Questions to ask your teenager

25 questions to ask your teenager 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. Ask in the car or while doing something else. Eye contact is the enemy of a teenager's honesty.

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.

1. What happened on the best day you can remember? Start from when you woke up.
2. What do you want to be really, really good at?
3. What does our house sound like in the morning?
4. What is something you know how to do that I don't?
5. If you could change one room in our house, which one, and what would you put in it?
6. What is the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning?
7. What does our kitchen smell like on a Sunday?
8. What can you hear through your bedroom wall?
9. Who is up first in our house, and what do they do before everyone else is awake?
10. What happens in the first ten minutes of school? Start from the gate.A ten-minute scene told start to finish is how a child learns to tell a story.
11. What are you the best in your class at?
12. What does the playground sound like at break time?
13. What did you learn this week that you did not know last week?
14. Tell me about a time an animal surprised you.
15. What is the biggest animal you have ever touched? What did it feel like?
16. Have you ever looked after an animal? What did you have to do every day?
17. Who is your best friend right now, and what was the first thing you ever did together?
18. What do your friends call you, and do you like it?
19. Who was your first friend ever, when you were really little? What do you remember about them?
20. What song do you know all the words to? Sing me the first line.Record the line; it is the child's voice at this exact age.
21. What song makes you want to jump around the room?
22. What instrument would you most want to play, and what is the first thing you would play on it?
23. If you could go to any concert, who would be playing, and who would you take?
24. What music do you hear at school? Where does it come from?
25. What is the best sound in the whole world?

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 10 of the things a writer needs about your teenager: the story that shows them, wants, fears and wounds, habits, routines and work, objects, places, food, music, loves and tastes, key relationships, beliefs and values, their voice and sayings, how others saw them, where they came from.

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