How to interview for fiction: advice from a journalist-turned-novelist

Seven years in the journalism industry taught me many invaluable lessons: a healthy fear of imperfection (and in my school days the dreaded ‘Medill F,’1 iykyk), how to write a nut graf, the necessity of fact-checking, how to write a FOIA request, and the importance of a thick skin, especially if getting into political reporting.

The most important thing I learned, though—and the one that’s helped me the most both in my personal life and in my career—is how to perform a great interview. It’s also the skill that’s made the biggest difference in my fiction, and the one most writers underestimate.

As a reporter, I snagged bylines in The Washington Post, CNN, MinnPost, MarketWatch, and many more. I reported on hundreds of topics and interviewed a huge range of people from an all-Spanish conversation with a retired coyote2 in Puerto Rico to an hourlong livestream with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.

If this sounds crazy or intimidating to you, fear not! Interviewing is often not all that different from an engaged conversation about someone’s life or interests. By the end of this post, you’ll know exactly how to incorporate interviews into your fiction project, too.

I began working on my debut novel last April. It’s a dual-POV, dual-timeline queer coming-of-age story set in 1970s Buenos Aires, 1980s Washington DC, and current-day DC. I spent the first several months in pure drafting mode, but soon realized that I needed more context on the historical3 elements of my novel, especially the portions set in Argentina.

My father-in-law, whose stories inspired the Buenos Aires timeline, spent hours talking with me about growing up under the military junta, the disappearances, and the people who never made it home. Those conversations opened the door to many more. Over the past several months, I’ve conducted nearly twenty hours of interviews with people who grew up in Buenos Aires, lived in D.C. in the 1980s, and survived the early years of the AIDS epidemic.

These interviews have shaped my book in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. And notably: no one I asked said no.

If you’re writing fiction—especially about a place, time period, or identity outside your lived experience—I can’t recommend interviewing enough.

From my journalist-turned-fiction writer’s perspective, the rest of this post will explain:

1. When and why you should interview people for your fiction project

2. How to find interview subjects (and what makes people say yes)

3. How to prepare for your interviews

4. Interview best practices (from journalism, adapted for fiction)

5. How to incorporate interviews into your novel (or other fiction project)

6. The ethics of writing stories about people who don’t share your lived experiences

Let’s get into it.

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