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Interview Techniques for the Time-Constrained

Hello and a very happy springtime to you! Maureen Pratt here with my monthly CAN blog on the Writing Craft. This time, I thought I'd go "behind the scenes" and offer some tips on conducting interviews when either you or your subject (or both) don't have oodles of time to sit and gab.

Although this might seem like a narrowly focused topic, it's not. On more than one occasion, I've had to interview subjects of articles, books, or blogs and been very, very pressed for time.

How do you get everything you need out of an interview that's short and, perhaps, conducted in a difficult environment (say, a crowded hallway or a parking lot)?  Here are some tips:

o    Prepare very well beforehand. Sometimes, the shorter the interview, the longer the preparation. If you are interviewing a person about him- or herself, find out all you can about his or her background prior to the interview. For technical subjects, don't just brush up on the area, bore down deeply so that your subject doesn't have to explain basics to get to the heart of the matter.

o  Be well-equipped. Make sure that you have a pen with ink (I kid you not), appropriate and adequate paper, a hand-held microphone that you know how to use and that has fresh batteries. Turn off your cell phone and put it away during the interview.

o Know exactly how much time you will have. Wear a watch. Respect the time (often, subjects will give more time than originally allotted, especially if they appreciate the way in which you conduct the interview, but don't count on it).

o  Know exactly what you want to ask. Phrase the questions so that they can lead to more than monosyllabic answers - but always keep in mind the time-frame in which you are working.

o Keep small talk, greetings, and other social conversation very short. Be polite, but not effusive. Get right to the interview.

o  If your subject has only a few minutes, refocus your questions to cover narrower ground and ask if you can followup when he or she has more time.

o  Leave the interview with a way to follow up with either the person you interviewed or his or her representative. Although the interview may be short, this may not negate the need for getting more information or answers in order to do a thorough job in the piece you will write.

I've had very profound interviews that have lasted only five or ten minutes. I hope that these tips will help you when you are time-constrained, but curious, too!

Blessings of joy and peace,

Maureen

www.maureenpratt.com

http://blog.beliefnet.com/gooddaysbaddays/

Drastic Measures for Drastic Situations

Hello! Maureen Pratt here for my monthly CAN blog contribution. I've just returned from the dentist, so am even-more-than-usually delighted to be here (she writes, grinning with those newly repaired pearly whites)! 

To be completely honest, although not exactly fun, my unexpected detour to drill-land has inspired my topic this month: Drastic measures for drastic situations. That is, what do you do when every trick, technique, and type font has been exhausted and you're still not happy with what you see pouring forth on the page? Do you abandon the project (not easy, if you're on contract and deadline)? Do you put the project aside and work on something else, praying that the subconscious will percolate behind the scenes? Or, do you do something else?

How does this relate to a trip to the dentist? Well, today, I went in to see what could be done about small chips in my front teeth, the result of years of major medications to treat all of my many chronic illnesses, as well as Sjogren's Syndrome, which causes extreme dry mouth, among other things. Instead of getting right to work, my wonderful dentist enumerated the possible fixes. One was benign ("let it be"), one was a moderate repair that could last for quite awhile. The third option was the most extreme.

"It's really very extreme," she said. "And I don't think this situation is that extreme."

Praise God! And, bring on option # 2!

As she worked away on my tooth, I began to work away on my (this) blog. I've written before about things that might be helpful when characters run amok. But this time, I thought about the times when I've seemingly "hit the wall" on my work-in-progress. Setting, characters, underlying tone - sometimes these have gone awry to the point where the road ahead seems blocked with a huge "do not pass" sign. (Not to be confused with 'writer's block,' this is a time when words are pouring forth, but just not for the same story as the one you're supposed to be writing.)

At such times, I've turned to prayer, specific prayer for the specific writing situation: "Lord, is this project right for me, at least for now?" or "Lord, please show me the way, or at least please update my GPS!"

Next, I've gone back to my original premise, characters, outline, or inspiration and held these up to where I am with the project. It can be painstaking, but very useful to force yourself to look at everything you've written from those early kernels through the prism of the start. Is everything tying back to the beginning? If not, what needs to change, go, or remain?

Another thing to do is exercise. No, not writing exercises. I mean walking, running, playing tennis, golfing, aerobics - something physical that forces the brain to use different "muscles." Instead of hand on keyboard or pen, put hand on basketball, or, if you're not athletically inclined, vacuum cleaner or mixing bowl, which can be athletic endeavors, too. Exercise always helps clear my head, give me a fresh outlook and my subconscious time to regroup.

Talk to people you've already interviewed (if this is a non-fiction work) or to people who know nothing about your subject. Try to explain what you're trying to do. See what questions they have and gauge what you have or have not put into your work thus far (this is always helpful). If you're writing fiction, talk to your characters. Okay, this is a tick farther up on the drastic scale, but I actually find it very illuminating. Take your characters to the store, to a historic site, or just sit at your kitchen table and chat. Don't mind if others look at you and shake their heads; it is a blessing and an honor to be gifted with storytelling, and sometimes the creative process just seems odd to others, but not to us!

