Do: Remember...this is still a narrative.That means you're going to need all of the elements that you look for in a good narrative story. You're going to need a sequence of events. But not just, "this happened, and then this happened." You want to focus on anecdotes, just like you would in a scripted narrative.
You also need to make sure you have a strong central character -- or characters. You need tension, stakes and surprise. You need to be thinking about foreshadowing, signposting and turning points.
You're going to want to think about structure. Many, many narrative interviews follow an e-structure, starting with a news item at the top and then going back in time to explain how we got here. But that's not the only way to do a narrative interview.
Maybe you want to start at the beginning? (Oh, how groundbreaking!) Maybe you want to think of your interview like a broken narrative, pausing the chronology at tense moments to explain difficult concepts? All of the structures you would consider for a scripted narrative are available to you.
Even a great editor can't salvage a bad narrative interview. So you're going to want to go in with a concrete plan. You're going to want to know the story inside and out, so that you know what's missing in every answer and can ask the right follow-ups.
This is not the time to wing it.
Don't: Copy Michael Barbaro's style
Look, I get it. According to the
most recent figures I can find, The Daily gets 4 million downloads. Daily. That's insane.
Insane.
But, I'm just gonna be honest with y'all, because I feel like I can do that here.
If I hear another f---ing podcast where a pleasant male host talks over spacey, electronic music, pausing longer than necessary every few seconds, while introducing something that is inevitably named The (One Syllable Word) -- I might just lose my mind.
Lose.
My.
Mind.
Everyone who's copying Michael Barbaro's style is copying the wrong f---ing thing. (Please pardon my pseudo-swearing, but I feel very strongly about this.) I don't object to Michael Barbaro's style. But it's HIS style. Not yours. So stop pretending to be someone you're not.
Do: Add sound...lots and lots of sound
I'm not going to get into the whole debate over "fair use" and podcasts. I'll paste in some resources below.
But let's just sum it up by saying that before you steal audio from the internet and cram it into your podcast, you should check with your employer and/or your lawyer.
Some people think it's okay. Others feel strongly that you need to secure rights.
The truth is, no one really knows for sure. It's the wild, wild west...and you don't want to be the one that gets taken down if/when a new sheriff comes to town.
That said, there are a lot of ways to add audio that isn't stolen from the internet. Here are some examples:
I told a story set in 1908, and asked my friends
act out passages from newspaper reports, doing their best turn-of-the-century newsman voices.
I told a story about a wacky March Madness style tournament for
endangered animal species, and had my friends mimic their favorite, cheesy sports announcers while reading tweets that had been sent out during the tournament.
I've also asked people to share cell phone videos and voice mail messages. I've even recorded the sound of a coworker
eating Pop Rocks after a guest compared the sound of eating Pop Rocks to the sound of the ocean floor while diving inside an iceberg.
Remember Pop Rocks? So weird, yet strangely delicious.Anyway, get creative. It'll sound better than yet another waterfall of archive news clips, anyway.
Don't: Add sound if you don't need it.
Look, not every narrative interview needs to be crammed full of bells and whistles. Some conversations are
compelling enough to stand on their own.
To be honest, sometimes narrative interviews are crammed full of clips as a way to introduce important details l that didn't get explained well during the interview.
If that happens, and you don't have access to clips that can bridge the gap for you, feel free to just drop in a simple line of narration. The listener isn't going to sit up and say, "What's that doing here?"
Do: Take Charge Look, if your guest skips ahead like mine did, don't let it fluster you. Let them finish their thought and then say, "We're going to get back to that, but first I want to ask you…"
Pause -- to give yourself an edit point -- and then ask the next question in your chronology.
You're probably going to do some rearranging when you edit, to get everything back in chronological order. (Or your e-structure, broken narrative, or whatever structure you've decided to use for your interview.) That's okay. But you might still need the question you had planned to ask, as a transition. So when you get back to the question your guest has already answered, go ahead and say, "I know you've already talked about this, but I want to go over it again…"
Pause -- to give yourself an edit point -- and then ask your question.
Don't: Write long questions
Long questions suck for two reasons.
1. You want to sound like you're having a real conversation, and you're going to have a hard time sounding natural and smooth if your question is too long.
(And no, you can't just go back and re-record all of your questions. Re-recorded questions sound like they've been re-recorded. Re-record sparingly, and only as a last resort.)
2. You're the guide and you're the glue, but you are not the focus. The focus should be on the story and on the guest, so shut up and let them talk!
I'm sure there are about 1000 other Do's and Don'ts for Narrative Interviews, and I'm going to think of all of them as soon as I hit "send" on this newsletter. But this should be enough to get you started.
Just remember. Don't be like Michael Barbaro...unless you actually ARE Michael Barbaro
Karen
