Honing curiosity, courage and connection
If you conduct interviews for your podcast, feature stories, blog posts or books, you’ve undoubtedly run into the problem that Ira Glass made famous: Our ambition often outstrips our ability. Occasionally, you lead an interview that feels like magic, like you’ve gotten to the essence of the human in front of you. But often, your interviews disappoint. They skim the surface or meander from here to there without offering fresh information, insights — or heart.
Uncovering facts alone is not enough. We’re looking for something far more resonant: the truth of what it means to be human. We’re looking for conversations that move us. We want to see into another’s experience and feel what it might mean for us and our audiences.
We’re also interviewing for the critical elements of story: narrative, character, conflict, action, stakes, and meaning. We want our sources to share sensory details, dialogue, metaphor and emotion. We want honesty.
That’s a tall order.
To achieve our desires, we need techniques that help us choose sources and elicit stories, facts and feelings.
But the surprising, little-understood ingredient is that we also need to know and trust ourselves.
In this course, we’ll work on interviewing from our hearts as well as our heads. We’ll grow the courage we need to witness others’ experiences, emotions and insights. We’ll do this through individual and group exercises and by workshopping our own material with each other.
This is a hands-on course for people who want to dig in and learn, not just from the instructor but also in connection with your cohort — other curious and eager creators.
This class requires a brief application and an agreement to show up as your whole self. It’s appropriate for anyone who conducts interviews, no matter your platform or genre.
Between our weekly live sessions, I’ll email optional assignments (listening to model interviews, analyzing, and practicing) that you’ll be able to complete in two hours or less. You’ll also embark on your own interview from curation to completion.
By the end of the course, you’ll have conducted a conversation that employs the tools of narrative: characters, scenes, dialogue, sensory details, emotions and insights. This interview will be able to stand alone as a podcast conversation or serve as fodder for a narrative podcast or written story, book, or speech.
You’ll dramatically increase your confidence in your interviewing and storytelling abilities.
I’ll share knowledge, techniques, and behind-the-scenes processes from master storytellers (Sound Judgment guests and other podcasters and writers). I’ll draw upon experiences from my 30-year writing, editing and NPR producing and reporting career. We’ll learn from journalism, oral history, the writing craft, and interpersonal communication/psychology.
Application requirements: You need not be an experienced writer or podcaster, but you do need to have done at least a few interviews prior to taking this course; dedicate the time to make progress; and be interested in learning collaboratively with a cohort of peers.
Four Tuesdays, 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. EST
Sessions will be recorded for replay
Session 1
Idea generation & curation: Going beyond the obvious sources
Session 2
Interviewing for narrative: Research, writing interview questions, power dynamics, preparing your sources and producing basics
Session 3
Who is your character and what transformation are they experiencing? Observation, “the tour guide,” eliciting specifics and metaphors, the role of intuition, context and the “broken narrative”
Session 4
Moving from idea to practice: Workshopping for constructive, encouraging feedback
Four weekly 90-minute Zoom or Google Meet sessions. Limited to 12 students. $299.
No special software is necessary. Assignments will be given in class and/or emailed.
IMPORTANT: Prior to paying, please complete this 2-minute application. You will receive a response within 24 hours.
(Photo by John Mccann on Unsplash)