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Back to Malcolm Gladwell: The Most Useful Hour You'll Ever Spend on Storytelling | How I Write, with Malcolm Gladwell.

Who Should Writers Interview for a Story?

Malcolm Gladwell says writers should interview the person who can bring the most specificity to a topic. The most important person does not help. In nonfiction the writer sets up the context, and the subjects supply the granularity.

He once spent two hours with one of the guys from Vampire Weekend, and at least half of the interview stayed on one line in a song. The musician used an incredibly specific bit of music and lyrics because he happened to want to focus on that line. Cardiac surgeon John Puskas, one of the pioneers of minimally invasive cardiac surgery, gave a 99th percentile interview. Puskas is Canadian, grew up in a mining town in Northern Ontario, and is now a fancy surgeon in Emory. He matches an old-school Canadian type: proper, English, plain spoken, precise, and a little earthy, the kind of people who live in the Toronto neighborhood Rosedale. Bypass surgery means cutting the sternum, prying open the ribs, facing the heart, hooking it to an external machine, and sewing on an artery. Minimally invasive surgery leaves the chest closed and uses a tiny incision, a camera, thin long instruments, and sometimes a robot.

The easiest move, and in many ways the best one, is for the writer to supply the context and take the granularity from someone who can be that specific.

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Transcript

Malcolm Gladwell: The Most Useful Hour You'll Ever Spend on Storytelling | How I Write ·

How I Write

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  1. Why Does Writing Make Malcolm Gladwell Get Lost?Malcolm Gladwell gets lost when he stands up from deep writing because he uses the same part of his brain for writing that he uses to make sense of direction.
  2. Why Does Day of the Jackal Read Like a How-to?Malcolm Gladwell says Day of the Jackal reads like a how-to, and he calls it the most important book of its genre.
  3. How Does Malcolm Gladwell Find the Story in His Research?Malcolm Gladwell finds the story by talking with no plan until one detail clicks.
  4. Why Does Malcolm Gladwell Give Readers a Framework?Malcolm Gladwell says writers who do his kind of writing have an obligation to give people tools to organize their experience.
  5. How Does Malcolm Gladwell Find the Moment a Story Turns on?Malcolm Gladwell finds the moment a story turns on by listening back to a long interview and building the piece around the line that turns one case into a…
  6. Does Malcolm Gladwell Regret Broken Windows?Malcolm Gladwell fell in love with broken windows in Tipping Point, and he has regretted that choice many times.
  7. What Would Malcolm Gladwell Teach First in a Writing Class?Malcolm Gladwell would start a writing class by teaching students how to ask questions.

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