The most drastic thing that I have done, only reserved for absolutely drastic situations, is to completely and utterly erase everything I've already written. Yup, the proverbial "computer crash." I discovered this tool when my computer really did crash once years ago. Could not find the backup, let alone past versions of my work-in-progress, which was, at the time, under contract. After my initial shock, I had no alternative but to rewrite everything. It was a drastic situation, alright, and a drastic measure to have to rewrite the piece. But it actually turned out much better than it had been going along initially. And so, on those rare occasions when I need to do something drastic with my current writing project, I recall and sometimes employ this "measure of last resort," as hard as it is to press delete and empty the recycle bin!

"Back in the day," trips to the dentist were much more onerous than they are now (usually). Today's visit turned out to be minor on the scale of discomfort, and all's well, thanks to dentistry's new tools of the trade. "Back in the day" of typewriters or writing longhand, it wasn't possible to "lose it all," unless you had a voracious dog or dared take your pages through the shredder (but even then, it probably wasn't a cross-cut, and you could tape it all back together). Today, however, sometimes the dreaded "crash" is actually a blessing in disguise - a way to start completely afresh while retaining what's most important from the good work you've done already.

Blessings for the day!

Maureen

www.maureenpratt.com

http://blog.beliefnet.com/gooddaysbaddays/

 

Your Devotional

Hello! Maureen Pratt here with my monthly CAN blog. This time, some thoughts on writing the devotional.

The devotional is intensely personal, but can also provide tremendous support for many. I've experienced this first-hand. When I was first diagnosed with lupus, I suffered from a number of life-threatening symptoms. None, however, was as confounding as the non-life-threatening phenomenon of lupus brain fog, which is much like looking at the world through a pea-soup fog on a chilly day. It isn't permanent, much like those clouds of fog, and it doesn't cause changes in the brain, per se. But it does make memories slippery at times, and frustration quick to rise.

Faced with a horrible diagnosis, I turned to prayer, Scripture, and reflective meditation on what I had read and prayed about. Only, I would forget what I had read and prayed about. Frequently. I finally bought a spiral-bound notebook and started writing down what I read and prayed about. A year later, I looked back at the now-full notebook and wondered, "Could someone else benefit from what's in here?" Then, I prayed. And then, I called my agent. A few years later, my book "Peace in the Storm: Meditations on Chronic Pain & Illness" was published and has been reaching readers like myself, patients of chronic pain & illness, ever since. Such a blessing!

Writing the devotional is a highly personal pursuit, fueled by insight and inspiration born from experience. Not all experience needs to be that of the writer, but ideally each devotion should be linked to a "ripped from real life" instance in someone's life. I liken writing a devotional to being a "spiritual reporter," combining life's events with the place God takes within it all.

As they are extensions of our faith, devotionals spring from Scriptural reflections. Reading Scripture regularly and listening to the passages resonate gives the right context for the meditations you craft for each topic. I also spent much time in an empty church, sitting quietly, reading passages, then sitting quietly again. The waters of the Word can refresh us whenever we partake of them, but they truly nourish us when we let them soak into us completely.

Devotional structure will be unique to each project, but ideally each project does have a structure, an arc, a way in which it builds and carries the reader through to greater insight, comfort, or encouragement. At the same time, devotionals are often read in pieces, and not linearly, so the author needs to keep this in mind (avoid referring to a previous devotion, for example).

Writing "Peace in the Storm..." was exhausting for me, but what motivated me to keep going was the thought of my audience. Each day, I prayed for and thought of someone who would read what I was writing, someone who was suffering with or from the particular problem, or asking the particular question, that I addressed in the devotion I wrote that day. Keeping the reader close to mind and heart enables the words to flow as from a friend to a friend, a very effective and empathetic voice.

Blessings to you!

Maureen

www.maureenpratt.com

http://blog.beliefnet.com/gooddaysbaddays/

 

 

 

Right There, Right Then: Immediacy

Peace to you! Maureen Pratt here with my monthly blog about specific aspects of the writing process. Today, I thought I'd highlight some suggestions about immediacy in our writing.

Whether we're writing fiction or non-fiction, we want our prose to carry the feel of immediacy, or a sense of time and place that draws the reader in to the exclusion of all other distractions and detractions. Compelling central plots do this to a certain extent, of course, but to carry someone along for the duration of a book requires some hooks-within-the-hooks. Immediacy boosts action to a more lively level, and it helps root scene and character to-the-minute instead of somewhere, out there, in time. 

For example, let's say you and I just won a shopping spree (here's the plot hook), but the event takes place in the wee hours of the morning on an excruciatingly hot day and the air conditioner in the store is broken (here are distractions from the initial excitement of the primary hook) and we're both just getting over the flu. Feel your enthusiasm waning, even just a little? What if we added a treasure hunt within the spree, perhaps a very valuable diamond ring is hidden somewhere among the merchandise, and we get to keep it if we find it - a hook-within-a-hook that can motivate beyond the heat and discomfort and bring an immediacy and action to something that might otherwise be more descriptive than dramatic.

Immediacy is helped along by avoiding gerunds (pardon the pun!) and connective phrases, and by precision. "We were looking in the shoe department hoping to find..." becomes "In the shoe department, we found..." or "We were running out of time..." becomes "We only had six minutes left..."

