Everything you need to record one long conversation with someone in your family. Print it, bring it, ignore half of it.
Before you sit down
Give it two to three hours. Under ninety minutes you'll get a fragment. Pick an afternoon with nothing after it.
One phone, face down, on the table between you. Voice Memos or the Recorder app. Airplane mode so a call can't interrupt. Check the battery.
Ask them to find five photographs beforehand. Not the framed ones — the loose ones in the drawer. A photograph pulls out detail that no question can reach.
Sit somewhere ordinary. The kitchen table beats the good room. People talk differently where they actually live.
No one else in the room. A third person changes what gets said, especially a spouse or a child.
Say what it's for. "I want to have this. Is that alright?" Then let them say no to anything, at any point.
How to ask
Push for one particular time. This is the whole craft. "We always went to the lake" is worth nothing. "Tell me about one day at the lake" is worth everything. Every time you get a general answer, ask for a specific one.
Let the silence run. Four seconds feels like a minute and it is almost always someone deciding whether to tell you. Do not fill it. Count to ten.
Follow the thread they opened, not the sheet. If they mention a name you've never heard, stop and go there. The sheet is a net, not a track.
Don't correct them. Not the dates, not the names, not the version of the story that contradicts what you know. You are collecting what they remember, which is a different thing from what happened.
Ask "what happened next?" more than you think. It is the single most productive thing you can say.
Say very little. If you're talking more than a tenth of the time, you're in the way.
Start here — not at the beginning
People remember far more from between fifteen and thirty than from any other stretch of life. Starting at birth spends their best energy on their thinnest memories. Open here.
Where were you living when you were twenty? Describe the room.
Then: who else was in that building? What did it smell like?
What did you do with a Friday night that year?
Who were you trying to impress?
What was the first money you earned, and what did you spend it on?
Tell me about the first time you left home.
Then: what did you take with you? Who took you?
What did you think your life was going to be?
The chapters
Ask them to divide their life into parts, the way a book has chapters. Let them name each one. Then ask about the ones they seem most interested in — and notice which one they hurry past.
If your life were a book, how many chapters would it have? What would you call them?
Which chapter would you read again?
Which one was the hardest to get through?
Where does the chapter you're in now begin?
The scenes
These six get asked in almost every serious life-story interview. Ask for a single moment each time — a day, a room, a conversation. Not a summary.
The high point. A moment you'd call one of the best of your life. Where were you, who was there, what was said?
The low point. The same, for the worst. Take as long as you need, and stop if you want to.
The turning point. A moment where things went one way instead of another.
Then: did you know it at the time, or only later?
The earliest thing you can remember. Not what you were told — what you actually remember.
A moment you still think about that nobody would guess was important.
Something you learned the hard way.Then: who was there when you learned it?
The people
Who was the most important person in your life that I never met?
Tell me about your mother. Not what she was like — one thing she did.
And your father.
Who did you lose too early?
Was there someone before the person you married?
Who in the family did people not talk about?
Whose voice can you still hear?
The work, and the years in the middle
What was the hardest job you ever had?
What were you good at that nobody knew about?
Was there a day at work you've never forgotten?
What did you do when there wasn't enough money?
What did a normal Sunday look like when your children were small?
What do you wish you'd done differently in those years?
The photographs
Take them one at a time. Hold it up, and stay quiet.
Who's in this, and where is it?
What happened just before this was taken?
What was going on that isn't in the picture?
Who took it?
Why did you keep this one?
Before you stop
What's something about you that your children don't know?
Is there anything you've never told anyone?
And if they say no, leave it there.
What are you proud of that you've never said out loud?
What do you want said about you?
Is there anything I should have asked you and didn't?
Then leave the recorder running for a few more minutes. A great deal is said after someone believes the interview is over.
Three ways this goes wrong
You work through the sheet in order. It becomes a questionnaire and they start performing. Jump around.
You accept the polished version. Everyone has four stories they've told a hundred times. They're smooth and they're empty. Ask what happened the week before instead.
You try to make it comfortable. When it gets heavy, the instinct is to rescue them with a joke. Don't. Just wait.