Whatever happens while you’re chatting will be fine so
long as it is cordial. However, do not get so relaxed that you
lose control of the set-up and find yourself talking across a
desk or from too far apart (too far meaning more than six to
eight feet).You need to be close enough that intimate con-
versation is possible. To a scientist, talking about her work
may indeed be intimate.
You’ll know that it’s time to start by a tiny, expectant si-
lence. Then—GO. Deliver that big fat pitch.
Follow the thread. As a culmination for all your carefully
prepared questions, you should now . . . ignore them. Well,
not quite, but close to it. Once you’ve launched a topic that
intrigues both you and the interviewee, be prepared to fol-
low the other person’s lead. Metaphorically, you are dancing,
and if your partner dips, you should dip, too.Your questions
should now arise naturally out of what was just said, in a
process you can think of as following the thread.
The thread: Imagine you’re in a wood, this person’s mind,
and the topic you have opened up constitutes a thread. Pick
up the thread and follow it. Every once in a while the thread
will lead into a clearing, where you can see several other
threads coming in to join.You may want to pick one up, or
you may want to stay with your original thread, or you may
want to roam around the clearing. If in doubt, choose what-
ever seems to excite the scientist. Go for the juice.
Letting the interview flow can be scary at first. It can feel
like “Oh my God, I’ve lost control.” If you suffer that fear,
look to see whether you’re getting good stuff. If you are,
you’re doing fine. If you’re not, you can always return to
your prepared questions.
LISTEN. Do not be afraid of silence. It often means that the

In print, since most readers will need the anchor of a gen-
eral statement, you may want to move the grand finale to the
front. In the interview, however, you should not press for it.
If you wait, it will come.You’ll know the bouquet is com-
plete when she stops and looks at you with the expression of
one who has just uttered the punchline.
At that point, if you did not understand, you must say so.
“I don’t understand how that relates to our topic. Am I miss-
ing something?” (In passing, notice how different “I don’t
understand” sounds from “You didn’t say.”) She may have
assumed the conclusion could go unspoken, as obvious to
you as it might be to a colleague.
Among researchers, “I don’t understand” is an honorable
admission, one that is made daily, because it is the basis of
all scientific investigation. To ask the right question, you
must first realize that you don’t understand.
Be alert for body language, both your own and the inter-
viewee’s. There are any number of good books and videos
on this subject, but the basics of reading people we all knew
as infants. I’ll just remind you:
Do not cross your arms over your chest, and be alert if the
interviewee does it: it is a transcultural signal of rejection.
Face the person, your body open in a signal of reception.
Never lean away. If anything, tilt forward.
The conventional advice to meet the other person’s eyes is
good but can be overdone. Do not stare like Dr. Mesmer or
Research
and the
Interview
61

can.Yet the quotation as it appears in my notebook is seldom
precisely what the man said. It is more like what he meant, in
his own characteristic cadence but cleaned up and somehow
more clear and forcible. No one ever accuses me of misquot-
ing, and other old-timers report the same experience.
This effect arises after years on the job, and you will
doubtless want to tape. Do take detailed notes, however, if
only in case the machine fails. Get good at it. If you can rely
on your notes for everything but the most complex and
technical details, you will have juicier quotes and you will
save yourself hundreds of tedious hours transcribing.
Also, taking notes in detail will force you to listen actively,
Ideas
into
Words
62
so that you will seldom go home and realize you missed sev-
eral big openings (a nasty experience). Any fool will notice
when the bird of thought takes wing—but if it only hesitates
on a brink? That’s harder to spot. If you are listening closely
enough to take detailed notes, however, you have a good
chance to see the opening and precipitate the take-off, either
with something you say or with your inviting silence.
You will get the best of both worlds by listening to the
tape one time only, to flesh out your notes—though you
may be surprised at how little you must add or change.
Taking notes on your laptop will be an extreme tempta-
tion if you type fast, but I recommend it only for follow-
up phone interviews. When I tried it in face-to-face inter-
views, the machine took enough attention that my rapport

63
perience of the speaker(s). For that purpose, what you need
is a range of quotations that are extremely clear, vivid, hu-
morous, characteristic, and/or precisely on point. When a
good one flies by, get it as exactly as you can, and mark the
exact portion with quotes. A three- to four-word unit that is
just right is as worthy as an entire sentence or two. Are there
particular nouns and verbs that this person uses again and
again? Jot those down, too.
If something amazes you, rouses emotion, or makes the
penny drop so that you suddenly understand, mark it in the
border with a star. It will probably affect the reader in the
same useful way.
Note down mannerisms, interesting objects in the room,
and any kind of action, because all have meaning.We may
not know the meaning, but if the speaker takes off his
glasses, starts to pace, gets up and looks out the window,
etc., etc., it may be worth reporting; it will add dimension. If
the action is not in your notes, however, you won’t remem-
ber the timing.
Leave some blank space on your pages, perhaps a big left
margin.You may want to write in questions and comments
later, not to mention a few tidbits from the tape.
It will help you write notes at speed if you memorize and
use a judicious assortment of standard scientific and
mathematical abbreviations. Such as:
∴ therefore
> is greater than
< is less than
~ is approximately