In non-fiction, creating immediacy makes facts come alive. This is not the same as fictionalizing a situation or place, but rather is expressed in the way various details are described. For example, perhaps you need to write a piece about your church's Sunday prayer service and potluck. Beyond the "who, what, when and where," paint in the "why." Why does one person always bring a fruit salad? Why does a particular worship song bring tears to a young man's eyes? Why does the assortment of dishes provided always seem to satisfy, even if no one plans it down to the ingredients? The "why" allows for personalities to come forward and details to leap to life in their daily context - immediacy in the making. It also helps build empathy between the reader and story.

Another strong technique for non-fiction is to write about what's going on outside a particular place or event as a backdrop for what is going on inside. I was able to do this in an article I wrote for Saint Anthony Messenger Magazine (www.americancatholic.org) last year, when I contrasted the freeway traffic humming outside a school with the beautiful music of a children's choir within it.

For inspirational non-fiction, such as a devotional or prayer book, immediacy comes from the specific examples you can write about that illustrate the point you are trying to get across. Think Our Lord teaching in parables. So, an essay on coping with pain becomes lessons learned from someone's journey through a dark valley of pain.

To create your own sense of immediacy while you are writing, practice this: Imagine your reader only has sixty seconds to spend on your story. Imagine the seconds ticking by (or place a clock that ticks off the seconds next to your workspace) as you write. Feel the pressure of that time passing, disappearing, and taking away your reader. At the end of the minute, put your work aside for awhile (a few hours, or even a day). Revisit it, and see the difference in what you wrote while under the immediacy of pressure - you might really like it!

The more in-the-moment writing can be, the more powerful, and immediate, the pull for the reader to keep reading, no matter what else is going on in the world around.

Joy and peace,

Maureen

www.maureenpratt.com

http://blog.beliefnet.com/gooddaysbaddays/

 

Tips from the Pros: Maureen Pratt

New Year's greetings from central Florida! Now that you've finished off all the extra fudge and gingerbread cookies, I hope you'll take time from the treadmill long enough to read today's marketing insights from award-winning playwright, journalist, and author Maureen Pratt. Maureen has lots of wisdom to share, so let's get started.

Maureen, how did you get into writing? How many books have you published, and what are a few of your latest titles?

I was always writing--scripts, songs, stories, even a comic strip--when I was young. My first paid writing job was as a stringer for a local newspaper. I covered stories and

Finding and Writing a Character's Voice: Lessons from Playwriting

     Hello, again! Maureen Pratt here with my monthly blogpost about the craft of writing. Today, I'm going to focus on techniques to employ to find and write distinctive voices for each of your characters or individuals in fiction or non-fiction.

    I began my professional writing career as a playwright, earning my Master of Fine Arts in Theater Arts with a concentration in playwriting from UCLA and later having a number of plays produced. Unlike writing for the movies, playwriting "runs" on dialogue. A professional script for live theater contains very little, if any, description except to set the scene, and actor's notes should be non-existent. (Once a play has been published, which assumes it's been produced, these notes are usually inserted as guidelines for subsequent productions, however, original scripts do not include them.) So, it's vital that a playwright master the art of dialogue, crafting lines that contain meaning, emphasis, and character without "indicating" these in the script.

Example: "Mary: He did what? How? I don't believe it" instead of: "Mary (raising her voice and her eyebrows): He did what? (She sits down on the sofa) How? (She sighs) I don't believe it."

WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD: WRITING CONTROVERSY

                                            [The woman] looked closely at Peter and said, "This man was with him." But Peter denied it. "Woman, I don't know him," he said. (Luke 22:56-57, NIV)

A blessed day to you! Maureen Pratt here with my second CAN Blog post. This time, I'm going to dive right into the deep end and talk about writing controversial subjects, characters, and themes. I've had very recent (ongoing, actually) experience with doing this, so I'm looking at the topic with eyes wide open and have some tips for handling not only the material, but also the feedback that inevitably comes when one "stirs the pot." (Although my experience is with a non-fiction piece, I hope these thought will be helpful to those who write fiction, too).

The Scripture verse I chose for this blog post sets the stage: For many people, even the strongest believer, controversy stirs up feelings of fear, denial, even cowardice. Yet, we people of faith are often called upon to confront issues and situations and stand firm, as our Lord did throughout his life. How much inside of us is Peter's "no!"? How much is Jesus' "yes!" How can we put on more courage and write boldly and maybe, just maybe, change hearts, too?

Writing Short

 

 

Then God said: "Let there be light," and there was light.

Genesis 1:1

Hello! Maureen Pratt here with my first CAN Blog post. I've been asked to write once a month about writing - one of my favorite topics! Today, I'm going to start off with a topic that sometimes confounds many writers - "writing short." As I'm the author of a 600-word syndicated, international column, I'm steeped in this style with each piece I file. And, more than ever before, we use this kind of writing, especially on the Internet. But it can be so difficult to adapt "big" thoughts into "few" words (for us...the Author of the Bible did it so beautifully!) Here are some suggestions for better, pithier posts and paragraphs: