27 February 2012

Interviews . . . Agggh! (Or, Really Getting to Know Your Characters)

I really don't like doing interviews.  I would guess that I've done less than a dozen to this point in my life and only four or five of those were done by people who would be considered professional. 

Why don't I liked them?  Well, it seems like it is very rare that what people say is accurately represented. I read an interview and unless it is an actual transcript I take very little stock in what is quoted.  (If it is a transcript I may still want to go to the original recording and any more there is still room for doubt there as well.)

This is fresh in my mind because I recently came across an interview a student did with me about a year ago for some coursework.  I remember talking to him, but as I read the contents of the interview I had several thoughts run through my mind, some of them more than once:

"I didn't say that."
"Was he not even listening?"
"Maybe he thought it would be more interesting if he made it up."

It's bad enough to have the paraphrased portions read in a way which fails to represent what someone said, but when so many of them are in quotation marks, I suppose it's just a good thing the guy's professors didn't have a recording of the interview for comparison. 

In this particular interview some of the things took on different meanings by the way they were written down.  It bothered me a tiny bit because, well, who likes being misquoted, but in the end I figured if he didn't even report the university I attended accurately (which he didn't) then how much stock could anyone take in the rest of his words.

Another instance was a very informal interview, more someone compiling quotes for an article about a group I was a part of. I knew that whatever I said may appear as a quote in the person's article, so I gave my words some thought before talking to the writer and even saw her writing something down as I spoke to her. 

A month later the article came out and, yup, you're right:  Misquoted. It was close, just a slightly altered version of what I'd said and in quotation marks.

Ah, the work of some students (or non-students as in the second instance).

Why do people use direct quotes if they're not really quoting someone directly?

It made me think of writing fiction.  It's a popular thing to talk about interviewing our characters, but we don't want our characters to come back and say, "Hey, you misquoted me!" or "That is not what I think, you totally didn't get it." or "Weren't you even listing when I was talking to you?"

Like people in the real world the characters who come to us to tell their stories are entrusting us with their lives.  The way in which the world will view them is in our hands and so, like everyone else, they want us to understand them well enough that we can tell their REAL story and not some partly true, partly false version of that. 

If you do a Google search for 'getting to know your characters' you'll get loads of sites with questionnaires, sample interviews, and various other tips and suggestions.  But keep in mind you have to go a lot farther than the color of their eyes or what the most disgusting thing on their school lunch tray was.  If the book handles a particular theme or issue you have to know what they think about it, how they react in different settings where the theme is present, why they think and react the way they do, and if they are aware of these thoughts and reactions or not.  If they're not, do they become aware in the time frame the story covers - and then what happens? If they are, what are their thoughts on their reactions - does this bring up something they want to change about themselves?

There are so many aspects of a character's life to learn about, but delve deep.  Don't just skim the surface.  No matter what you're learning about your character keep asking questions.  One question should trigger another, deeper question so that when you get one answer you should be able to think up another question, then another and another. 

People are seldom simple, but that's why they're interesting. It can take a lot of work to accurately represent someone's life on the page, even if the story you're telling is fictional. But, no matter you project, in the end the trouble's all worth it.

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