Recognising When a Subject Is Performing, Not Recalling
Launch library · evergreen read
Some answers arrive too smoothly, carrying the practised polish of a story told many times before rather than the slight hesitation and visible searching for the right word that usually accompanies a genuinely fresh act of remembering something specific and detailed from the past, rather than rehearsed for effect.
Recognising this difference is not really about accusing a subject of dishonesty, since a well worn story can still be entirely true in every particular, it is about knowing precisely when to ask a question the subject has genuinely not been asked before, one that requires actual recall rather than familiar recitation.
A useful technique here is asking about a small, unglamorous detail: what the room smelled like at the time, what someone else in the scene happened to be wearing, what time of day it actually was, since rehearsed stories rarely include this kind of incidental, unplanned texture at all.