Telling Your Life Story:

21 Preparation Prompts for Your Video Interview

Remember: Everyone’s story is different, there are no right or wrong answers, no boring or uninteresting stories—only your story matters.

1. Who was your best friend growing up?
2. What pets did you have? What was/were their names? Describe them. How long did you have them? How did you feel when you lost them?
3. Describe your favorite family meal. Where did you eat—around the dinner table? In front of the TV or radio?
4. When did you eat, and why that hour?
5. What games did you play growing up?
6. What was your “secret” place to go when you wanted to be alone or feel safe?
7. What was your first job?
8. Do you remember your grandparents or great-grandparents?
9. Who was your first love?
10. Describe your first date.
11. How did you learn to drive? What was your first car?
12. What places did you used to go? What did you used to do for vacations?
13. What were some of the important places from your childhood?
14. Are there smells, sounds, or tastes that take you back home? (a particular perfume, your dad’s aftershave, rotting leaves in the fall, a particular meal?)
15. What were some traditions your family observed during your early life? Do any of those traditions survive to this day in your family?
16. Were there particular phrases your parents said that stayed with you?
17. Describe a turning point in your life. Explore the past, present, and future around that experience. (Including what you may have done during the Great Depression or the war(s).)
18. Which one of your parents are you most like? How do you you feel about it?
19. Was there a particular person that inspired you? Or an event or experience that had a significant impact on your life?
20. What was one of your favorite songs that elicits strong memories or feelings?
21. Do you have any keepsakes or photographs that you hold on to—either still in your possession or your recall.

Everybody is different—different stories, experiences, family relationships. Life is not only good memories. Some of the greatest influences on our lives are the challenges, and the challenging people we encountered along the way. Those may include our parents, being bullied in school, terrible bosses, difficult relationships.

An oral history is more than an dispassionate account of one’s growing up and growing old, it is a time to find reconciliation, a passing on of life’s lessons learned, a discovery of what is important, now that you have had the opportunity to process your experiences. Even more important;y, your oral history is a legacy that can be shared with those who follow.