Recently I wrote, “I do very thorough research until I’m confident that I’ve understood the subject matter quite well, even before I’ve contacted my sources.”
A reader asks, “Do you have a research ‘plan’ or ‘system’? Where do you start?”
I mentioned last week that I typically have ten steps to every article and that as soon as I receive an assignment, I just note down those steps in my to-do list, knowing that they’ll be tackled one after the other. While some can be done simultaneously, I have to wait for others to be finished before I can move on to the next task (I can only transcribe an interview once I’ve actually interviewed someone, for instance.)
So here’s my system. The good thing about it, I might add, is that it works just as well for 1,000-word pieces as it has done for 6,000-word pieces. Take a stab at it!
1. Preliminary research
Pretty much the first thing I do when I start working on a story is to log on to Google, type relevant search phrases and then start reading through the articles that I come across. I might make notes, I might not. I save all relevant articles to a research folder in Scrivener (I start a new document for every piece I write) so that I can come back to them later when I start writing. I may have already done some research into the story if it’s something I pitched, in which case I’ll already have something to work with. I also look at books or other magazine articles, if relevant, but I have to say, lately most of my research has been online.
2. Find people to interview
There are several ways in which I do this. I read through the articles I’ve found through Google and make a note of who’s been interviewed and whether they’d fit into my piece. If there’s any contact information available, I make a note, otherwise I just write down names and titles. If it’s a general-interest or business piece, I might post on HARO or Profnet asking for experts. Sometimes, I’ll need to find “real people” for my stories, in which case I might look on online forums, ask friends and acquaintances, post on Facebook or Twitter, etc. I make sure I have a few more leads than I need in case some sources are unresponsive or don’t want to talk.
3. Contact people for interviews
Sometimes, this stage can take a long, long time. The whole world is yet not on Facebook and Twitter. Who knew? I try to find phone numbers, email addresses, any contact information for people I need to interview and while sometimes this is fairly easy, say for service articles, it’s when it’s a newsy story that this can get difficult. Any government official is almost ridiculously difficult to get hold of in India (or anywhere in the world, really), so depending on the story, I may spend countless hours having the phone slammed in my face (you get used to it, eventually). The Indian officials do, however, top the world in being exceptionally rude and egotistic.
4. Set up interviews
Once I’ve contacted my sources, I’ll set up a time for interviews. I try to do these as much in advance as I can because sometimes things come up and interviews get canceled. Don’t leave this until the last day! If I’m sending questions via email, I do mention a deadline that I need the answers by, otherwise I might be waiting forever (it’s happened before).
5. Write interview questions
I’m sure many people think this is a bit of a silly step, but I take time — sometimes a couple of hours or so– to frame my questions properly. Everyone I interview usually gets a different set of questions based on what their experience is, what’s been written about them before, or what they’ve said to other media outlets. For instance, recently I wrote a few pieces on road safety and had to interview several experts for the pieces. These people have given speeches, talks, and interviews on the subject, so I didn’t want to ask basic questions that I could find answers to online or in their interviews. Instead, I picked up on what they’d said in the interviews and dug deeper into their personal lives. Questions that had no direct relation to road safety, but gave me some wonderful anecdotes for the piece, such as “What does a typical day for you look like?” “What motivates you?” “What have been your biggest mistakes?” and questions based on things they’ve already said, for instance, “You said in a recent interview that road crashes in the country have a direct impact on GDP. How so?”
For this story for the NYT, I’d interviewed two gay couples but the piece was getting very source heavy and my experts gave me such great anecdotes (simply because I asked about their personal experiences) that we just decided to go with them instead.
6. Conduct interviews
I usually record my interviews so that I can transcribe them later, whether on the phone or in person. For phone, I use Skype and I have the Skype Call Recorder, one of my favorite pieces of software. For international calls, Skype is a lot cheaper, too. It’s my preferred mode of communication and I even use Skype for calling my editors and for conference calls. I used to be terrified of phone interviews, but now it’s my medium of choice and I’ve called everyone from local wastepickers (yes, they have mobile phones!) to Cabinet Ministers. This is also the point where, if I need to do any independent verifying or investigation, such as observing how an organization works from afar, I’ll do it. If I need to visit organizations, talk to people on the street or be an observer of an event, this step is usually the time in the process when I do all those things.
7. Transcribe interviews
Many writers don’t like transcribing their interviews, but I’m not one of them. I’ve found that for me, the structure of the piece starts taking shape during the time I’m transcribing and it becomes clearer to me what I’m going to keep and what I’m not. I prefer phone and face-to-face interviews because you get so many better quality quotes when people are just talking and sharing with you rather than sitting down to compose a perfectly-written email. Recording my interviews ensures that I can focus on what’s being said and ask follow-up questions without being distracted by note-taking (I’m not the world’s best note-taker.)
8. Research based on what I’ve learned
Now that I have my interviews in hand and my wonderful experts have answered my queries and explained things to me so that I’m clear about how things work and what I’m talking about, I’m ready to go back in and do some additional research. They might have talked about studies or statistics that I’ll need to check or they may have talked about a historical event that I’m not familiar with. Or I might just like to re-read what I already have, now with a better understanding. This usually takes me somewhere from fifteen minutes to an hour depending on what I’m writing.
9. Outline
I’m big on outlining. I can’t just sit down and start writing and hope that the article will turn out the way I want it to. It might change shape during the writing phase, but I still need a structure to work with.
10. Write
Time to get creative! I usually have so much research and so many wonderful quotes by now that the writing is usually a breeze. If I’ve done all the steps above properly, a 1,000-word article will usually take me from half an hour to an hour tops. There have been times when it’s taken me as little as fifteen minutes. I edit as I go along, and after I finish it, I let it sit for ten minutes, give it a read through, attach it to an email to the editor, and hit send.
I know it sounds like all this is so much work and that these articles take so much time, but depending on the research and ease of interviews, I’m sometimes able to do all these steps and finish the piece within three or four hours. I’ve had one-day deadlines where I’ve finished pieces in just one or two hours as well. This method just outlines the steps, how much time you spend on each one– five minutes or five hours– is totally dependent on your topic and your efficiency.
Good luck!