Now that we’ve talked about why a writer needs to interview people for an article, let’s talk about some of the things that need to be asked during the interview.

While I can’t outline every single question you might need to ask for your particular article, there are some general questions that often apply.

1) Name spelling. Be sure to ask the person how to spell his or her name. Even for a common name, someone can have an unusual spelling, so don’t assume you know how to spell it.

2) Title. Second, ask the person about his or her title that is relevant to the role in the story. Meaning, is she a pastor? Is he a director of a local evangelism ministry? A Sunday school teacher? A field strategy coordinator? A teacher? A neighbor in the community who simply attended the event? The reader wants to know why you’re interviewing this person — how is he or she qualified to talk about this? Make sure you get a clear explanation about what the title stands for and what the person’s job is. Sometimes a title can be misleading.

Then, based on which of two types of article you’re writing, your questions will be different.

Interviewing about an event

If you’re writing about an event, you will focus your questions on how the idea for the event originated or how long it has been going on, who was involved, what the purpose is/was, what went into the planning and execution, if its goals were met, and who were the people whose lives were affected or transformed through the event or series of events. Remember to think through the Who, What, When, Why, Where and How.

For the second type of article — the profile — in which you’re writing about an interesting person, you will focus on questions related to who she is as a person, about her life, passions and interests, occupation, the challenges she has overcome and important milestones that have made her who she is. I’ll address that in the next post.

Let’s start with looking more closely at interviewing about an event.

What do you mean by “event”?

When I say an event, I mean anything that happened, is happening or will happen. It might include such things as

• a three-week church planting project
• a JESUS Film showing
• a fundraising event to fund a mission project or the World Evangelism Fund
• a prison outreach
• a reconciliation group trying to bring peace to its community through evangelism
• a new prayer strategy for missions
• a medical mission to a neighboring community
• the opening of a new child development center
• a mission trip
• a two-year volunteer mission experience
• a weekly radio program
• and so on.

What questions should I ask?

Often, for a topic like this, I’ll ask some of the following questions (remember that you would adapt these to the specific subject or person you are writing about):

1. Tell me about how this (event or topic) first got started.
2. When did it occur (or if it is ongoing, when did it start, and on what days each day, week, month or year does it take place)?
3. Where did the idea originate?
4. What was/is your specific role with this?
5. Why did/do you want to (be part of this, organize this, attend, create this, etc.)?
6. What were some of the challenges that you (your church, committee, club, class) had to overcome?
7. What is most significant about this (event or topic) to you (or the community)?
8. What significance does this hold for your church (ministry group, seminary, family, etc.)?
9. How did you feel about it?
10. How many people (attended, were reached, helped organize, found Christ, saw the film, said they would do it again, etc.)?
11. Describe the area in which this took place (sights, sounds, smells, etc.).
12. If you can, tell me about a specific person who was reached, transformed, involved in a significant way as a result of this (event).
13. Can you get me in touch with this person? Do you think he or she would be willing to be interviewed?
14. Where is home for you?
15. How old are you? (In some cultures this may be an offensive question, so use your judgment. But generally, people under 30 are comfortable answering this question, and depending on the context of the story, a person’s age may be especially interesting to the reader.)
16. What is the full name of the local Nazarene church involved? Where is it located?
17. How can other people be involved in this event? (Prayer, giving, volunteering time or expertise?)
18. Are there other people involved with this who you think would be willing to do an interview with me?
19. Is there anything else we didn’t talk about that you feel would be important to mention?
20. Is there a Web site about this that we could link to?

These questions may not apply at all to what you’re writing about, but hopefully they’ll help you generate ideas of things you’ll need to ask about.

In my next entry, I’ll talk about the interviews you’ll conduct when writing a profile about an interesting person involved in missions.