You have the questions. You’ve maybe even printed them. What nobody tells you is that the hard part isn’t the list — it’s the twenty minutes at the start where it feels stilted and formal and you both wish you hadn’t suggested it.
Here’s how to get past that, from people who’ve done it badly first.
Don’t call it an interview
The word makes people perform. They sit up straighter and give the tidy public version of their life, which is exactly what you’re trying to get underneath.
“I want to write some of your stories down before I forget them” works far better. So does simply starting — asking one good question over tea, without announcing a project at all. The recording can begin later, once you’re both talking normally.
Record the audio, always
Whatever else you do, record. Your phone’s voice memo app is fine — genuinely, it’s fine. Put it down between you and stop thinking about it.
The reason isn’t accuracy. It’s that you cannot take notes and listen properly at once, and note-taking is what makes it feel like an interrogation. Recording lets you sit and actually listen, which is what produces the good material.
The other reason is one people only appreciate later: you’re capturing the voice, not just the facts. Years on, the way they said it turns out to matter more than what was said.
Ask permission, say what it’s for, and put it where it won’t be lost — cloud storage plus a copy somewhere else. A recording on one ageing phone isn’t preserved.
Ask about objects and places, not chronology
“Tell me about your childhood” produces a summary. Specific, sensory prompts produce stories:
- What did the kitchen in your first house smell like?
- What was the first thing you bought with your own money?
- Who was the first person you knew who owned a car?
- What did you wear to feel good in your twenties?
Photographs and old objects work even better. Put a photo between you and ask who took it, what happened just before, and who’s missing from the frame. Memory attaches itself to things far more readily than to dates.
If you’d rather not build a list yourself, our free Story Starter generates a fresh set for whoever you’re sitting with — mum, dad, grandma, a friend. Print them or just ask them tonight.
Learn to leave the silence alone
This is the single biggest skill, and it’s uncomfortable. When someone pauses after answering, the instinct is to fill the gap with the next question. Don’t.
The pause is usually them deciding whether to tell you the real version. Count to five in your head. A surprising proportion of the best material in any family recording arrives in the sentence after the silence you didn’t interrupt.
Follow the feeling, not the schedule
If they light up about a job you’d never heard of, abandon your list and stay there. You can always return to the questions; you rarely get the enthusiasm back.
Ask “what happened next?” and “how did you feel about that at the time?” far more than you ask new questions. Depth on six topics beats a shallow pass over thirty.
Keep sessions short and expect several
Forty-five minutes is plenty. Longer and both of you tire, and tired people give shorter answers. Two or three unhurried sessions produce far more than one marathon.
There’s also a compounding effect: after the first session they’ll keep remembering things for days. Frequently the second conversation is much better than the first, because they’ve been quietly preparing without meaning to.
Handle the difficult parts carefully
Real lives contain bereavements, estrangements, and things people have chosen not to discuss for decades. Ask gently, and accept a closed door the first time it closes. “Is that something you’d rather not go into?” gives them a dignified exit — and sometimes, having been offered it, they’ll go into it anyway.
Never push for a story because it would make the record more complete. That isn’t what this is for.
Do it sooner than feels necessary
The most common regret isn’t asking clumsily. It’s having waited until there was a reason to hurry. The best time is an ordinary afternoon when nothing is wrong and nobody’s ill — when it’s just a nice way to spend an hour.
If you want something structured to write the answers into afterwards, our guided journals are built around exactly this: you ask, they fill it in, you keep it.