# 78 questions to ask your mentor for a quick conversation

Thirty-second questions for a text, a car ride or a phone call. Each one still produces something a writer can use. 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.

1. Where were you born, and what was the house like that you first remember?
   A place the reader can stand in.
2. What did a normal Saturday look like when you were ten?
   Routine is where a life actually happens.
3. What was the first thing you ever earned money for?
4. Was there a dish your mother or grandmother made that nobody has managed to make the same since?
5. What did you want to be when you grew up, and when did that change?
6. What music was playing the year you turned seventeen?
7. What did you do with your first real paycheck?
8. What did you call each other? Was there a name nobody else used?
9. When did you first vote, and for whom? Would you now?
10. What was the first piece of technology that changed your daily life?
11. What is the one dish you would want someone to make for you right now?
12. What did your mother keep in her handbag, or your father in his pockets?
   Small inventory, enormous recall.
13. What song could you not get through without crying, and why?
14. What makes you laugh until you can't breathe?
15. What is a saying you use that you got from your own parents?
   Two sayings, verbatim. The book needs the exact words.
16. What do you do with your hands when you're thinking?
17. What did you wear that meant something? A coat, a ring, a hat you refused to give up?
18. What do you know now that you wish someone had told you at twenty-five?
19. How would you like to be remembered, in one sentence?
20. What is the best decision you ever made?
21. What was your worst haircut, and who was responsible?
22. What is the strangest job you ever had?
23. What did you think was true for years that turned out to be nonsense?
24. What is the most trouble a pet ever got you into?
25. Who was the worst driver in the family?
26. Is there a prayer, a hymn or a verse you still know by heart? Say it.
27. What was in the pantry, always? And what was a treat?
28. What did your father eat for breakfast every single day?
29. What did you do the day it ended?
30. What was the first thing you bought here that felt like a luxury?
31. 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.
32. What could you see from your bedroom window?
   A view is a scene the reader can stand in without a word of explanation.
33. 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.
34. What was on the walls of your childhood home? A picture, a calendar, a clock that was always wrong?
35. What did the front door of the house you grew up in look like, and was it ever locked?
36. How did you get to school each morning, and how long did it take?
37. What was the subject you were known for at school?
38. What did you wear to school? Who made it, and who had worn it before you?
   Hand-me-downs are a family economy in one garment.
39. Did you ever win something at school? What did your parents say when you told them?
   The parents' reaction is the real answer.
40. What did you learn by heart at school that you can still say?
   Ask them to say it. Recorded, it is a page by itself.
41. What was the first thing you saved up for, and how long did it take?
   A long wait for a small thing sets the scale of a childhood.
42. What was the biggest thing you ever bought, and who did you tell first?
43. What was the first thing you bought that your parents would have called a waste?
44. What did a haircut, a cinema ticket or a pint cost when you were twenty?
   They will know it to the penny. Use the number.
45. What will you always spend money on, however little there is?
46. What was the first record you bought with your own money, and where did you play it?
   The first record is a date, a taste and a room, all at once.
47. What did you wear on a Saturday night out, and how long did it take to get ready?
   The getting-ready is a scene the book can open on.
48. What was the song at your wedding, and who chose it?
   Who chose it is the answer.
49. 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.
50. What music do you put on when the house is empty?
51. What was the first journey you took on your own? How old were you, and who was waiting at the other end?
   The first solo journey is the first chapter of adulthood.
52. What was the farthest you had been from home by the time you were twenty?
   The size of the world at twenty is the measure of everything after.
53. What did you pack for a journey, and what did you always forget?
54. What was the first animal that was yours? What was it called, and who named it?
   Who named it is who was in charge.
55. Which pet was really yours, and which was the family's that you ended up feeding?
56. What wild creature did you see that you have never forgotten? Where were you?
57. If you could have one of them back for an afternoon, which animal, and what would you do?
58. Who has known you the longest, and what do they call you that nobody else does?
   The old nickname is a voice from before everyone else arrived.
59. What did your friends call your group, and who was the one everybody secretly followed?
   A gang with a name is a gang with a story.
60. Who is the friend you would phone at three in the morning, and have you ever had to?
61. What did a loaf of bread, a bus fare or a week's rent cost then? Which number do you still remember?
   One remembered price does the work of a paragraph of history.
62. What did you do on a Saturday afternoon in the 1950s: the pictures, the match, the shops?
63. Where were you living in 1965, and who with?
   An address and a housemate fix the decade to a life.
64. Where did you watch the moon landing, and who was in the room?
   The room matters more than the moon.
65. What did you drive, or ride, or wait for at the bus stop in the 1960s?
66. Who did you want to look like in the 1960s, and how close did you get?
67. What did you listen to in 1977: disco, punk, country, the same records as always?
68. What did you get for Christmas, or the holiday that mattered, the year you remember best? Who gave it to you?
69. What did you do on the day after the holiday, when everyone had gone?
70. 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.
71. Who said grace, or made the toast, and what did they always say?
   Verbatim. The toast is a line of family liturgy.
72. What did you do on the first proper date, and what did it cost?
   The cost and the venue date the scene exactly.
73. What is a habit of theirs that you have caught without meaning to?
74. Who proposed, where, and what were the exact words?
   The exact words are a line of dialogue the book can quote.
75. What is the one thing you would tell a young person starting work tomorrow?
76. 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.
77. What did you wear to work, and what state was it in by the end of the day?
   The state of the clothes at six o'clock is the job.
78. What was the one task at work you could do with your eyes shut? Walk me through it.

## 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