Writing, Interviewing And Proof-Reading Skills

There may be occasions when you need to write contributions for the magazine yourself. If you have a wide range of contributors this will be less important, but it is an important skill to have if needed. There is probably no substitute for a good course on these topics, but here are a few basic points to give you a grounding.

Writing Skills

Some of the key points to remember are considered below.

Relevance

Make sure that what you write is relevant to the topic. You should keep to the point and help your readers to understand why what you are writing is relevant. Avoid going off at tangents and make sure that any examples or anecdotes are clearly related to the main direction of your writing.

Clarity

Make your writing clear so that it can easily be understood. There are measures of clarity, such as the FOG index; these indicate that the shorter your sentences and the fewer syllables your words have, the easier your text is to read and understand. You can check this for yourself by looking at a variety of magazines, selecting a ‘typical’ article from each one, and then taking three separate sentences from each article. Count the number of words the three sentences contain in total and multiply that number by the number of words the three sentences have that contain three syllables or more. This will give you a numerical figure. Compare the final figure for each of the publications you have selected – the lower the figure, the easier it should be to make sense of the writing.

Brevity

Make your writing reasonably short and succinct, unless you are producing something that needs particularly lengthy, or in-depth, construction. The more technical, or academic, your magazine is, the more scope you will probably have for longer writing.

Structure

Make sure that the items you write have a beginning, a middle and an end – this may sound obvious but people do not always follow this practice. The beginning should introduce the topic, the middle should explore it and the end should review, sum up or provide conclusions. You should also show the connection between points as they occur, by referring back to the overall purpose of the piece and by using linking phrases and sentences to show the direction you are taking.

Style

Make sure you adapt your writing style to the kind of magazine you are producing. Refer back to the chapter (Chapter 4) on selecting a format and check that the words you use to describe your magazine are echoed in the writing style you select. As a brief reminder, some styles are:

chatty
serious
motivating
down to earth
campaigning

Interviewing Skills

Some key points here are considered below.

Arranging The Interview

You will need to agree with the interviewee that they are willing to be interviewed. You will also need to find a mutually convenient time for the interview to take place.

Selecting The Environment

You will need to find a suitable place, without interruptions, if you are meeting face to face, or somewhere quiet if you are conducting the interview on the telephone. You can also conduct interviews by email but, if you do this, you should make sure that you are correctly ‘interpreting’ what the interviewee says – without accompanying voice patterns and tonality, or ‘body language’ you may read the responses in an inappropriate way.

Planning The Interview

It is helpful to plan the main points you would like to cover. This will help you structure what you ask and will enable you to give the interviewee an idea of the topics you wish to cover. Some possible topics are:

historical information
biographical information
technical information
opinions and attitudes
new developments
controversial issues
issues of specific relevance to your readership

Deciding What To Ask

You may plan to ask some specific questions, but it is also helpful to formulate questions as you go along, depending on the responses you are getting from the interviewee. Remember:

to be aware of any sensitive issues
to avoid questions which ‘lead’ the interviewee; i.e. make the person more likely to give a particular response
to avoid questions that are discriminatory
to consider a range of question types (for example ‘closed’ questions to elicit facts – e.g. ‘Where did you study?’; ‘How long were you there?’, ‘open’ questions to elicit opinions and exploration – e.g. ‘How did you handle that situation?’; ‘What were your reactions to the proposals?’)
to include questions that are particularly likely to interest readers
to make your questions interesting and varied
to allow the interviewee to come across as a person