Questions to ask someone who is dying

20 questions to ask someone who is dying about journeys and places

Every journey is a scene with a beginning and an end. These questions ask for the first one taken alone, the one taken because there was no choice, and the place they never went back to. Ask "what do you want people to know?" first and "what would you rather leave out?" second. Everything else follows from those two.

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 1 marked tender come last: ask them once, late, in person, with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question.

1. Is there a place you still think of as home, even if you can never go back?
2. What was the journey itself like? How long, what did it smell like, who was sick, who was kind?
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Tell me about a family holiday that went wrong. Who was to blame?The holiday disaster is the most-retold story in any family; get the definitive version.
6. When did you first see the sea, and who took you?
7. What was the first car the family had, and where did it take you?The first car redraws the family's whole map.
8. Is there a place you went once and have thought about ever since?The place they never went back to is usually hiding a want.
9. Who did you meet on a journey that you still remember by name?A stranger remembered by name for fifty years has earned a paragraph.
10. What was your first flight like? Where were you going, and what did you wear for it?
11. Where did you spend your honeymoon, and what did it cost?
12. Which journey did you take because you had to, not because you wanted to?tender
13. What did you send home from a trip: a postcard, a present, a photograph? Who kept it?
14. Is there a place you always meant to go and never did? What stopped you?
15. What was the longest you were ever away from home, and what had changed when you got back?
16. What wild creature did you see that you have never forgotten? Where were you?
17. What did you drive, or ride, or wait for at the bus stop in the 1960s?
18. Where did you go on holiday in the 1970s, and how did you get there?
19. 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.
20. Which holiday did you spend away from the family, and where were 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 11 of the things a writer needs about someone who is dying: wants, fears and wounds, where they came from, the story that shows them, their place in history, key relationships, objects, places, food, music, loves and tastes, loss and fate, contradictions, how others saw them, habits, routines and work.

More questions to ask someone who is dying

• All questions to ask someone who is dying
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about their childhood
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about family history
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about love and marriage
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about their work
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about faith and beliefs
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about hard times
• Questions to ask someone who is dying for their advice
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about what they want remembered

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