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The first book I bought when I got my first tech writer/editor job was The
Craft of Interviewing [Writer's Digest Books], as I was faced with many
engineers & scientists as SMEs [& internal customers!] frmo whom I needed to
get the info for every project I worked on. It's 25 yrs old now, and no
doubt many others are as good or better perhaps?, but it's a fine start.
Beyond semi-obvious common-sense advice, Brady lays out useful approaches to
getting what you need.
BTW, Writer's Digest [ http://www.writersdigest.com ] has lots of useful
writers' references, how-to's and such. Very useful for TWs & any other kind
of writer you aspire to be.
> -----Original Message-----
> Subject: RE: Interview Techniques
>
> Guy A. McDonald wrote:
> >I would like to see this discussion move toward interview techniques.
> Some
> >of our greatest challenges for data capture involve human factors.
>
> One day, as I lurched from SME to SME, I found myself muttering,
> "I'm not a tech-writer, I'm an investigative journalist." After
> listening to myself, I looked up journalistic techniques in the
> nearest university library, and cribbed some titles from the
> reading list of some local journalism courses.
>
