# 304 questions to ask your spouse about their life

You can be married to someone for forty years and still not know what their childhood bedroom looked like or what they wanted at nineteen. These questions are for a long car journey or a quiet evening, and for the book one of you may write about the other.

1. Where were you born, and what was the house like that you first remember?
   A place the reader can stand in.
2. Who was in the house when you were small? Who was in charge, and who did you run to?
   The cast, and the power in the room.
3. What is your very first memory? Not the earliest you were told about, the earliest you actually remember.
4. What did your mother call you? And what did she call you when she was angry?
   Names are voice. Nobody forgets the angry name.
5. What did your father do for work, and what did you understand about it as a child?
6. What did a normal Saturday look like when you were ten?
   Routine is where a life actually happens.
7. What was the rule in your house that you thought was unfair?
8. What did you get in trouble for, and what did trouble look like in your family?
9. Who was your best friend when you were a child, and what did the two of you do that nobody else knew about?
10. What was the first thing you ever earned money for?
11. What did your family eat on an ordinary weeknight, and what did you eat when there was something to celebrate?
12. Was there a dish your mother or grandmother made that nobody has managed to make the same since?
13. What did your grandparents tell you about their own childhoods?
   Family stories reach two generations further back than any record.
14. Which of your grandparents did you know best, and what did their house smell like?
15. What was the story your family always told about you when you were little?
   The signature story. Ask for the whole thing: what happened, who said what, what came of it.
16. What were you afraid of as a child?
17. What did you want to be when you grew up, and when did that change?
18. What did school smell like, sound like? Which teacher do you still think about?
19. Was there a year when everything changed? What was the first sign?
   Turning points are the spine of any book. Ask how it started, not just what happened.
20. What was the first thing you did that your parents would have hated, and did they ever find out?
21. What music was playing the year you turned seventeen?
22. How did you leave home? Was it a decision or did it just happen?
23. Who was the first person outside your family who really saw you?
24. What did you believe at twenty that you don't believe now?
   A self that changes is what makes a memoir readable.
25. What did you do with your first real paycheck?
26. How did you meet, and when did you know? Tell me the actual day.
   A scene, not a summary.
27. What was the first fight about, and who gave in?
28. What did your parents think of them at first?
29. What did you wear on your wedding day, and what went wrong?
   Something always goes wrong. That is the story.
30. What did you call each other? Was there a name nobody else used?
31. What did they do that showed they loved you, without saying it?
32. Walk me through a working day. What time did it start, what were the tools, who was the boss?
   Work as craft: the particulars nobody records.
33. What were you good at that nobody noticed?
34. What was the proudest moment of your working life? And the worst day?
35. Did you ever quit something, or get fired? What did you tell people?
36. Who taught you the most about how to work?
37. What did money mean in your house? Who held it, and what did "we can't afford it" sound like?
38. What do you remember about the day your first child was born?
39. 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.
40. What did you most want to give your children that you never had?
41. Where were you when the big news of your lifetime came? What did people around you do?
   History is only worth a page if it touched this person. Ask what it did to them.
42. Did anyone in your family serve? What did they say about it, and what did they never say?
43. What was rationed, scarce, or impossible to get, and how did people manage?
44. What did you think of the war at the time, and has that changed?
45. When did you first vote, and for whom? Would you now?
46. What was the first piece of technology that changed your daily life?
47. Where did your family come from before here, and who made the decision to leave?
48. What did they bring with them, and what did they have to leave behind?
   Objects carry whole chapters.
49. What language was spoken at home, and when did it stop?
50. What did the first winter, the first job, the first apartment look like?
51. What did people get wrong about where you came from?
52. Is there a place you still think of as home, even if you can never go back?
53. What did you believe about God as a child, and what do you believe now?
54. 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.
55. What did your parents teach you that you kept, and what did you throw out?
56. What did Christmas, or the holiday that mattered in your house, actually look like? Who cooked, who argued, who fell asleep?
57. Is there a tradition you kept going that nobody else in the family understands?
58. What is the one dish you would want someone to make for you right now?
59. Is there an object in your house that you would run back in for? What's its story?
60. What did your mother keep in her handbag, or your father in his pockets?
   Small inventory, enormous recall.
