Stories
Conducting interviews has never been my forte and so this casual assignment was a good way for me to ease myself back into the game. Although the group interview provided a comfortable atmosphere, it did not produce for me the lively story that the assignment required. Interview, take two, was successful and I realized that sometimes asking a leading question is more productive than listening to a life story and hoping for a gem among the list of events. I found that the challenge in interviewing a classmate was that my classmate was not a blank slate waiting to be directed because very aware of the assignment. The knowledge of the assignment caused many doors to be closed.
In the second interview I asked my subject to tell me of a frightening incident that put her into a state of panic. This brought forth a usable story, but I got the feeling that she had told the story one too many times, and the details and excitement of it had, through overuse, faded. I think in the future, a more unusual of prying question that is less broad would serve me better.
I struggled with limiting my sentences to ten words. I had to change the entire pace and attitude of my stories to allow for the restrictive sentence structure. This is difficult for me because I tend to write long, descriptive sentences. I ended up enjoying the pace, especially in one of my stories. It opened me up to inventing a new attitude, or tone, for my writing that I could not have created with sentences stuffed with superfluous details.
Ira Glass
Ira Glass talked about his experience in broadcasting and what he has found to make up a good reporter, and great stories. The first building block that makes up a good story is the anecdote, including both the sequence of actions and the bait. The second building block is the moment of reflection in which the significance of the story is expressed in order to support the interesting anecdote. Glass also stressed the importance of “good taste.” Having good taste and maintaining it through your initially poor work is all part of the process. Glass explained that if you are not failing than you are not creating lucky situations for yourself. In order to create good work, one must do a lot of work, discarding most of it.
The advice that really stuck with me was the value in speaking naturally. Glass said that speaking in a conversational way is a more effective technique than imitating T.V. professionals or “underlining” every third word as you speak. Glass also said that good stories revolve primarily around the subject, but that the personality and voice of the reporter plays a significant role as well. I found the concept of having good taste and continuing to realize it, even when you knew that your work was not reflecting it, very humbling but encouraging. No matter how confident you are or how realized your “vision” of great work is, every reporter will still produce crap. It would be easy to glorify your bad work as adequate and lose sight of your good taste in order to save face and keep your self-pride. Glass points out how foolish this mindset is. It is a reporter’s creative downfall.
