How To Shorten An Interview Recording | “Where did my 30 seconds go?"

How To Edit An Interview

My friend Robert Twigger allowed me to interview him. He wanted a video to put on his website, aimed at writers looking for coaching and mentoring.

Rob (left) is a fellow author. Picture shows us together at Trinity College Dublin.

So I interviewed Rob on Zoom for about eight mins. Then I cut it right back – removing myself entirely, and removing bits that Rob obviously wouldn’t want or need.

You can watch that Rough Cut (90 secs) here in Black and White, and immediately afterwards (in the same video) the Fine Cut (59 secs) in colour.

I challenge you, as you watch, to tell me how I cut 30 seconds from it? (To make it easier for you, I’m pasting the transcript below.)

ROUGH CUT (90 secs)

Thank you for coming to my website. I really appreciate it.

So you’ve written a book, or you’ve written a chapter plan, or you just thought about a book, you came out of a bookshop, and you thought I could write one of those. What’s the next step?

How do you go from thinking that you might be a writer as a dream or a fantasy to actually achieving it?

Over time, I have helped a lot of people go from an idea – from a series of experiences. For example, Shaun Bithell’s Diary of a Bookseller. He showed that to me just as just the things that he’d written down, funny things that people had had said to him, and gradually over time that evolved into a manuscript that became a best selling – well, first of several best selling books. So that started from somebody just literally writing things down, in between customers coming in and out of his shop.

What I want to do is offer you the chance of achieving your ambition, your dream, to write a book, and to write the best book you can write.

So what do you do now? Well, you can drop me a line, drop me an email, and tell me what project you’re involved in, or want to be involved in or what you want to get out of this coaching. And also, you can talk to me for 20 minutes, it won’t cost anything. We can talk a bit more and find out whether we can progress it, whether it works for us both. And take it from that. So send me an email!

FINE CUT (59 secs)

Thank you for coming to my website. I really appreciate it.

So you’ve written a book, you’ve written a chapter plan, or you just thought about a book. What’s the next step? How do you go from thinking that you might be a writer as a dream or a fantasy to actually achieving it?

Over time, I have helped a lot of people go from an idea – for example, Shaun Bithell, Diary of a Bookseller. He showed that to me, just as just as the things that he’d written down, funny things that people had had said to him, and gradually over time that evolved into a manuscript that became a best selling – well, the first of several best selling books. But that started from somebody just literally writing things down, in between customers coming in and out of the shop.

What I want to do is offer you the chance of achieving your ambition, your dream, to write a book, and to write the best book you can write.

So what do you do now? Tell me what projects you’re involved in or what you want to get out of this coaching. You can talk to me for 20 minutes, it won’t cost anything, and take it from that. So send me an email!