Roast My New Series

Hi Todd! First of all, congratulations on starting this project. Choosing interviews as my main research tool has been rewarding in more ways than one. So whatever I say right now in hopes of helping you, don't let it defer you from continuing your work. Our job as writers is to test 99 ways that don't work before we find the 1 combination that does.

Just because it's an interview, doesn't mean it's a good story. I've literally scoured through 100s of interviews (and did about 20-30 of them myself) for articles and I had to face the unpleasant truth that just because a real person tells their story doesn't mean it's a good story. I don't want to be too harsh, but Elizabeth's interview is just a bunch of truisms. No challenging perspective or detailed story of how she overcame this or that challenge.

My suggestion: if the goal is to grow your blog, look for interviews done by others. There are literally millions of golden stories hidden in podcasts, and nobody's turning them into articles or books. Visit my Medium for inspiration. ALTERNATIVELY: if you want to actually interview people, make sure they have a story to tell, and then work on your questions. Check out Dave School's article about Cal Fussman- one of the best interviewers of all time.

After you do that, I highly suggest working on your titles and article structure.

TITLES: It's every writer's wet dream to write an abstract, fancy-sounding title that attract readers. Unfortunately, that rarely works. You're literally competing against Youtube, Medium, the news, Facebook and all other fun activities people could be doing instead of reading your article. If the first 6 words of your title don't convey something they CANNOT ignore, then they won't click.

STRUCTURE: You're not taking advantage of the possibilities writing provides. Structuring your article like an interview begs the question: why not just upload the interview itself? Instead, I would suggest selecting 2-3 key findings, structure them into paragraphs, and then insert quotes where necessary.

I hope you find these suggestions useful. Either way, please keep doing what you're doing.

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Hi Todd! First of all, congratulations on starting this project. Choosing interviews as my main research tool has been rewarding in more ways than one. So whatever I say right now in hopes of helping you, don't let it defer you from continuing your work. Our job as writers is to test 99 ways that don't work before we find the 1 combination that does.
1. Just because it's an interview, doesn't mean it's a good story. I've literally scoured through 100s of interviews (and did about 20-30 of them myself) for articles and I had to face the unpleasant truth that just because a real person tells their story doesn't mean it's a good story. I don't want to be too harsh, but Elizabeth's interview is just a bunch of truisms. No challenging perspective or detailed story of how she overcame this or that challenge.
My suggestion: if the goal is to grow your blog, look for interviews done by others. There are literally millions of golden stories hidden in podcasts, and nobody's turning them into articles or books. Visit my Medium for inspiration. ALTERNATIVELY: if you want to actually interview people, make sure they have a story to tell, and then work on your questions. Check out Dave School's article about Cal Fussman- one of the best interviewers of all time.
1. After you do that, I highly suggest working on your titles and article structure.
TITLES: It's every writer's wet dream to write an abstract, fancy-sounding title that attract readers. Unfortunately, that rarely works. You're literally competing against Youtube, Medium, the news, Facebook and all other fun activities people could be doing instead of reading your article. If the first 6 words of your title don't convey something they CANNOT ignore, then they won't click.

STRUCTURE: You're not taking advantage of the possibilities writing provides. Structuring your article like an interview begs the question: why not just upload the interview itself? Instead, I would suggest selecting 2-3 key findings, structure them into paragraphs, and then insert quotes where necessary.

I hope you find these suggestions useful. Either way, please keep doing what you're doing.
alan_trapulionis

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6 years ago
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