61. What song could you not get through without crying, and why?
62. What did your family's kitchen table hear over the years?
63. What makes you laugh until you can't breathe?
64. What do people get wrong about you?
65. What is a saying you use that you got from your own parents?
   Two sayings, verbatim. The book needs the exact words.
66. When you were angry, what did that look like? Would we have known?
67. What do you do with your hands when you're thinking?
68. What did you wear that meant something? A coat, a ring, a hat you refused to give up?
69. What are three words your best friend would use for you? And three your sister would?
70. What is something you did that was completely out of character?
71. What do you know now that you wish someone had told you at twenty-five?
72. What are you proudest of, that nobody would guess?
73. What is a thing you would hate to see written in a book about you?
   Ask it straight. It sets the rules for everything else and makes people braver, not shyer.
74. How would you like to be remembered, in one sentence?
75. If your life were a film, where would it start?
   Their answer tells you where the book starts too.
76. What is the best decision you ever made?
77. What do you want to say to the people who will read this?
78. What was your worst haircut, and who was responsible?
79. What did you get away with that you still can't believe?
80. What is the strangest job you ever had?
81. What did you think was true for years that turned out to be nonsense?
82. What is the most trouble a pet ever got you into?
83. Who was the worst driver in the family?
84. What did you think of me the first time we met? Be honest.
85. What is a thing I do that drives you mad and you've never said?
86. What did Sunday, or the Sabbath, look like in your house growing up? Who insisted, and who slipped out?
87. Was there a minister, rabbi, priest or teacher who actually mattered to you? What did they say?
88. Did you ever stop going, or start again? What happened?
   A belief that changed is a chapter. A belief that never did is a sentence.
89. What did you teach your children to believe, and did it take?
90. Is there a prayer, a hymn or a verse you still know by heart? Say it.
91. Who taught you to cook, and what was the first thing you made on your own?
92. What was in the pantry, always? And what was a treat?
93. Tell me about a meal that went wrong. A burnt bird, a dropped cake, a guest who should not have come.
94. Was there a recipe written down anywhere, or was it all in someone's head? Whose head?
   A recipe is an object with a story and an owner. Ask where it is now.
95. What did you eat when there was no money?
96. What did your father eat for breakfast every single day?
97. Which dish is only made for one occasion, and what happens if someone makes it at the wrong time?
98. Who sat where at the table, and what happened if someone took the wrong chair?
99. What did people at home know, and what did they get wrong about it?
100. What did you do the day it ended?
101. What did your mother or father tell you about their war, and what did they never say?
102. What was the journey itself like? How long, what did it smell like, who was sick, who was kind?
103. What was the first thing you bought here that felt like a luxury?
104. Who helped you in the first year, and did you ever get to thank them?
105. What did you change about yourself to fit in: your name, your clothes, your accent, your food?
   Every arrival is also a loss. Ask for both.
106. What did the people back home think you were doing here, and were they right?
107. 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.
108. 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.
109. 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.
110. What could you see from your bedroom window?
   A view is a scene the reader can stand in without a word of explanation.
111. Was there a room you were not allowed into? What was in it?
112. 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.
113. 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.
114. Which house did you bring your first baby home to, and what did it still need doing?
115. Who were the neighbours on either side, and which one did your mother not speak to?
   A street has a cast too.
116. What was on the walls of your childhood home? A picture, a calendar, a clock that was always wrong?
117. 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.
118. What did the front door of the house you grew up in look like, and was it ever locked?
119. 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.
120. What did you build, fix or plant at a house that is still there, as far as you know?
121. How did you get to school each morning, and how long did it take?
122. What did you eat at school at midday, and who did you sit with?
   Who they sat with at eleven is the first friendship chapter.
123. Which teacher was feared, and what did they do to earn it?
   A feared teacher is a villain the reader will enjoy.
124. Which teacher noticed you? What did they say that you still remember?
   One adult who saw them is often the hinge of the early chapters.
125. What was the subject you were known for at school?
126. What could you not do at school, no matter how hard you tried?
   The thing they could not do is often the thing they spent a life making up for.
127. What was the punishment at your school, and did you ever get it?
128. 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.
129. Tell me about a day you skipped school. Where did you go instead?
   The first truancy is the first choice they made alone.
