Question pack

Life Story Interview Questions (and How to Ask Them)

A working set of life story interview questions, era by era, plus how to run the interview so you get scenes and stories rather than a résumé.

Most life-story interviews fail the same way: they open with something enormous ("tell me about your life") and get back a résumé. Dates, jobs, moves — accurate, complete, and empty. The person wasn't being difficult. Big questions retrieve summaries; small questions retrieve scenes.

The questions below are small on purpose, arranged roughly in life order. Used across a few sessions, they'll carry a subject from first memory to the present day without either of you facing the blank of "so... tell me everything."

Openers that lower the stakes

What's your full name, and who chose it?
Where were you born, and what kind of town was it?
What's the first house you remember? Walk me through it, room by room.
What's the earliest memory you can pin to a place and a season?

Childhood and growing up

Who was in the household, and who ran it?
What did you do after school on an ordinary day?
What was the first big news event you remember, and where did you hear about it?
What did you get away with that your parents never found out about?
Who was your best friend at fourteen, and what did the two of you do?

Work and adult life

What was your first full day of real work like?
How did you end up in the work you did — plan, or accident?
Who was the best boss or mentor you had, and what did they teach you?
What's the best decision you ever made about money? And the worst?
What did you do on a day off in your thirties?

Love and family

Tell me about the day you met your spouse — start to finish.
What was your wedding day like behind the photographs?
What surprised you about the first year of marriage?
What was bedtime like in your house when the children were small?
What tradition did you start that your kids kept going?

Looking back

What risk did you take that paid off?
Which decade of your life would you live over again exactly as it was?
What did you build, make, or plant that's still out there?
Who do you wish you could have one more conversation with, and what would you ask?
What should your grandchildren know about how you did things?

How to run a life-story interview

Book sessions, not a session; a life doesn't fit in an afternoon. Thirty to forty-five minutes per sitting, one era at a time (childhood this week, work the next), keeps each conversation lively and gives the subject days to remember more, which they reliably do. The best material often arrives at the start of session two: "I've been thinking about what you asked."

During the interview, your main job is to chase scenes. When you hear a summary ("we didn't have much, but we managed"), ask for one specific instance: a winter, a meal, a bill that almost didn't get paid. The words "tell me about one time" are the most useful five words in oral history. Resist the urge to relate everything back to your own life.

Record everything from the first minute; the story you don't record is the one you'll want. Afterward, note the proper nouns (people, places, employers) while they're fresh — transcripts full of unidentifiable "Eddies" lose half their value in a generation. End each session by asking what you should ask about next time; subjects almost always know where their own good stories are.