Some tips on how it’s done…
Interviewer: Which days do you write?
Ann: Each Monday I have to choose from a list of four or five, so that day I’m immersed in reading, taking 20 to 30 pages of notes, Tuesdays I’m writing for the 5 pm deadline.
Interviewer: Who do you choose?
Ann: A variety. Someone perhaps less well-known. My heart sinks when someone enormously famous dies, like Thatcher.
Interviewer: The content?
Ann: I look for an interesting life, quirky stories. Like the man who sailed across the world navigating by watching weed on the water. Or the Wuhan doctor who loved food.
Interviewer: The structure?
Ann: The opening paragraph is a story. Less like conventional journalism, I like to go from the small details to the big picture, from the particular to the general. I avoid chronology. The final paragraph can be elegiac, perhaps recalling the first paragraph.
Interviewer: The voice?
Ann: I try to channel them through their quotations from interviews. Tell their own story.
Interviewer: So it’s their words?
Ann: Yes, I don’t try to connect the dots, to invent. It’s not a novel.
Interviewer: I know a lot of people turn to the obituary at the end of the paper to begin.
Ann: Well, it’s an easier lead-in to the politics and economics leaders which talk at you.
__________
Voice-over
A distillation of the thoughts of the accomplished Ann Wroe, obituaries editor for The Economist.
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