Questions to ask your best friend

15 questions to ask your best friend about the 1970s

Strikes, wallpaper, the first mortgage, the first colour television, the clothes the photographs were burned over. These questions ask what the decade actually looked like in their house. Swap. Ask one, then answer the same one yourself. The answers are better when both of you are on the record.

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.

1. Was there a band or a singer your parents could not stand? Did you play them louder?
2. Did you ever see anyone famous play live? What do you remember that nobody else would?
3. What was your first flight like? Where were you going, and what did you wear for it?
4. Where were you working in 1975, and what did the place look like on a Monday morning?A Monday morning scene is the honest version of a career.
5. What did you wear in the 1970s that you have since destroyed every photograph of?
6. Were there power cuts, strikes or petrol queues where you lived? What did you do during one?A candlelit evening is a scene; "the seventies were hard" is not.
7. What was the wallpaper, the carpet and the colour of the bathroom in your 1970s house?
8. What did you listen to in 1977: disco, punk, country, the same records as always?
9. What did a house cost when you bought your first one, and what was the mortgage rate?The number will be exact, and it will stop a younger reader cold.
10. What did you cook for guests in the 1970s, and what did you serve it in?The dinner party is a period piece, and they will remember the dish.
11. What was the news story of the 1970s that you followed every night? Who did you argue about it with?
12. Where did you go on holiday in the 1970s, and how did you get there?
13. What did you drive in the 1970s, what colour was it, and what kept going wrong with it?A car that kept breaking down is a running joke the book can use.
14. Which gadget arrived in your house in the 1970s: a colour television, a calculator, a freezer? Who was allowed to touch it?
15. Who were you in 1979, and what did you think the 1980s would do for you?

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 9 of the things a writer needs about your best friend: contradictions, their place in history, the story that shows them, habits, routines and work, how they look and move, objects, places, food, music, loves and tastes, beliefs and values, wants, fears and wounds.

More questions to ask your best friend

• All questions to ask your best friend
• Questions to ask your best friend about their childhood
• Questions to ask your best friend about love and marriage
• Questions to ask your best friend about their work
• Questions to ask your best friend about food and the kitchen table
• Questions to ask your best friend that are funny
• Questions to ask your best friend about hard times
• Questions to ask your best friend for their advice
• Questions to ask your best friend that go deep

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