# 34 questions to ask your best friend about the houses they lived in

A house is the easiest scene to put a reader in, and people remember rooms when they have forgotten years. These questions walk through every house, door by door: who slept where, what was on the walls, what could be seen from the window. Swap. Ask one, then answer the same one yourself. The answers are better when both of you are on the record.

1. Where were you born, and what was the house like that you first remember?
   A place the reader can stand in.
2. What was the first piece of technology that changed your daily life?
3. What did the first winter, the first job, the first apartment look like?
4. Is there a place you still think of as home, even if you can never go back?
5. What was in the pantry, always? And what was a treat?
6. How many houses did you live in before you were eighteen? Name them by street.
   The list is the map of the book's first chapters.
7. Which room in the house you grew up in was yours, and who did you share it with?
   Who shared the room is who shared the childhood.
8. Where did the family sit in the evenings, and which chair was nobody else allowed in?
   The seating plan is the family's power structure, drawn in furniture.
9. What could you see from your bedroom window?
   A view is a scene the reader can stand in without a word of explanation.
10. Was there a room you were not allowed into? What was in it?
11. How was the house heated, and who got up first to see to it?
   Cold puts a reader in another era faster than any date.
12. What was the first place you paid for yourself? Describe the day you got the key.
   The first key is a turning point nobody thinks to call one.
13. Which house did you bring your first baby home to, and what did it still need doing?
14. Who were the neighbours on either side, and which one did your mother not speak to?
   A street has a cast too.
15. What was on the walls of your childhood home? A picture, a calendar, a clock that was always wrong?
16. Where did you hide things as a child, and did anyone ever find them?
   The hiding place tells you what they valued and who they feared.
17. What did the front door of the house you grew up in look like, and was it ever locked?
18. Which house do you dream about? What are you doing in the dream?
   The house the mind returns to is usually the one the book should start in.
19. What did you build, fix or plant at a house that is still there, as far as you know?
20. What was on the radio in your kitchen in the mornings, and who chose the station?
   Who chose the station is who ran the kitchen.
21. Was there a dog or a cat in the house when you were growing up, and whose bed did it sleep on?
   Where the dog slept is a map of the family's affections.
22. Was there an animal that was not supposed to be in the house, and who let it in?
23. When did a television first come into your house? Or whose house did you go to, to watch one?
   The arrival of the set is a scene the whole street was in.
24. Who on your street had a telephone, a fridge or a car first? What did everyone say about them?
   First on the street is a small drama of envy and pride.
25. Where were you living in 1965, and who with?
   An address and a housemate fix the decade to a life.
26. What arrived in your kitchen in the 1960s that your mother never had: a fridge, a washing machine, a packet of something new?
   A new appliance is a changed daily life, and daily life is the book.
27. What was the wallpaper, the carpet and the colour of the bathroom in your 1970s house?
28. 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.
29. Which gadget arrived in your house in the 1970s: a colour television, a calculator, a freezer? Who was allowed to touch it?
30. What did you do on the day after the holiday, when everyone had gone?
31. What came out of the decorations box every year, and which thing was never thrown out despite being broken?
   The broken decoration that survives is an heirloom nobody calls one.
32. What was the first holiday you hosted yourself, and what went wrong?
33. Where did you live in the first year you were married, and what was wrong with it?
   What was wrong with the first home is the first shared story.
34. Did you ever have to leave a house you loved? What was the last thing you did before you shut the door? (tender: ask once, late, in person)

## How to use these questions

Ask by voice, not by form. Record it. One or two questions a visit is enough; the follow-up ("who else was there?", "what did she say?", "what happened the day after?") matters more than the next question on the list. Tender questions are marked; ask them once, late, and with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question itself.

## About Tellforth

Tellforth asks questions like these by voice, remembers every answer, asks the next question a good listener would, and writes a finished book from what was said: a memoir in the person's own words, or a novel built on the true story. You own every recording. https://tellforth.com