Interviews and questionnaires are two very different but productive methods of getting
information from people. An interview is ideal for acquiring material from an expert or if you want someone to explain a subject to you. Just two examples would be interviewing the manager of a local football team about the history of the club, or interviewing an older person about life in your local area during the Second World War
In many modern novels, not every line of dialogue is qualified with a phrase such as ‘he said’ or ‘she said’, for instance:
‘Who was that?’ ‘When?’
‘On the phone.’
‘Oh. It was a wrong number.’ ‘But you were talking for ages.’ ‘Was I?’
When writing a piece of fiction, you need to decide if you are going to explain who is talking every time a character speaks. Malorie Blackman talks about this issue below, as well as how she achieves realistic speech in her books.
MALORIE BLACKMAN: As I’m writing I hear the voices, the dialogue in my head. It’s not me talking, it’s my characters talking, and I’m just recording what they’re saying. And because I imagine my characters to be real people in my head, it comes out as real people talking. Yet at times I’ve noticed that some of my dialogue has become quite flowery and poetic, and I’ve realised that I’ve taken over too much, and it doesn’t sound like that character speaking, so I’ve had to change it.
With my dialogue I tend to use ‘he said’ or ‘she said’ more than anything else. In the main, a reader should be able to appreciate the way that something is spoken from the dialogue itself. Also, I feel that if you’re using lots of adverbs to qualify how everything is spoken – ‘she replied softly’, ‘he answered quickly’ – then the dialogue is not doing its job. Take for example,
‘Come in for your dinner, John,’ she shouted angrily.
Here, the speech isn’t enough, because it needs the adverb ‘angrily’ to explain. So, it needs to be something like,
‘John! How many times do I have to call you? Come in NOW!’ she said.
There, you get it from the dialogue on its own. But that’s not to say I don’t use adverbs, there are exceptions where I do, such as when somebody is whispering something, and they’re saying something normal and you want to tell the reader how it is being spoken – and then you’ll have to put ‘she whispered’, or ‘she replied softly’.
When you’ve got only two people talking, you don’t need ‘he said’ and ‘she said’ for every time they speak, you can just let the dialogue do the work. It’s actually been proved that when people read they skip over the ‘he saids’ and ‘she saids’ anyway, so you don’t need to put them in every sentence! And anyway, reading a series of ‘she saids’ does slow the reading down.
Drama
Drama can take many forms, including: • a stage play • a radio play • an audio recording • a film • a television programme. 95
Before an interview, do as much preparation as you can. Spend time working on a list of questions to take with you. Try to avoid too many ‘closed’ questions which encourage a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, such as ‘Did you like doing that?’ or ‘Were you scared when . . . ?’. Instead, ask more ‘open’ questions that give the interviewee a chance to talk and explain, such as ‘How did you feel when . . . ?’ or ‘What do you think about . . . ?’. Take a recording device with you to tape your interview. Make sure it has a mains lead or that you have some new batteries. Do not be afraid to ask the interviewee to explain something that you do not understand. And do ask any extra questions that come to mind during the interview. When you return, listen to the interview recording carefully. Then play it again, but this time write out all the important material that you want to use. This is called an interview transcript. (You may decide to remove all the ‘ums’ and ‘errs’ that people say – your interviewee will not mind at all!)
From there, select which quotes you want to use and decide where you are going to use them in your text. You could, if you choose, share the responsibility and conduct an interview with a friend. (See the ‘Interviews’ workshop, p. 157.)
A questionnaire is useful if you need to gather information or opinions from a number of people, perhaps friends in your class or people who live near you. Information from a questionnaire can be represented in the form of graphs and can help you to evaluate people’s opinions and lifestyles. One example of a questionnaire might be on the topic of the environment; it might ask if people use recycled paper or unleaded petrol. Another questionnaire could be on transport and would ask people how they travel to school and what transport they use at the weekends. Decide if you will fill out the forms as people answer your questions or if you wish people to write their answers themselves. You can include the questionnaires in the appendix of your non-fiction project.