130. What was the playground game everyone played, and were you any good at it?
131. When did you leave school, and whose decision was it?
   The leaving date explains the next twenty years.
132. Did you ever win something at school? What did your parents say when you told them?
   The parents' reaction is the real answer.
133. What did you do in the last week of the summer holidays, before school started again?
134. Did anyone from your class become famous, rich or notorious? What were they like at twelve?
135. 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.
136. 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.
137. What did your first wage packet hold, and how much of it did you hand over at home?
   The split between the wage and the housekeeping is the whole family economy in one number.
138. How did your parents pay for things? Cash in a tin, a book at the shop, the never-never?
   The tin, the tab and the hire purchase are three different families.
139. What did a week's shopping cost when you were first married, and where did you buy it?
   An exact figure lets the reader feel the decade in their pocket.
140. Who in the family was tight with money, and who was hopeless with it?
141. What was the biggest thing you ever bought, and who did you tell first?
142. What did you do for extra money when things were tight: a second job, a sideline, something off the books?
   The sideline is where the ingenuity lives.
143. What was the first thing you bought that your parents would have called a waste?
144. 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.
145. 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.
146. Did you ever strike it lucky: a win, a windfall, a deal that came off? What did you do with it?
147. What will you always spend money on, however little there is?
148. 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.
149. Where did you go dancing, and what night of the week was it?
   The dance hall is where most of the love chapters begin.
150. Who taught you to dance, and in whose kitchen?
151. Was there a song your mother sang while she worked? Sing a line of it.
   A recorded line of a parent singing is worth a chapter.
152. Did you play an instrument, or wish you had? What happened to it?
153. 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.
154. Tell me about the best night out of your life. Who was there, and how did you get home?
155. Was there a band or a singer your parents could not stand? Did you play them louder?
156. What was the song at your wedding, and who chose it?
   Who chose it is the answer.
157. Did you ever see anyone famous play live? What do you remember that nobody else would?
158. 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.
159. Was there a pub, a hall or a club where everyone went? What did it look like inside?
   One room described well stands in for a whole youth.
160. What music do you put on when the house is empty?
161. 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.
162. 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.
163. 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.
164. When did you first see the sea, and who took you?
165. What did you pack for a journey, and what did you always forget?
166. What was the first car the family had, and where did it take you?
   The first car redraws the family's whole map.
167. 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.
168. 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.
169. What was your first flight like? Where were you going, and what did you wear for it?
170. Where did you spend your honeymoon, and what did it cost?
171. What did you send home from a trip: a postcard, a present, a photograph? Who kept it?
172. Is there a place you always meant to go and never did? What stopped you?
173. What was the longest you were ever away from home, and what had changed when you got back?
174. What was the first animal that was yours? What was it called, and who named it?
   Who named it is who was in charge.
175. 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.
176. Did you grow up around working animals: horses, cows, hens, pigeons? Who looked after them?
   Working animals mean a working childhood, and that is a different book.
177. Tell me about an animal that got loose. Who chased it, and where did it end up?
178. Were you ever bitten, kicked or stung badly enough to remember? What were you doing at the time?
179. Who in the family talked to the animals as if they were people? What did they say to them?
   How someone speaks to a dog is how they speak when nobody is judging.
180. Was there an animal that was not supposed to be in the house, and who let it in?
181. Did an animal ever save the day, or ruin one? Tell me the whole thing.
182. What animal were you afraid of as a child, and did you ever get over it?
   A childhood fear and its ending is a complete small story.
183. Which pet was really yours, and which was the family's that you ended up feeding?
184. What wild creature did you see that you have never forgotten? Where were you?
185. If you could have one of them back for an afternoon, which animal, and what would you do?
186. Who was your first friend outside the family, and how did the two of you meet?
   The first friend is the first choice they ever made.
187. 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.
188. Which friend got you into the most trouble, and which one got you out of it?
   Trouble is the plot; the friend is the cast.
189. Who did you make friends with at work that you kept long after the work was over?
190. What did you and your friends do on a Friday night at sixteen, and where did your parents think you were?
191. Which friend did your mother not approve of, and was she right?
   The disapproved friend is a chapter about both of them.
192. Who taught you something you still use every day: a trick, a recipe, a way of handling people?
193. Is there a friend you have never thanked properly? What for?
194. 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.
