tension you can maybe hang a question on. Really, any juncture where influences converge or diverge, with each other or with the creator's more personal and individual vision, isn't a bad place to look for something to ask about.
Then, Miller's a controversial figure. If this creator replicates some of what makes Miller controversial, let's not shy away from confronting the controversy. I might quote a blog post where someone really rips into Miller on some point, and then say something like, "We see this in your work in such-and-such scene." Or, if I myself don't like that aspect of Miller, I may just say so in my own words.
This brings us to another important point. Don't shy away from being provocative or even adversarial! In fact, I think every interview could benefit from at least one or two questions that are confrontational in tone. Such conflict isn't comfortable at first, but I've done enough interviews now to understand that a good adversarial question is a win for everyone. The trick is to pose a criticism in a fair, honest manner that guides the creator into a way of responding that doesn't come across as defensive. The best way to do that, in my experience, is to identify the creative decision I don't particularly care for, directly and precisely, and then invite the subject to "show their work." I may ask about alternatives considered and why they were rejected, or I may ask how this creative decision fits into the context of others . . . again, there's no formula, and every interviewer will have to find their own way. Ultimately, though, this needs to come across as a "creative process" question like any other. It's just one more opportunity for you to explore with this creator why her work made a particular impression on you, and ideally you'll both come away the wiser for it.
Look at it as doing creators a favor, by freeing them from the taboo against responding to critics. They can't just charge into Amazon or someone else's comments and start defending themselves without looking like totally defensive douchebags. If you do it right, though, your adversarial questions can give them permission and the best shot they'll ever get to try to put across why they thought this was a good idea. Readers will enjoy the conflict, appreciate the honesty, and might even be won over. Alternately, because this kind of questioning encourages creators to review their decisions from the point of view of the creative process (the initial criticism notwithstanding), they may relax their defenses enough to get it and learn something.
Another upside to adversarial questions is that your more complimentary questions will come across as genuine rather than ass-kissing. And that brings us to my final point--don't shy away from being complimentary! Presumably, there's something you like about this person's work, maybe a
lot. Well, go ahead and say so! It's one of my favorite things about getting to interview all these interesting, creative people. I'm not saying gush all over them, but there's no need to hide the fact that you're asking about something because it's awesome.
And there you have it! To all the would-be interviewers out there, I say don't be shy, and have fun!
The first thing I'll say about this is, it's a very well-designed book, not only to look at but to pick up and hold in your hands (Jeff VanderMeer posts some photos that drive the point home). As the age of Kindle seems to encroach ever closer, it'll be interesting to see whether and to what extent traditional publishers begin to give more attention to the appeal of their books as physical objects. I have no idea whether such considerations played a role in this book's design, but it certainly gets high marks in that regard.
