The most common ghostwriting request I decline is the one where a client wants me to help them interview their own parent for a memoir. I decline because it almost never works. The dynamics between an adult child and their parent are not the dynamics of an interview. They are the dynamics of every dinner, every phone call, every visit since 1978.
Why it goes wrong
The child asks a question. The parent gives the answer they have given the child for forty years. The child hears the answer they have heard for forty years. The interview stalls at the first question.
Or the child asks a question the parent has never been asked before. The parent, sensing the change in register, treats it as a challenge rather than a question. The parent gets defensive. The child, sensing the defensiveness, gets frustrated. What was meant to be an interview becomes the argument the two of them have been avoiding.
How to do it anyway
Three techniques help. First, do the interview somewhere neutral. Not the parent's house. Not your house. A café. A hotel lobby. A park bench. The change of setting resets the register.
Second, use a recorder and put it visible on the table. Say, this is for the book. This changes the interaction. Your parent knows they are speaking to the book, not to you. They will edit themselves differently. You will listen differently.
Third, ask questions in the third person. Not what was it like when you moved to Chicago. Ask, what was it like for a young man from a village in Kerala to arrive in Chicago in 1974. The third person creates the distance the interview needs.
What still goes wrong
Emotional questions will still catch you off guard. Your parent will still say something that hurts. You will still want to argue. Do not argue during the interview. Write down what they said. Finish the interview. Argue about it a week later if you have to. The interview is for the record. The argument is a different conversation.
When to hire a ghostwriter
When the parent is a stranger to you. When the topic is a shame the parent has never spoken of. When your presence in the room will make the parent say less rather than more. In those cases, hire someone. It is not weakness. It is the correct tool for a specific problem.
Comments (5)
This is going to help so many people.
The hardest interview I have ever done was my own mother. Everything Owais wrote here is why.
Third person questioning. Never tried this. Will try it next week with my father. Reporting back.
The visible recorder rule. Signals the register change. Small thing, huge effect.
The neutral setting suggestion changed the way I work with families in my own work. It is worth the price of the flight to a hotel.