Sep 08 2008
Creative Interviews
I am a huge fan of writing exercises. I’ve found several around the Internet that were fun and very helpful, but I’ve found that creating my own exercises can be much more satisfying. Why? Because I’m taking the initiative to keep myself writing. However, I love helping other writers come up with things to write about.
One of my favorite writing exercises is to interview someone I’ve never met. I don’t mean like someone I’ve been fortunate enough to meet online, or a big wig in my region. No, I’m talking about interviewing someone from history, or a literary character who never really was. This is a fun way to get both sides of your brain working as one.
Ok, here’s how I do it. If you try this, do it in whatever way makes you happy. This is just my way. So, first of all, I write out a list of about 10 or 15 questions I’ve always wanted to ask the “interviewee”. For instance, I’ve always wanted to interview someone like Gregori Rasputin. Now it’s a matter of coming up with the questions.
This is where the process takes on a more personal feel. After all, what I want to know from this person may not be interesting to another. It all comes down to what you’d like to know. Write out all the questions ahead of time. Think like a non-fiction writer, do research about the person or character, and inner critic have some say in this.
Once the questions are written, it’s time to send the inner critic away and bring in the creative muse. If you’ve done the research, you’ll have an idea about your choice’s personality. Now go back and answer all those questions from that point of view. You can make your interview serious, educational, or just plain silly. It’s all up to you.
This little exercise will get your creative side motivated. Want a little harder chore? Trying interviewing yourself from 2 different perspectives. Or, let your creative muse interview your inner critic. Sometimes, that’s good for a laugh.
In the end, if you find that you enjoy doing these little interviews, you might think about doing interviews for your own site on real people. It’s a great way to bring traffic to your site, and will give you tons to write about.
When I’m building a character for a piece of fiction I like to first of all have them compile their own autobiography - wrote in first person - and then I use this to grill them further so that I can get a better insight into each character and can therefore make the novel go in a way that keep in tune to the characters involved.