Interview, dialogue
To begin with, you should carry out agent work and try to find out everything you can about your hero. Internet to help. Classic investigation involves talking with witnesses to the hero's journey, analysts and, most importantly, enemies. "Most importantly" - because the enemies will tell all the most unpleasant; and even if they lie, the hero, fighting off accusations, will show you the quality of his argumentation and, in general, his reaction to stimuli.
Depending on the genre and focus of your text, you have to choose how deeply to work out the character's personal line. Is it worth, for example, to go to the place where he grew up, where some significant events happened to him? I try to dive as deep as possible, because cool finds happen only at depth.
It is worth a lot to piss off a hero. Anyone can give interviews in their own office, comfortably reclining in an armchair. And getting into unexpected circumstances and answering questions in a situation close to stressful - such a test will not leave everyone unfazed. A person is cognized at points of extreme - this is a commandment for cinema, literature, and journalism.
How to get mad? It doesn't have to be some evil trick or provocation. The key here is an unexpected situation in which the hero has to open up; unexpected formulation that does not allow evading an answer.
An example is the case of one of the greatest living journalists, Michael Lewis, author of the bestselling books Liar's Poker, Moneyball and others. Vanity Fair asked him to write an essay on American President Barack Obama - how this man fulfills the duties of the number one politician on earth. Obama's background has already been described in several books, such as David Ramnick's The Bridge, which details how the former editor of a law journal at Harvard made his way to the presidency step by step. But how he changed internally, taking responsibility for the whole world, how this person looks through the eyes of an intelligent observer, but not an academic historian, was to be described to Lewis.
Here is one of Lewis's tricks. “Listen,” he told Obama shortly after they met, having already earned his trust. - Imagine that I am the next president of the United States, I have never been and you have five minutes. When they expire, you will jump out of here with a parachute. "You have to quickly tell me the most important thing a president needs to know." At first Obama thought: he was not ready for such a task. Apparently, he was distracted by something. Or he was simply not in the mood for such games. However, soon after dozing off during a long flight, Lewis woke up from the fact that Obama shook his shoulder: “If you are ready, I can answer your question. The one about five minutes. " He really told the most important thing - and this scene with the conversation became the key in the essay.
Another trick: you put the video camera or put the dictaphone (telephone) on the table next to the notepad and say that you need to go out for a minute, change the rod in the pen. "In the meantime, talk about something so that I can check how the recording is going, otherwise the equipment is junk." - "What can I say?" - "What do you want, the main thing is intelligible." And come out. Amazing things often happen next. People do not know what to tell them, and begin to say something completely off-topic, tell some scenes from life or talk about something - but the very choice of the topic of the story, as a rule, says something about them. Someone starts to call and speaks on the phone - and this is also typical, one can draw conclusions from the manner of speaking.
However, to do such tricks, you first need to establish a relationship of trust. And there is only one way. First, you put yourself in the hero's place and figure out why he needs to give interviews to you, that is, you determine what his pragmatic motive may be. Then formulate what you are really interested in, what a big topic you see behind his actions. And tell it to him directly. The sincerity of the city takes. Especially when it is backed up by a deep knowledge of the past and the thoughts of the hero.
Actually, this is the answer to the question "what to do if a person does not want to give an interview in any way." You can only add that you have to be very persistent and dig into the character with a tick. By composing his story from the words of other people, comparing information from different sources, you will find a kind of balanced version of what happened and understand what role your character actually played. After that, you can announce to him that if he does not want to talk to you, you will still write about him, and, alas, it will be a poem without a hero, without his point of view and voice (from which it follows that distortions and unfriendly interpretations of events are possible ). Unfortunately, there are people who remain silent even after such a turn. But there is nothing you can do about it.
Also, to build trust, you should not behave like a rogue reporter or a robot for asking questions with a built-in voice recorder, but like an interlocutor who brings added intellectual value to the conversation. This means that you have to go to the hero not only with questions, but with original and sensible fresh ideas that he would be interested in commenting on. Better yet, which you two would like to argue about. After all, a dispute is the same conflict, and in conflicts the hero expresses himself most vividly. Our task is to create such extreme points in the conversation.
This requires homework. For example, sharp and well-developed questions that cannot be answered with a short neutral answer.
All these tricks must be honest, without misinformation, quoting invented rumors, leaks, being passed off as compromising evidence. And, of course, first of all, a relationship of trust, clarification of the entire non-conflict texture and its details, and only then unpleasant questions.
In general, the hardest moment in an interview is not asking unpleasant questions. The most heartbreaking moment is at the beginning, when you have to put the recorder on the table and turn it on. This device makes people numb - only a television camera works worse. Moreover, you can chat nicely with the hero for half an hour, but as soon as the recording starts (even if it’s not a dictaphone, but, say, a program on the phone), the interviewee starts talking in clerical ways, weighing every word, and doesn’t want to talk about sensitive topics at all.
So, if your character turns green at the words“ if you don’t mind, I’ll record the conversation, ”then you have already made a mistake. Perhaps he should have put the recorder down at the very beginning of the meeting and made the interlocutor talk to the point where he forgets that the interview is being written.
So, to summarize the above, we must ...