Questioning
The interview
You know something in depth and cannot get it written down: a scoping note, a position, a lesson learned that only you hold.
How it goes
do it yourself- Reverse the roles: ask to be interviewed, one question at a time, with drafting on your behalf forbidden.
- Answer the way you would speak, and paste your replies raw without tidying them. The disorder does not matter at this stage.
- After a dozen questions or so, ask for a summary of what YOU said, and nothing else.
The instruction, word for word
copy it, then correct itI want to write a note about [subject]. I know the subject, I cannot get it into shape. Draft nothing. Interview me. Rules: - one question at a time, and you wait for my answer; - start from the concrete: a case, a date, a person, a figure; - when an answer is vague, do not move on: ask the same thing another way; - never offer me answers to choose from. After a dozen questions or so, tell me you have enough material. I will ask you for the summary then, and it must contain only what I said.
- “one question at a time”
- The rule that produces the effect. Every other rule here only protects it.
- “start from the concrete”
- Without it the interview opens with “what are your objectives?”, and you answer like everybody else.
- “never offer me answers”
- A multiple choice has you approve a phrasing that is not yours. That is precisely what this is meant to avoid.
- The summary, at the end
- Asked separately, and bounded to your material: that is what stops the text completing itself with plausible filler.
What you get out of it
A text containing only your own material, obtained without ever facing the blank page. The “one question at a time” constraint does all the work: a list of ten questions asked in one block gets three hollow lines, whereas a single question in isolation calls for a real answer.
Going further
Before the summary, ask which questions went unanswered. That is the inventory of what you thought you knew, and it is often the most instructive part of the exercise.