What we are doing tonight
You are going to interview someone else in this class, and they are going to interview you. Then each of you is going to write a short piece about the other one — not about yourself. At the end you will read what you wrote to the person it is about, before anyone else hears a word of it, and they will tell you what to take out.
Two things about that, and they are the whole reason it works.
You decide what is on the table. Before anybody asks anybody anything, you are going to write down three things you are willing to be asked about tonight, and one thing you are not. You hand that to your partner. You do not explain it, and nobody will ask you to.
You decide what leaves the room. Nothing written about you gets read aloud unless you say so, and anything in it you want gone is gone. You do not have to give a reason for that either.
So why do this at all, in a class about reading and writing for a test?
Because it is the test, in small. The GED essay hands you two writers, and asks you to say what they argued and to prove it using their own words. That is the same job as writing about the person you just spoke with: you have a source, you have to get them right, and you have to use what they actually said instead of what you assume. It is easier to practice on a person sitting across from you than on a stranger in a printed passage. And when you can do it with a person, the passage stops being frightening.
It is also, plainly, the first night. We are going to be in a room together for some months. It is better to be in it with people whose names and work and histories you know something about.
Your card
Fill this in first. It takes a few minutes. When it is done you give it to your partner, and their questions have to come off it.
The three things can be small. They are not confessions. They are doors. Any of these would do:
- a job you have had, or have now
- a place you have lived, or left
- something you know how to do that most people do not
- somebody who taught you something
- a language, and where you speak it
- what you cook, or what someone cooked for you
- music, a team, a show, a book, a game
- a routine — what a Tuesday actually looks like
- a trip, long or short
- a time you changed your mind about something
- why you are in this class
The fourth line is the one that is off the table tonight. Write it down even if it feels obvious, and write it down even if it feels like nobody would have asked. Putting it in writing is what makes it a rule instead of a hope.
No reasons. Nobody asks why.
If you would rather not be asked about your own life at all tonight — that is allowed and it is not a lesser version of the assignment. Write three things you know how to do on the card instead: a skill, a trade, a craft, a process, a game you are good at. Your partner interviews you about the work, and writes about the work. You will be doing the same reading and writing everyone else is doing.
Writing the questions
This part is a skill, and it is the one most people have never been taught. A question is a tool. Some questions open a door and some close it, and you can tell which is which before you ever ask.
A closed question can be answered with one word. Yes. No. Eleven years. Queens. There is nothing wrong with a closed question — you need a few to get facts straight — but if you ask six of them you will have six words and nothing to write about.
An open question cannot be answered in one word without the person feeling rude. It asks for a scene, an order of events, a reason, a comparison. It gives them room to talk, and it gives you something to write down.
Here are the same subjects, asked both ways.
| Closes the door | Opens it |
|---|---|
| Do you like your job? | What does the first hour of your shift look like? |
| Was it hard? | What was the hardest part, and when did you find that out? |
| Are you from New York? | Where did you grow up, and what was on your block? |
| Do you cook? | Walk me through something you can make without a recipe. |
| Do you have kids? | Who is at your table on a normal night? |
| Do you speak Spanish? | Where do you speak Spanish and where do you speak English, in one day? |
| Why did you come back to school? | What happened in the weeks before you signed up for this class? |
| Are you good at it? | What do you know about it now that you did not know at the start? |
Notice what the open ones have in common. They ask for a picture, a sequence, or a change. Those are the three things that produce sentences worth writing down.
If you get stuck, start a question with one of these. They almost always work:
- What does … look like?
- Walk me through …
- Who taught you …?
- What surprised you about …?
- When did you first …?
- What would you tell somebody who was about to …?
- What is the part people get wrong about …?
- How is it different now from …?
Now write six questions for your partner — not six general questions, six questions that could only be asked of the person whose card is in front of you. At least four of them must be open.
Four open, at least. Read them over once and cross out any that can be answered with one word — unless you meant it that way.
The interview
Fifteen minutes one way, then you switch and it is fifteen minutes the other way. One of you asks and writes; the other one talks. Then you trade.
The four rules
- Write down what they say, not what you think about it. You are taking down a record, not forming an opinion.
- Get at least three exact phrases, word for word, in quotation marks. The moment a sentence strikes you, write it exactly and put the marks around it right then, so that later you know for certain those words are theirs and not yours.
- Follow up. Your six questions are a floor, not a ceiling. The best question of the night is almost always the one you did not plan, asked right after something they said. If they say a thing you did not expect, ask about that thing.
- If they pass on a question, move on. No second try, no face, no comment. Next question.
On taking notes while somebody is talking. Do not try to write complete sentences — you will fall behind and stop listening, and the listening is the part that matters. Write fragments. Write the number, the name, the street, the object. And when a phrase lands, stop and take that one down whole. Three whole phrases and a page of fragments is a good night's notes.
If the talking dries up early, it usually means the last question was closed. Ask what something looked like, or who else was there, or what happened next.
Writing about your partner
Between 250 and 400 words about the person you just interviewed. Not a report. Not a form. A piece of writing that somebody who has never met them could read and come away knowing something true.
It has to have
- their name
- at least three of their exact words, in quotation marks
- at least one specific thing — a place, a number, a time of day, an object, a street. Not “she works hard.” The thing that made you think so.
It does not need an introduction. It does not need a conclusion. It does not need to say what kind of person they are in general — leave that to the reader, who will work it out from the specific things, the way you did.
If you do not know how to start
This is the most common problem in writing and it is not a sign of anything. Here are three ways in. Any one of them will do.
Start with one of their sentences. Take the best of the three phrases you wrote down and make it your first line. Then say who said it and go on. This is not a trick and it is not cheating — it is what writers do with a source, and the whole GED essay is built on it. A piece that begins with somebody else's words is already past the hardest part.
Start at the moment they came alive. Somewhere in those fifteen minutes their voice changed and they stopped answering and started telling. Start there. Describe what they were talking about when it happened.
Start with the thing that surprised you. One fact about them was not what you expected. Put it in the first sentence, plainly, with no build-up.
If you want a first few words to push off from, any of these will carry you into a second sentence:
- “___,” ___ said, and then explained …
- Before ___ ever ___, she …
- The thing ___ wanted me to understand was …
- For ___ years, ___ has …
- I asked ___ about ___. I did not expect …
- On a normal Tuesday, ___ is …
And if you are stuck at word ninety and the clock is running: go back to your notes and find a phrase you have not used yet. Put it in. Then say what was happening when they said it. That will take you another sixty words, and sixty words is usually enough to get moving again.
The read-back
You go back into a pair, and you read what you wrote to the person it is about. Out loud. Before anybody else in the class hears it.
Then they get two decisions, and both of them are theirs alone.
- Anything they want taken out comes out. A sentence, a detail, a quotation, the whole thing. They do not have to say why, and you do not get to argue for it. If you got something wrong, they fix it and you write down the correction.
- They decide whether it is read to the room. Yes or no. No is a complete answer.
That is the part that makes the rest of it possible. It is easy to be careless writing about somebody who will never read it. It is a different kind of attention when you know you are going to read it to their face in twenty minutes — and that attention is exactly what the essay wants from you later, when the source is a stranger in a passage who cannot object.
Whatever survives the read-back and gets a yes belongs to this class. Together, those pieces are the first thing we will have written here: a set of short accounts of the people in the room, each one approved by the person it describes. We will come back to them.