Getting Anecdotes

Insist on anecdotes, although the subject may seem more comfortable spinning generalities. If he says, "I owe my 40 years of marriage to absolute understanding and compatibility," ask him, "What do you mean by understanding and compatibility? Can you give me some examples?"

Follow-up questions do more than secure specifics - they brace rapport. They indicate that you are genuinely curious about the subject's life and charred times. With sufficient rapport, the writer can even get away with a hard-bitten closed question. An interviewer asked George Frazier, the late and stylish columnist for the Boston Globe, "Which comes first - friendship or work?"

"That's phrasing it a little harshly," replied Frazier. He paused. "I make no bones about it. I'm a lonely man. The column precludes friendships."

A quote like that resurrects Frazier more acutely than a half-page of recitations in Who's Who in America ever could. "Your purpose in conducting an interview is partly to get facts," says Max Gunther, "but you also want color; you want anecdotes; you want quotes; you want material that will give readers an impression of the interviewee's personality."

Gunther gains color by structuring his interview loosely. He asks a few questions to get the interview rolling then sits back and allows the subject to tell his own story, at his own pace. Meanwhile, Gunther looks around. "If everything goes well, the starter questions wind him up like a clock, and I quietly fall back from the status of questioning to that of listener. If he omits some area of subject matter that I want to hear about, or if he explains something inadequately, I resist the temptation to interrupt him. I wait until he winds down, then wind him up again by asking the questions he has left unanswered."

One key word will incite anecdotes: when. "When did you realize you would need open-heart surgery?" Like a slow pan in a movie, "when" takes the subject to a scene, a setting, and thence to a story. The reporter's four other Ws, of course, are also solicitors. "Where were you when you heard John F. Kennedy had been shot?" "Who told you your house was on fire?" "What are some of the most unusual questions children ask about sex?" "Why did you run away from home on Christmas Eve?"

The writer should never lose sight of The Definitive Anecdote, which he instinctively knows will give his article a rousing beginning or a thoughtful ending. "Quite often, in the course of interviews about a subject, the writer will stumble upon the single telling anecdote that either sums up the character or illumines one facet of it compellingly," wrote Richard Gehman. It may occur to him as soon as the research has begun, or during a follow-up phone call after the research has effectively ended. No matter. "If that anecdote 'feels' right," said Gehman, "He ought to write it at once and put it aside for later use."