# The author interview

When the readers find nothing at stake (nothing survived recall, near-total
portability, no admissions, no events), line edits are the wrong tool: the
draft is missing material, and the only person who has it is the author.
The interview collects that material. It is the one moment this skill
generates words, and the discipline below exists so those words stay the
author's.

## When to offer it

Offer once, in the verdict, in one sentence: "The readers found nothing
only you could have written. Want me to interview you for ten minutes and
then re-run?" If the author declines, deliver the findings as usual and
stop. Never start interviewing uninvited, and never frame the offer as
the draft being bad; frame it as the draft being empty of them.

## How to ask

One question per message, then wait. Never a questionnaire. Follow the
energy: when an answer has a specific in it (a number, a name, a failure,
a fight), the next question digs there, not at the next item on your list.

Ask for events, never for opinions. The difference:

- Not "what do you think about eval metrics?" but "tell me about a time a
  metric lied to you. What did it cost?"
- Not "why is this important?" but "what happened that made you sit down
  and write this?"
- Not "what would you tell beginners?" but "what did you do wrong the
  first time?"

The six questions that most reliably surface stakes, adapted to the piece:

1. What actually happened? (the incident behind the thesis)
2. What did it cost, in hours, money, or embarrassment?
3. Who disagrees with you about this, and what is their best argument?
4. What did you believe before that you don't believe now?
5. What example from your own work would you show if the reader were
   sitting next to you?
6. What are you still unsure about?

Question 3 and 6 matter most: disagreement and uncertainty are the two
signals a hollow draft never contains, because they cannot be generated,
only owned.

Stop when you have two or three concrete events with details, or when two
questions in a row come back thin. A thin answer gets ONE follow-up
("when that happened, what did you actually do?"); if it stays thin, move
on. Do not squeeze; absent material is a finding too, and it is fine to
end with "the piece may want to wait until this has happened to you."

## How to write from the answers

- Capture the author's phrasing verbatim during the interview; their
  wording of an event is almost always better than your paraphrase of it.
- Weave their answers into the draft where the hollow passages were, in
  their words wherever the words work. Connective tissue may be yours;
  events, numbers, names, positions, and doubts must be theirs.
- Never upgrade an answer. "It took a while" does not become "it took
  three weeks". "Some people disagreed" does not become a named skeptic.
  If a detail matters and they were vague, ask again instead of writing.
- Show the rewritten passages as tracked changes (see room.md), tell the
  author these are their answers arranged, and ask them to read once for
  anything that is not true in their voice.
- Then re-run with fresh readers. The interview succeeded if the recall
  test now returns their material, not your arrangement of it.