Preparing a spokesperson for an interview

Start from the questions, not the messages

The common failure is to arrive with a list of points to make and no view of the questions that will actually be asked. A recorded conversation is driven by the host, and a guest who is steering toward their own list is audible as a guest who is steering. Listeners forgive an imperfect answer far more readily than a rehearsed one.

A more useful preparation is to write down the eight or ten questions the conversation is likely to reach, including the two that would be uncomfortable, and to answer each of them out loud once. Not to memorise the answers, but to find out which ones collapse when spoken. An answer that reads well and speaks badly is common enough that the only reliable test is the spoken one.

Decide the boundary before the recording

Every subject has a boundary somewhere: a matter that is not settled, a decision that belongs to someone else, a detail that cannot be discussed yet. The boundary should be decided before the recording begins and stated plainly when it is reached. "That is not settled, and I would rather not guess at it on the record" is a complete answer, and it costs nothing.

What does cost something is discovering the boundary mid-sentence. A guest who begins an answer, realises halfway through that it cannot be finished, and reverses out of it leaves a far worse impression than a guest who declined at the outset. The reversal is audible; the decline is not.

Practical habits that survive the edit

1. Answer the question that was asked before adding the context you wanted to add, rather than the other way round.
2. Leave a full beat of silence before answering; it edits cleanly and it reads as consideration rather than hesitation.
3. Finish sentences. A trailing sentence cannot be cut, so it forces an editor to keep whatever followed it.
4. Use one figure per topic at most, and round it to the shape you want remembered.
5. Say a correction as its own sentence rather than folding it into the next one, so it can stand on its own if the surrounding material is trimmed.
6. Assume every sentence may be extracted and played alone, and avoid any sentence that only makes sense with the one before it.

After the recording

Very few hosts will offer approval of the edit, and asking for it usually reads as distrust. What can reasonably be offered is a written correction of anything factual that was said wrongly, sent promptly, without argument about interpretation. Most hosts will take a factual correction into the show notes gladly and will remember the guest who made it easy.