195. Who is the friend you would phone at three in the morning, and have you ever had to?
196. What is the longest you and your oldest friend have gone without speaking, and who broke the silence?
197. How old were you in 1955, and what did an ordinary Tuesday look like that year?
   Pin the decade to a day in their life, not to history.
198. 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.
199. What did you wear in the 1950s that you would not be seen in now? Who ironed it?
200. 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.
201. Where were you when rock and roll arrived? Who played it to you first?
   Who played it first is a character; the record is only a date.
202. What did the grown-ups talk about in the 1950s when they thought you were not listening?
   The overheard adult world is how a child learns what the decade was afraid of.
203. What was still rationed, broken or unrebuilt in your town when you were growing up?
204. 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.
205. What was the big news story you remember from the 1950s, and what did your father say about it at the table?
206. What did you do on a Saturday afternoon in the 1950s: the pictures, the match, the shops?
207. What did you expect your life to look like in 1959? How much of it came true?
   The expected life and the lived one, side by side, is the memoir's engine.
208. Who was the glamorous one in your family or your street in the 1950s? What did they wear, and where did they go?
209. Where were you living in 1965, and who with?
   An address and a housemate fix the decade to a life.
210. What were you doing the day you heard Kennedy had been shot?
   Everyone of that age has this scene; the book wants theirs, not the newsreel.
211. Where did you watch the moon landing, and who was in the room?
   The room matters more than the moon.
212. What did you make of the Beatles at the time? Who in your house disagreed?
213. How short were the skirts, how long was the hair, and what did your mother say about it?
   The mother's line, verbatim, is the whole generation gap.
214. What was your weekly wage in the 1960s, and what did a night out take out of it?
   Wage against night out is a ratio the reader understands instantly.
215. Did the 1960s reach your town, or did you only read about them? What actually changed on your street?
   Most people lived next door to the decade, not in it. That is the honest chapter.
216. What did you drive, or ride, or wait for at the bus stop in the 1960s?
217. What did you argue with your parents about in the 1960s that you would now side with them on?
218. 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.
219. Who did you want to look like in the 1960s, and how close did you get?
220. What did you believe the world was about to become in 1968? What did it become instead?
221. Where were you working in 1975, and what did the place look like on a Monday morning?
   A Monday morning scene is the honest version of a career.
222. What did you wear in the 1970s that you have since destroyed every photograph of?
223. Were there power cuts, strikes or petrol queues where you lived? What did you do during one?
   A candlelit evening is a scene; "the seventies were hard" is not.
224. What was the wallpaper, the carpet and the colour of the bathroom in your 1970s house?
225. What did you listen to in 1977: disco, punk, country, the same records as always?
226. 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.
227. What did you cook for guests in the 1970s, and what did you serve it in?
   The dinner party is a period piece, and they will remember the dish.
228. What was the news story of the 1970s that you followed every night? Who did you argue about it with?
229. Where did you go on holiday in the 1970s, and how did you get there?
230. 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.
231. Which gadget arrived in your house in the 1970s: a colour television, a calculator, a freezer? Who was allowed to touch it?
232. Who were you in 1979, and what did you think the 1980s would do for you?
233. What did your children wear to school in the 1970s, and what did they beg you for that you would not buy?
234. What did you get for Christmas, or the holiday that mattered, the year you remember best? Who gave it to you?
235. Who was always late to the holiday table, and what did your mother say when they finally arrived?
236. What was the holiday argument that happened every year? Who started it?
   The annual argument is a recurring scene; the book can use it three times.
237. What did you do on the day after the holiday, when everyone had gone?
238. Was there a holiday that was cancelled, missed, or spent somewhere strange? What happened?
239. 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.
240. Who said grace, or made the toast, and what did they always say?
   Verbatim. The toast is a line of family liturgy.
241. What did you do for a birthday when you were a child? Was there a cake, and who made it?
242. What was the first holiday you hosted yourself, and what went wrong?
243. Which holiday did you spend away from the family, and where were you?
244. What did you do on the first proper date, and what did it cost?
   The cost and the venue date the scene exactly.
245. 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.
246. What is a habit of theirs that you have caught without meaning to?
247. What did you argue about in the twentieth year that you never argued about in the first?
   A marriage changes subject. The subjects are the chapters.
