Managing Interviews by Alan Hester

Using other people’s words: Alan Hester, author of the biography Tiny Keeper, on managing interviews and quotes in your non-fiction book.

You’ve done your interviews, typed them up and organised them. Now, all you have to do is put them into your manuscript in the best way possible. There are lots of choices and lots of decisions to make. Do you use them verbatim, quoting exactly the words they said in exactly the way they said them? Do you write them up as one long interview or in smaller segments? How much background information do you give the reader about the people you are quoting? How do you decide what to include and what to leave out?

There are lots of choices to make. This article offers some advice on making these decisions, based on my experience of writing the biography of a little-known footballer from a lower league team who played in the 1970s. I would like to share with you what I learnt – the challenges, the joys and how I made the best use possible of a treasure trove of memories and insights from interviews and exchanges with dozens of contributors.

When writing non-fiction, although we want to be as accurate as possible, we are nonetheless telling a story. Stories are powerful, and without a narrative no-one will want to read our words. To do this, we will need to hear from those involved, using their words to give the reader the sense that they are hearing events directly ‘from the horse’s mouth.’ Using the words of participants in the story, those who knew the person or events, lends it authenticity, emotion and, if we are lucky, new and original content. These words are the gold gleaned from the interviews you’ve been privileged to have.

The single most important priority we have as writers, is to make decisions that best serve the story we are telling. So, every choice we make is about one question: how does this interview help to tell the story?

Tiny Keeper – Steve Death: Record Breaker, Shy Genius and Maverick

In writing my book, a biography of the late Steve Death, (Tiny Keeper – Steve Death: Record Breaker, Shy Genius and Maverick) I was dealing with a subject who was very famous in his local area (Reading, England) and largely unheard of elsewhere. Events covered happened over fifty years ago, and many of the people interviewed are in their seventies and eighties. Most were ex-players, who had played with Death, others were journalists, and the rest were supporters from the era, like me. Here is my process – it may not be yours, but I hope it helps.

Structure

Every author needs a plan; and every plan should be changed when a better one comes along. I started with a plan to have a chapter devoted to the memories of the old players (called Playing with Death – nothing like a good pun!). After my very first interview, however, I realised that there was so much gold in this one interview that it would be a waste to throw it all away in one chapter. I therefore explained to subsequent interviewees that I would use their contribution in three ways. 1) as a stand-alone piece spoken by them (so Playing with Death became individual pieces interspersed between chapters). 2) using their anecdotes and memories as part of the narrative to give depth to the storytelling, and 3) as direct quotes throughout.

Editing

Everything in the book is written by you. It’s your book, so if words are repeated or used wrongly, or an interview is boring, it’s still part of your book. One player used the word ‘outstanding’ three times in two sentences – understandable in speech but no good written down! So I changed two of the words and it sounded much better and read more interestingly. This is not only legitimate but essential. People also get facts wrong, and this again is your responsibility. One player got the date of his transfer and his fee wrong – again understandable after 50-plus years but it had to be changed.

What to leave out?

There is no hard and fast rule here, but generally I suggest if it doesn’t add to the story leave it out. Unless, of course, it’s so good or unique that it adds value for your target reader: examples I left in include an original story about Brian Clough and a genuinely funny anecdote from a player who scored an own goal.

Otherwise, if the interview doesn’t improve the story, leave it out. One player I interviewed talked mainly about himself, so he didn’t get his own personal section. But he did get some quotes in the narrative and thanks in the acknowledgements.

Context

The reader needs to know where contributors fit into the story. For the players, I gave a quick summary of their career before their segment. For other contributors, a descriptive sentence (e.g. ‘Harry Redknapp, a senior professional at West Ham, remembers when…’)

Maximising Interviews

Getting maximum value from the interview I found that sprinkling content from one key interviewee throughout the book helps to bind the narrative together and enables you to bring different people’s unique perspective to a specific aspect of the story. For example, the subject’s daughter gave me an hour of her time early in the process: that hour gave me insights I spread across several chapters. As his daughter, hers was also the perfect voice to use to end the whole book.

I will finish with some reflections on the word ‘voice’. The main voice in the book is, of course, yours. Your voice creates the relationship with the reader and the tone of the book. The interviewees need to be interwoven with yours in a way that feels part of the same environment, while retaining the character of the contributor. One of mine talked at a hundred miles an hour with swearwords as punctuation marks – I kept his ‘voice’ and two of his profanities, so it added to the landscape of the book and sounded like him. I enjoyed making those editorial decisions as much as I enjoyed my own writing; both are important and both were a privilege.

About Tiny Keeper – Steve Death: Record Breaker, Shy Genius and Maverick