Since I have been writing feature stories over the past five years for my last two employers, I have developed my own workflow. First, I like to use a tape recorder; I don't want to miss anything. Additionally, I always have a pen and pad with some questions on it. I also like to write down extra questions during the interview because I don't want to interrupt the subject, break up their flow, and ruin a good potential quote. I transcribe the interview, print it out, grab my highlighter, and begin to start sorting everything out.
The next part is where the story really starts to take shape. In front of me, spread out on my desk, are all of my interviews printed out. Now, I could turn this into a boilerplate journalism story: simplify the crux of the story into a one-sentence lead, fill in with additional details and some quotes. But this is a feature story, it needs to illustrate a larger point of the magazine it is going to be in and say something significant about the organization.
So what am I doing when I'm highlighting all these interviews? I'm identifying patterns. It's the same way the human mind works. When we are confronted with an overload of information that is too much to take in, we look for patterns and ways to compartmentalize the facts. What's necessary and what can be excluded? What can be associated with an ideology I am already familiar with? What can I hone in on that makes sense to me? I'm just doing the work for the reader, relating the story to a larger theme with which they can identify.
Sometimes it's as easy as seeing a word repeated by the different subjects but it often requires a time for reflection. That's the other important step in my writing workflow: taking time away from the story. It helps give me perspective and the ability to identify these patterns.
It would seem to make more sense to develop this theme before I begin my interviews. But that's the thing about stories, you can't control them. You can try to shape your questions to get the answers you want but often times you end up changing your story when you realize what it is really about. Because as you're gathering all the facts, you're inside of the story. You're a part of the pattern. It's not until you can step outside it that you can see everything with fresh eyes and make sense of it all.
