When you need a few good anecdotes or stories to convey a point, how do you get them? The normal source is interviews. People you interview reveal all kinds of snippets that drive home points in a colorful way. But getting stories—other than from born storytellers—poses a challenge.

Getting good anecdotal material, especially in sit-down interviews, demands both skill and luck. If you have trouble, you’re not alone. Even seasoned journalists complain of not being able to get sources to tell a good tale. But there are tricks to put your sources in storytelling mode:

• Tell a story on yourself: If your source doesn’t offer an anecdote, tell a related one yourself. You’ll often find people respond to a story with a story of their own. People are wired that way.
• Come across as unhurried: Pressing a source to come up with story details often triggers the contrary effect. The door slams shut on the memory channels that lead to anecdotes.
• Talk kids: Tell a relevant story about children, yours or others’. People let their guard down when kids come up. In fact, kids trigger human stories of all kinds.
• Be stupid: By all means prepare for an interview, but feign ignorance to your advantage. Pop a dumb question and you often prompt an explanation that leads to a good story.
• Pretend to end: When you make motions to wrap up, sources often rethink what they’ve said from the start. They also often shift into small talk and storytelling mode. Keep your recorder running.

You can always ask your source for a story, but that rarely works. Only a few people go into storytelling mode on request.

Of all the tricks, I find that nothing works better than pretending to end. I’ve often gotten my best material after putting my notebook away, standing up, and grabbing my briefcase. I once interviewed a scientist who spoke vaguely about his boss, who I desperately wanted to profile. Just as I was going through the motions to wrap up, he gave me a nugget: If you want to know about my boss, he said, you should read a Washington Post article, “Why Turkeys Rule the World.” That was a good anecdote and taught me once again that the best part of the interview isn’t over until it’s over.

[Revised January 2020. Originally published April 19, 2011]