how to answer a yes/no question

Long ago, I read an article sharing writing tips the author 'stole' from Chuck Klosterman (1). Like any set of tips (except steak tips, obviously) I thought a few were good and a few were ignorable. The one I remembered for the longest time was his recommendation to learn how to interview someone. "It's a lost art," he said, or something like that.

Originally, I thought he meant writers were no longer doing enough of the standard 'Q&A' to cultivate these skills on the job. But I realized about a year ago that I may have been mistaken. What he (may have) meant was how most people by default did a terrible job at answering questions. Therefore, someone who wanted to get questions answered (like, say, a budding writer) would need to learn how to get someone to actually answer a question.

The exact moment of my realization came while I was reading a short story. A dialogue left me confused because I could not decide if it was either very realistic or completely implausible. I don't remember the specifics from the short story so I'll make up an example here just to illustrate my point:

A: Can you get lunch on Friday?

B: You know I have to work, right?

A: Well, I was just wondering if you wanted to go during your break, I mean.

Here's another made-up example:

C: Hey, can you pass me the salt?

D: I don't see it anywhere.

C: Can you check behind the pepper?

D: There's nothing behind the pepper.

These two fake conversations look perfectly normal to me except for this - not one of the four questions actually gets answered.

After reading the dialogue scene, I began paying more attention to how people spoke with one another. I was surprised, to a degree, when I understood how realistic the dialogue turned out to be (though I must admit, what was I expecting? Authors of short stories tend to know these things). In most conversations, people simply make assumptions, blow past each other's questions and... everyone understands this as perfectly normal.

Why is this strange phenomenon so normal? I have some theories. In the examples above, simply answering the question might have shut the discussion down. A 'no' to the lunch invitation might dissuade speaker A from exploring further ways to make the schedule work. And a 'no' in the salt example might be misinterpreted by speaker C as a refusal or inability to pass the salt when the root cause of the refusal was a logistical issue.

But I don't think this is a good thing, either. The dialogues above are loaded with possible assumptions that might lead one party to... assume... some negative intent from the other. In the first example, A assumes B is careless with remembering the details of a work schedule and responds in a way that might make B assume A is disinterested in finding a mutually convenient time for lunch. The latter examples starts with C assuming D is going to pass the salt once it is located but if the salt is in plain sight then D might assume C is not paying very close attention to the meal and, therefore, isn't going to pay very close attention to the conversation, either.

In striking a balance between asking questions and making assumptions, I would lean toward the former. Conversations might become more stilted but I'd prefer that to the possibly corrosive results of an erroneous assumption. And of course, it doesn't have to be one or the other. It's easy enough to just answer the question first and take care of everything else later.

Perhaps the only firm exception is if you are writing a dialogue scene. In that case, it's probably best to recognize a basic truth about life - an actual answer to any question is a rare thing indeed.

Footnotes / utter rubbish

0. Most job interview questions are loaded with assumptions...

Some of what I rattle on about explored in this post explains why I went through so many lousy job interviews. For many, interviewing is something they get sucked into. Those untrained or uninterested will likely approach the interview as they do a regular conversation.

This is a problem because during interviews answering the question is the only important thing while in conversation it is a barely relevant consideration. A person who asks questions yet is accustomed to not having them actually answered will ask questions that demand the other make certain assumptions in order to respond without seeming like a complete social outcast. This is not an acceptable recipe for a good job interview (and might explain why someone wary of this pitfall will fill job interviews with strange hypothetical or comparative questions).

1. Huh?

As in, Klosterman emailed the tips to the author without intending them to be published and the author... you can just read the story here.