Questions to ask your mentor

17 questions to ask your mentor 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. Tell them what they taught you before you ask anything. Then ask who taught it to them. The chain goes back further than either of you expects.

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 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.
4. What did your parents teach you that you kept, and what did you throw out?
5. What is a saying you use that you got from your own parents?Two sayings, verbatim. The book needs the exact words.
6. What do you know now that you wish someone had told you at twenty-five?
7. What is the best decision you ever made?
8. Who taught you something you still use every day: a trick, a recipe, a way of handling people?
9. What did you argue with your parents about in the 1960s that you would now side with them on?
10. What is the one thing you would tell a young person starting work tomorrow?
11. What is a mistake you made twice before you learned from it?The second time is the story; the first was just bad luck.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. What did you learn about yourself from the worst thing that happened to you?tender
15. What do you regret, and would you do it differently?tender
16. What should a person do in the week after something terrible happens? What did you do?tender
17. 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 mentor: beliefs and values, contradictions, key relationships, their voice and sayings, where they came from, wants, fears and wounds, habits, routines and work, the story that shows them.

More questions to ask your mentor

• All questions to ask your mentor
• Questions to ask your mentor about their work
• Questions to ask your mentor that are funny
• Questions to ask your mentor about hard times
• Questions to ask your mentor about what they want remembered
• Questions to ask your mentor that go deep
• Questions to ask your mentor for a quick conversation
• Questions to ask your mentor about money and getting by
• Questions to ask your mentor about friendship

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