Every street has someone who remembers what was there before. The corner shop that is now a phone repair kiosk. The tree that came down in a storm nobody under fifty recalls. Sit with that person for an hour and you have the raw material for the kind of profile readers keep coming back to: not a formal history, but a life told through one place.
It is also, for a first-time interviewer, slightly nerve-racking. You have a notebook, a vague plan, and a fear of asking a dull question. The skills involved are ordinary ones. Prepare a little, ask for specifics, listen more than you talk, and check facts with care rather than suspicion.
Before You Arrive, Prepare Less Than You Think
You need enough background to ask sensible questions and no more. Ask two neighbours what they know about the person, look at the street on an old map if your library has one, and leave it there. Arriving with a theory about someone's life is the fastest way to spend an hour confirming it.
When you make contact, be concrete. Offer two possible times rather than asking when they are free. Say how long you expect to stay, and mean it: "about an hour" is a promise, and respecting it makes a second conversation much easier to arrange. Explain where the piece will appear, roughly when, and whether readers will see their name and photograph.
Then think about the room. A kitchen table beats a noisy café every time. Bring a notebook and two pens, and ask before you record anything on a phone. If they say no to recording, that is not a problem; a notebook and a slower pace will do the job.
Building a Question List That Opens Doors
Treat your list as a safety net, not a script. If the conversation takes a better turn, follow it and come back to the list later. The questions below are the ones worth having in your pocket.
Start with arrival
When did you move here, and what did you see from the front step that first week? Who was already living on the street? Who helped you carry things in? Arrival stories produce names, prices, weather and small kindnesses, all of which are usable material.
Ask for objects and routines, not opinions
Where did you buy bread? What time did the buses run? Which dog made the most noise? What did the street sound like on a Sunday? Concrete questions produce concrete answers. Abstract ones produce polite fog. "How do you feel about how the neighbourhood has changed?" will get you a shrug. "What do you miss most?" will get you a story.
Then move to change
What is here now that you never expected to see? What has gone that you would bring back? What changed so gradually that outsiders would never notice? That last question is often where the best paragraph is hiding.
Close gently
Who else should I talk to? What have I not asked you? The second question costs nothing and regularly delivers the detail that holds a whole profile together.
The First Five Minutes Matter More Than the First Question
Small talk is not wasted time. Comment on the photograph on the wall, the view from the window, the cat that has decided to sit on your notebook. Say again how long you will stay and what will happen to the piece afterwards. If tea appears, accept it. The five minutes of ordinary conversation are what turn an interview into a talk, and people remember far more when they are relaxed than when they are being formally questioned.
Listening Is the Skill You Are Actually There to Practise
Aim to speak for a fifth of the time. Most beginners talk too much because silence feels like failure. It is not. Count three slow seconds before you fill a pause; the next sentence is usually the honest one.
Echo their words back instead of paraphrasing them. If they say the yard "was all mud and geese," repeat "mud and geese" and wait. You will get the rest of the scene. When a local word appears, ask what it means and write down the definition in their phrasing. Follow a tangent one step, then gently steer back: "You mentioned the geese — was that before the wall went up?"
Do not correct small errors mid-flow. If they say the school closed in 1971 and you believe it was 1973, let it go and check later. Interrupting to fix a year costs you the story that was coming next.
Fact-Checking Memories Without Calling Anyone a Liar
Memory is reconstruction, not playback. Dates drift by a year or two, decades blur together, and a story told many times becomes smoother and sometimes grander. None of that makes your interviewee dishonest, and none of it means you should print everything as fact.
Work in the background rather than the interview. Photographs, the local newspaper archive, school and parish records, and a second resident who was there can all be checked quietly. Some practical habits:
- Ask context questions rather than corrections: "That would have been around the time the new school opened, wouldn't it?"
- Frame challenges as other people's accounts: "Someone else told me the shop closed earlier — do you remember it differently?"
- Confirm the spelling of every name, and the maiden names of women who married locally.
- Keep a separate list of claims you could not verify, and write those into the copy as memory: "she remembers it as the summer of 1968."
- Read back the passages that touch on health, money, family disputes or anyone still living. Offer to leave them out.
That last point matters more than it looks. A profile is not a court record, and a neighbour who feels ambushed will not send anyone else your way.
Getting the Details That Make a Profile Sing
One strong quote beats five ordinary ones, so keep the notebook open for the sentences people say without thinking. Note the route they walked to school and where it flooded. Note what the front room smelled of. Note the phrase they use for a person they disliked forty years ago. Write those down word for word and resist the urge to tidy their grammar; the shape of the speech is part of the person.
When you write, resist starting at the cradle. Find one thread — a job, a garden, a corner shop, a bus route — and let the rest of the life arrive through it.
Go Back Once Before You Publish
A short second conversation, by phone or over the fence, protects everyone. Read back the names, dates and the quotes you plan to use. Check the details you were unsure of. Confirm what stays out of the piece. It takes fifteen minutes and it is the difference between a profile people trust and one they quietly resent.
A Short Practical Checklist
- Two possible times offered; a clear promise about how long you will stay.
- Notebook, spare pen, and permission asked before recording.
- A question list with concrete prompts, plus room to abandon it.
- Three seconds of silence before you fill a gap.
- Names and dates checked against a second source before publication.
- Uncertain memories attributed as memories, not stated as fact.
- A read-back conversation, and a thank-you note afterwards.
Photo: StartupStockPhotos / Pixabay