# 20 questions to ask your father for his advice

What they know now that nobody told them. Ask for it concretely, with the story behind it, not as a list of maxims. Work and tools open fathers up faster than anything. "What was the first truck you drove?" gets you further than "What was your childhood like?"

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: ask once, late, in person)
18. What do you regret, and would you do it differently? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
19. What should a person do in the week after something terrible happens? What did you do? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
20. What do you wish you had said no to sooner? (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