248. What did you learn about them from their family the first time you visited?
249. Who proposed, where, and what were the exact words?
   The exact words are a line of dialogue the book can quote.
250. What is the one thing you would tell a young person starting work tomorrow?
251. What is a mistake you made twice before you learned from it?
   The second time is the story; the first was just bad luck.
252. 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.
253. 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.
254. 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.
255. What did you make, fix, sell or look after that is still out there somewhere?
   Work that outlasts the worker is the chapter the family never thought to ask for.
256. Who was the worst boss you ever had, and what did you say about them at home?
257. What were you paid when you started, and what were you getting when you finished?
   Two numbers, forty years apart, are a career in a sentence.
258. How did you get the job? Who put in a word, and what did you say at the interview?
   Who put in a word is how the world actually worked.
259. What was the one task at work you could do with your eyes shut? Walk me through it.
260. Was there a time you nearly left, or nearly lost them? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
261. Who did you love before that, and what happened? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
262. Was there a moment your faith was tested? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
263. What do you pray for, or hope for, when it's late and nobody is listening? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
264. What was the hardest year of your life, and what got you through it? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
265. Who showed up for you when it mattered? Who didn't? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
266. Is there a loss you still carry? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
267. What did you learn about yourself from the worst thing that happened to you? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
268. Was there a time you were truly afraid? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
269. Is there something you've never told anyone that you would like someone to know? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   Ask only once, late, and with the door open: "or would you rather leave that?"
270. What do you regret, and would you do it differently? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
271. Who should get the things that matter to you, and why that person? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
272. What do you think happens after? Has that answer changed? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
273. Was there a death, a birth or an illness that changed what you believe? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
274. Is there a story from that time you have never told, that you would be willing to tell once? Or would you rather leave it? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
275. Did you ever go back? What was the same and what was gone? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
276. 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)
277. Who was the bully, and who stood up to them? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
278. Was there a time you could not pay for something you needed? What did you do that week? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
279. Did you ever lend money to someone who never paid it back? Did you ever say anything? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
280. Was there ever money you were ashamed of: owed, lost, taken, or more than anyone knew? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
281. What song do you want played at the end, and what should people do while it plays? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
282. Which journey did you take because you had to, not because you wanted to? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
283. Which animal did you lose that you still think about? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   Grief for an animal is often the first grief, and the safest to tell.
284. Did you ever have to put an animal down, or give one away? Who did it, and who cried? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
285. Tell me about a friend you lost touch with. When did you last speak, and what was the last thing said? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   The last words said are usually remembered exactly.
286. Was there a friendship that ended badly? What would you say to them now? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
287. Who turned up at the hospital, the funeral or the door without being asked? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   The unasked arrival is the clearest proof of a friendship the book will get.
288. Is there a story about your family that was never told outside the house? Would you tell it now, or would you rather leave it? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   Put the way out in the question itself. People take the door in more often, not less.
289. What did your parents never explain, that you worked out for yourself years later? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   What a child worked out alone is often the truest thing in the book.
290. Was there someone in the family who was not spoken about? What do you know about them? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   The unmentioned relative is a door; let them decide whether to open it.
291. Did you ever keep something from your husband or wife to protect them? Did it work? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
292. What did you do that you were never caught for, and would you still rather nobody knew? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
293. Is there a letter, a photograph or a paper you kept hidden? Where is it now? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   A hidden object is a story with a location.
294. Was there a child, a marriage or a love that the family does not know about? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   Ask it only when you have earned it, and accept the first answer.
295. What did you find out about a parent after they died that changed how you saw them? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
   The late discovery rewrites the earlier chapters; the book needs both versions.
296. Is there something you were told to keep quiet about as a child? Who told you, and why? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
297. What were you most ashamed of at the time, that you can see differently now? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
298. Did you ever lie to get a job, a house or a person? What was the lie? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
299. Who knows the real story, if anyone? Would you want them asked? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
300. Is there a thing you would like told after you are gone, but not before? Who should hear it first? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
301. Was there polio, TB or another illness that everyone was afraid of? Did it touch your street? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
302. Was anyone you knew sent to a war in the 1960s? What did their mother do while they were away? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
303. What should a person do in the week after something terrible happens? What did you do? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
304. 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