The term that gets used and rarely explained
Anyone who has sat through a few interview courses has heard the phrase open question. It usually arrives with a quick nod and a wave of the hand, as though everyone already knew what it meant. In this note I want to slow down and say it in ordinary words, because it is the single most useful term in Module 2: Question Preparation.
An open question is one that cannot be answered with a single word or a short fact. It invites the guest to explain, describe or reflect. A closed question, by contrast, has a narrow door: yes, no, a number, a name. Neither type is wrong. The trouble starts when a whole session is built from closed questions and the recording ends up sounding like a form being filled in.
The reason this matters on camera is practical. Viewers and event audiences listen for the guest's reasoning, not for confirmation of facts the interviewer already holds. Open questions give the guest room to supply that reasoning in their own voice, which is the material you will later cut into excerpts.
Closed and open, side by side
Take a subject specialist who restores old furniture. A closed version of a question would be: did you learn this trade from a relative? The guest says yes, and the room goes quiet. The open version asks how they first came to work with their hands, and now there is a story to follow, with places, people and turning points.
Notice that the open version is not longer or fancier. It simply hands the guest the choice of where to begin. That small shift is what the course asks learners to practise in the first drafting exercise, where each closed question on a list is rewritten and compared with the original.
Closed questions still have a job. They confirm a detail, settle a spelling of a name, or bring a wandering answer back to a point. Used sparingly and on purpose, they act like a hand on the wheel rather than a wall in front of the guest.
- Closed: a single word or fact will do
- Open: the guest has to explain or describe
- Closed questions are useful for checking details
- Open questions carry the substance of the session
Words that usually open the door
You do not need a clever vocabulary. Questions that begin with how, what, why, or a request such as tell me about tend to open things up. Compare asking whether a project was difficult with asking what made it difficult. The second assumes there was something worth telling and lets the guest choose it.
A caution about why: it can sound like a challenge, especially to guests who are not used to being recorded. Softening it, for instance by asking what led to a decision rather than why the guest made it, keeps the tone calm. Respect for the guest is one of the values we keep returning to, and phrasing is where it shows first.
Another habit worth breaking is stacking two or three questions into one breath. The guest answers the last one and the others are lost. One question, then silence, is far kinder to everyone, and it makes the edit easier too.
- How and what usually invite explanation
- Tell me about opens a story
- Soften why when the guest is nervous
- Ask one question at a time
Ordering questions into a sensible arc
A list of good open questions is still only a list. The course asks learners to arrange them into an arc: easy and familiar at the start, deeper in the middle, and reflective near the close. Beginning with the hardest material rarely goes well, because the guest has not yet settled into the conversation.
One way to test your arc is to read only the first line of each question aloud, in order. If it sounds like a conversation someone might actually have, the order is probably sound. If it jumps between decades and topics, regroup the questions around two or three threads before you meet the guest.
The arc is a plan, not a script. Part of Module 2 is learning to leave a prepared question unasked when the guest has already answered it by accident. Preparation should make you flexible, not rigid.
Preparing follow-ups for specialists
Subject specialists often answer in compressed professional shorthand. A follow-up is what lets the audience catch up. Phrases such as can you give me an example, or what would that look like to someone new to it, cost nothing and often produce the best lines in the whole recording.
Prepare a few follow-ups in advance for each main question, but keep them short and generic enough to fit whatever the guest actually says. Writing them in the margin next to the question, rather than on a separate sheet, keeps your eyes in one place during the session.
From the editing side, which is where I work with learners in Module 5, follow-ups are valuable for another reason. A clear example offered after a dense answer often becomes the excerpt that stands on its own, because it explains itself without needing the rest of the recording.
- Ask for an example when an answer is abstract
- Ask what it would mean to a newcomer
- Note follow-ups beside each main question
A short exercise to try this week
Write ten questions for any guest you might realistically interview, a colleague or someone in your community will do. Mark each one open or closed. Rewrite every closed question in an open form and read the two versions aloud to hear the difference in how they invite a reply.
Then number the survivors into an arc and add one follow-up beside each. This takes under an hour and gives you a working draft to bring to the written feedback stage of the course, where an instructor comments on what the list would actually do in a live session.
As the autumn evenings draw in, many event organisers begin planning winter programmes. A prepared list of open questions is a good thing to have finished before the calendar fills.
An open question is simply one that leaves the answer to the guest. Learning to write them, order them and back them with follow-ups is a modest skill, but it changes what ends up on the recording and what you can later cut from it. Start with a short list, test it aloud, and keep the habit of one question at a time. Everything else in the preparation stage builds on that plain foundation.