How to write up the interview into narrative form

Think about the material you have. Listen again to the interview. What is the important story to tell? What personal quality do you want to emphasize? What feature or time period in your person’s life do you want to write about? Choose only the slant (point-of-view or POV) you want to highlight.

Begin your narrative essay with a fascinating story, fact, or quotation from your interviewee. Let that set the tone and direction for the whole essay. If you begin with a story, don’t finish it until later in the essay. Keep your readers interested.

Include a short description of your person, including the age, soon after the introduction. For instance, “Marie, 79, sat on a little chair with her back straight, looking like a tiny bird on a still wire.” Include mannerisms and perhaps the sound of his or her voice (“scratchy,” for example). Use direct quotations. This way, readers will be able to see and hear your person.

If you need to back up and tell how your person got into the introductory story, write his or her history chronologically. Then catch readers up to the story. For instance, if you begin the narrative essay with the trapeze artist hanging upside down by her toes caught in the rope, back up and tell about her life and how she came to be a trapeze artist, how she admired her mother and wanted to fly just like her mother did. When you catch up to your story, finish off the initial story so readers know what finally happened to your person. Don’t leave them hanging, so to speak.

Tell how these events affected your interviewee, what she learned from all this, or how her life has affected you. Draw conclusions about the story, time period, or the character trait you highlighted.

You are writing to inform and entertain your audience. So inform. Entertain. And enjoy this amazing glimpse into someone else’s life.