response to creating powerful radio and listening as an act of love

In my junior year of high school, I joined the school newspaper as a writer; having had no previous journalistic experience and being a textbook introvert, I had a few hurdles to leap. How was I expected to interview multiple subjects and then compile it all into a coherent and thoughtful story when I was too shy to approach my editors to receive my story assignments??

Reading "Creating Powerful Radio Interviews" harkened back to my early years' dilemmas. I remember my first interview with a professor who acted/directed in a local theater company. In the days leading up to the interview I labored over a list of 20-ish questions that I was to ask him, and come interview time I read them in consecutive order, not daring to stray from my safe, predetermined path. It wasn't until I had been through the process a few times that I finally began to understand my role was not one of a stenographer, but an interactive, thinking human listener. I still write out a list of questions before every interview, and I study them well, but come time for the real interview I stash them in a pocket or backpack and generally never look at them ever again.

I've found that if I don't have the safety net of a questions list, I am forced to be engaged in the subject, because if they stop talking I have to instantly figure out something to say to prod them further in our interview; otherwise there's an awkward, wasted pause of empty space. Momentum is lost. When I force myself to be in a situation to think on my feet, the end result is generally more interesting than anything I could have planned out beforehand with my paltry list of 20-ish vague questions from before I ever even met the interview subject.

"Listening as an Act of Love" talks about treating interview subjects with care because they are sitting in front of you, spilling their emotional guts to the audio recorder; this is not a one-way service. It's a give-and-take relationship, so I try to give as much as I can during an interview in hopes of taking the most usable material away on my recorder.