"Sounds Like a Story"

by Loren Goodman

People can be sensitive to how they sound on the tape recorder, so you have to work with that, you have to shape that into something that they'll be comfortable with but that will still retain those elements of personal speech and still sounds like a story.

And then there are things like finding the right title for a story. That's something I learned from Bruce Jackson's book, In the Life. I take the story title from the person's own words within the narrative. I like that because it's a kind of organic method. But that's not the only way to create a title. Sometimes I can't use a selection of speech from within the piece, so I make a title based upon the subject, the conventional way, or like a painter might do for the title for a painting, associational.

Sometimes you work in a kind of team, with Jessica Thorpe, Shelley Romoff, and Pam Beale. One person might give the interview, another might do the transcription, and another might edit the story. Or maybe I edit the story and I am very happy with how the story turned out, but I'm not happy with my title; I can pass it on and Jessica might come up with a much better title. That's collaboration; even from the beginning the interview itself is a kind of collaboration.