Turn your interview and notes into a list of facts about the subject. This is helpful because interviews tend not to proceed in a linear fashion. For example, while you may want to begin your essay with information about your subject's background, such as what university he attended, you may not ask about this until near the end of the interview. A partial fact list taken from an interview looks like this:
Leonard Pechatnoff
Age 78
Born Leningrad, Soviet Union
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Worked for KGB 25 years
Oil entrepreneur 90s, 00s,
Tall, silver hair, blue eyes
Armani suit
Consult your fact list as you compose the first draft of your essay. Craft expository sentences throughout your essay that make as much use of your notes as possible. What sort of information you choose to include from your notes, however, depends largely upon for whom you are writing your essay. A piece written for a newspaper and a creative essay require very different approaches. Look at the following two examples:
Leonard D. Pechatnoff is not smiling this morning. He sits across the room towering above me despite his small chair. This former KGB agent turned oil entrepreneur is 78 years old, and his hair is silvery-gray, but his blue eyes pierce me with a youthful intelligence.
Pechatnoff, 78, was born in Leningard. Though he has spent the last two decades working in the oil industry, Pechatnoff actually boasts a background in intelligence. At age 17, he entered Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he studied engineering. Soon after graduation, he joined the KGB, which employed him off and on for the next 25 years.
Both examples make use of most of the same notes, but the previous focuses more on sensory information than on straight facts. The former is more appropriate for a creative essay, while the latter would fit a newspaper audience better.
Give your interview subject the chance to fact-check your essay. This is important because in the process of turning an interview into an essay, writers sometimes misinterpret statements that interview subjects make. For example, if Pechatnoff says at one point during the interview that he joined the KGB in 1955 and later mentions that he worked in the KGB for 25, you may assume that he worked for the KGB from 1955 to 1980. This may not be the case, however, because Pechatnoff may have joined the KGB in 1955, worked with them for 10 years, then taken a break and rejoined later.