Questions to ask your aunt or uncle

20 questions to ask your aunt or uncle for their advice

What they know now that nobody told them. Ask for it concretely, with the story behind it, not as a list of maxims. Ask "what was my mother like at twelve?" about halfway through. An aunt will answer that question more honestly than your mother ever will.

How to use this list. Ask by voice and record it. One or two questions a visit is plenty; the follow-up ("Who else was there?" "What did she say?" "What happened the day after?") matters more than the next question. The 4 marked tender come last: ask them once, late, in person, with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question.

1. What did you believe at twenty that you don't believe now?A self that changes is what makes a memoir readable.
2. Who taught you the most about how to work?
3. What kind of parent did you decide to be, and what kind did you turn out to be?The gap between intention and result is where the honesty lives.
4. What rule did you live by that you never said out loud?Ask for it in their words. That sentence may be the book's epigraph.
5. What did your parents teach you that you kept, and what did you throw out?
6. What is a saying you use that you got from your own parents?Two sayings, verbatim. The book needs the exact words.
7. What do you know now that you wish someone had told you at twenty-five?
8. What is the best decision you ever made?
9. What did you teach your children to believe, and did it take?
10. What did you teach your children about money, by saying it or by what they saw?The lesson they meant to give and the one that landed are rarely the same.
11. Who taught you something you still use every day: a trick, a recipe, a way of handling people?
12. What did you argue with your parents about in the 1960s that you would now side with them on?
13. What is the one thing you would tell a young person starting work tomorrow?
14. What is a mistake you made twice before you learned from it?The second time is the story; the first was just bad luck.
15. What did someone tell you once, in passing, that you have lived by ever since? Who said it?A borrowed sentence, with its owner named, is a gift to the reader.
16. How do you know when it is time to leave: a job, a house, a person?The answer arrives with the time they did, or did not.
17. What did you learn about yourself from the worst thing that happened to you?tender
18. What do you regret, and would you do it differently?tender
19. What should a person do in the week after something terrible happens? What did you do?tender
20. What do you wish you had said no to sooner?tender

What these questions are for

A good book about a person needs more than facts. It needs the person on the page: how they talked, what they wanted, what they did when it mattered, the story that shows them. These questions cover 8 of the things a writer needs about your aunt or uncle: beliefs and values, contradictions, key relationships, wants, fears and wounds, their voice and sayings, where they came from, habits, routines and work, the story that shows them.

More questions to ask your aunt or uncle

• All questions to ask your aunt or uncle
• Questions to ask your aunt or uncle about their childhood
• Questions to ask your aunt or uncle about family history
• Questions to ask your aunt or uncle about love and marriage
• Questions to ask your aunt or uncle about their work
• Questions to ask your aunt or uncle about faith and beliefs
• Questions to ask your aunt or uncle about food and the kitchen table
• Questions to ask your aunt or uncle that are funny
• Questions to ask your aunt or uncle about hard times

Or see questions for everyone else, and how to interview a parent about their life.