# How to write someone's life story

A life story written by a family member fails for one of two reasons: not enough material, or a structure that is just a timeline. Here is how to fix both.

## Collect by voice, in short visits

Sit with them, or call them, for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, and record it. Ask one question and then follow it: who was there, what did he say, what happened next. Twenty-five to forty such conversations is what a real book needs. Fewer gives you a booklet.

Use a question list as a map, not a script. Our lists are arranged easy to tender for a reason: the tender questions (loss, regret, the things never spoken of) are asked once, late, and with permission to decline.

## Know what you are missing

After every few visits, check: which people in their life are still just names? Which stories stop halfway? Which years has nobody mentioned? The next visit goes there. This is what a professional interviewer does and what an email prompt a week never can.

## Find the shape

Read everything you have and look for the question the life answers. "She spent forty years making a home she was never sure was hers." "He kept choosing the harder road and never once explained why." That sentence becomes the organising idea; chapters follow it rather than the calendar.

## Write in their voice

Use their words, including the odd ones. Keep the sayings. Mark hearsay as hearsay. If you are tempted to improve a sentence, ask whether the improvement sounds like them. If not, put it back.

## Proof, approve, print

Let the person read it, or hear it read, before anyone else. Anything they want out comes out. Then print: a 200-page hardcover costs well under a hundred dollars from any print-on-demand service, and the keepsake box matters more than the paper weight.