your personality. People need to know you are with them.
I tend to murmur things like “Wow!” or “Intriguing!” be-
cause I’m an enthusiast, but something else might work bet-
ter for you.
There’s only one taboo: Do not say “uh-huh.” Some
people take that as meaning, “Oh, I already knew that.” If so,
it will stop them cold. The only way to not say “uh-huh” in
an interview is to not say it in ordinary life. If you have that
habit, break it.
When the interview is over, even though you are prepared
to stay, don’t be hard to get out of the office. About five or
ten minutes before the appointment is scheduled to end, say
something like, “Time’s running out. Let me look at my
questions to see if there’s anything we’ve missed.”When you
look, you’ll probably find you’ve covered it all, albeit in a
different order, except a few questions that now, in the light
of the interview, were clearly off the mark. And if you did
miss something, you still have a few minutes.
An ideal last question, always, is this one: “Is there any-
thing I should have asked you and didn’t?”
Leave no loose ends: Establish some way to ask more ques-
tions (e-mail is ideal), and if you may need another appoint-
ment, make it while you are there.You can always cancel the
slot you have, but it’s unsafe to count on getting time at
short notice.
Research
and the
Interview
65
Before you go to bed that night, review and flesh out your

the material about such-and-so?” The writer would look
puzzled; then the memory would slowly return, as if it were
trudging in from some polar zone of the mind. “What? .
Hmm. Oh . Oh! I’d forgotten! Yes, that was a good example,
all my friends loved that story . ”
About the fifth time I heard “My friends loved that story,”
I concluded that every socially competent adult must have a
brain center that prevents our becoming bores. Call it the
MEGO, after the editorial shorthand that stands for “My Eyes
Glaze Over.” This hypothetical MEGO keeps count, so that
once we’ve told a story several times, the material drops
Ideas
into
Words
66
from active memory as too old, not to be told again. No kid-
ding. I think something much like that happens when writ-
ers dine out on their interviews.
Brainstorming the material with your editor or a writer
friend is okay, however, because not only is it work, it feels
like work. Brainstorming seems not to rouse the MEGO, I
think because you are not entertaining each other. Nor are
you polishing stories in isolation from the rest of the mate-
rial.You are poking at the stuff together, looking for high-
lights and unseen connections. The writer should expect to
leave such a session all charged up to write.
Between the research and the writing comes a period of
immersion, which can last hours, days, weeks, or even
months and years (for a book), depending on how hard
the material is. You should not write till you understand

They’d be on the test because they’re important, and they
belong in your mind (and probably your writing) for the
same reason. Using a good encyclopedia of science and
technology, look up every word you run into more than once.
Emphasis, more than once. If you try to look up everything,
you’ll be overwhelmed. I’ve seen it happen.
Don’t get derailed by some tangential detail, like the refer-
ence to the Elephant’s Child a few paragraphs back. Did you
stop reading to puzzle over it or, worse yet, to look it up,
and if so why? Either you grew up on Kipling’s Just So Stories
and you understand precisely how excessive that curiosity
was, or you know from context that it must be some kind of
big curiosity. Either way is fine.You can tell the phrase is a
throwaway because if you remove it from the sentence,
nothing happens. There’s no loss of meaning, only of a
chuckle for some few readers.
Curses on the many teachers who seem to have taught a
whole generation to stop dead until they understand each
and every word. If babies tried to learn that way, none of us
could talk. Go for the big picture. Trust the context.
To shortcut immersion in the future, start building a wide
base of miscellaneous information. The less scientific back-
ground you have, the more you may wish to subscribe to Sci-
ence News and the New Scientist, both of which offer what you
need: an ongoing education in science and technology, in-
cluding the latest news. Both are written accurately at a
mostly lay level, and they will arrive at your door each week.
If you subscribe, you can use their web sites, and if you save
the magazines, after a while you’ll have research material on
almost anything you might ever need to figure out.

Begin writing by not writing: THINK. I seem to hear
you saying, “What? Think some more, after all that im-
mersion?”Yes, because now you need to think about how
you should present the material, a subtly different ques-
tion—though in practice, of course, the two phases of
thinking blur and join.
If you start to write without knowing what you want to
say, you will have to write multiple drafts—a painful
process, even its practitioners would agree. On the other
hand, if you have thought to the point of boredom, you
could be writing in regurgitation mode, which is dull for
you and dull for readers. Best, if you can get there, is the
middle road: Start to write when you’re clear enough that
you won’t go wrong—but are still thinking, still excited,
still able to be surprised as the last few details click into
Writing
Getting Started and the Structure
I do not always
love to write. I love
having written.
—Anonymous