What seems to set really good non-fiction and journalistic writing apart is the creation of whole, three-dimensional, empathetic characters. Readers don’t care about issues as much as they care about people. They want to see themselves in the people they’re reading about. They acquire their understanding of the issue at hand as a by-product.

    Say you’re writing a longish piece about a particular patch of forest land that is about to be bulldozed for development. You will, of course, make the rounds to the opponents, the developers, the local government officials, the people who live in or near the forest. But if the Developer in your piece -- capital D -- is nothing but a two-dimensional fount of business-speak, and if the Environmentalist is nothing but a one-note pluckster on the value of the ecosystem, the piece will be flat and forgettable. Somehow, you’ve got to convey that this developer is a real person, with a complicated worldview and set of life experiences that leads him to want to bulldoze the forest. Ditto the environmentalist and the others. So you’ve got to get them to open up to you, to bare their souls and show their vulnerabilities. The question is, how do you do that?

    Two tricks come to mind, and the first is a luxury not all reporters have: time. Spending a lot of time with your sources is crucial.  Meeting for a one-hour lunch might be fine for a newspaper article. But for anything longer -- a magazine piece, certainly a book -- it just won’t do. All you’ll get is the stuff the person is prepared to say, the stuff on the surface. Multiple interviews are best; each time you peel them down another layer. But sometimes the best time you spend with a source is the time you spend not talking at all. I’ve found that just sitting quietly on the porch, drinking beer from the six-pack I’ve brought along, has been some of the most valuable time I’ve spent with sources. The conversations that follow times like that are frequently golden.

    The other trick is one anybody can use, regardless of how little time the writer has, and is frequently overlooked: Ask questions completely unrelated to the subject at hand. Talking to that developer? Suddenly throw in a question like, “How many siblings to have, and where do you fall in the lineup?” “What do you do for fun?” “What are you reading lately?” Often, it seems, the answers that come back not only give you personal details, but the way they’re spoken lend insight into why the person feels the way he does about the issue at hand. Very little of the data you get back will actually go in your story, probably. But it will help you make the person real -- complete -- on the page. And very often, those off-topic conversations provide the tiny fillip of pathos that makes the entire story make a deeper, more memorable sense.