Recording your life story: a 90-minute method

Why 90 minutes, and why now

There is no perfect age for this. People in their forties have parents in their seventies who tell stories no one has written down. People in their seventies have a clearer view of their own life than they will in ten years. The honest answer to "when" is: this season, before something changes.

A StoryCorps session lasts about an hour, of which roughly 40 minutes is the recorded conversation itself. At home, without a facilitator, a single sitting of about 60 to 90 minutes captures one good arc of a person's life. You can do more sittings later if you want depth on a specific period (childhood, working years, parenthood). Trying to cover an entire life in one go usually produces a thin recording. Trying to cover one chapter properly produces something families return to.

The Humanitas levensboek programme, in which some local Humanitas branches pair trained volunteers with older adults to write down their life stories, takes a different shape: roughly eight conversations of 60 to 90 minutes each, every one or two weeks, resulting in an A5 book of around 80 to 100 pages with photographs (Humanitas, levensboek programme description). That is the long version. The 90-minute method below is the short version. Both are valid. The short one tends to actually happen.

What you need

Almost nothing.

• A phone with a voice memo app, or any recorder. Modern phones produce audio that is good enough for family use.
• A quiet room. Close the window. Turn off the dishwasher.
• A glass of water for the speaker.
• A list of questions, printed or on a separate device. (See below.)
• Optional: one or two photographs to prompt memory. People often talk more freely with an object in their hands.

Two notes on technique. First, put the phone close to the speaker, not to you. Second, ask permission to record before you start, out loud, on the recording. "I am recording this conversation with [name] on [date]. Are you okay with that?" That sentence is the only piece of formal structure the recording needs.

How to ask: the rules of the conversation

The two best pieces of guidance from the StoryCorps method are these. Ask open questions, not yes-or-no questions. "Tell me about..." and "What was it like when..." produce stories. "Did you like school?" produces a one-word answer. Be willing to sit in silence. Most of the best material in any recorded conversation comes after a pause the interviewer was tempted to fill. If the speaker stops talking, count to five before asking the next question. Often they will keep going.

A few other things help. Do not interrupt to correct dates or names; you can fix those later. Do not steer them away from emotional moments; if they want to cry, let them cry, the recording is allowed to have crying in it. Do not ask leading questions ("That must have been wonderful, right?"). Ask one question at a time, not three stacked together. And listen with your face, not your phone.

The questions

Below is a working list of 14 questions, adapted from the StoryCorps Great Questions list (the public methodology used in StoryCorps booths since 2003). They are sequenced to move from easy to deeper. You will not get to all of them in 90 minutes. Most participants get through six to eight questions in 40 minutes of conversation, which is the StoryCorps guidance. Choose the ones that fit the person.

1. Where and when were you born, and what do you remember about the place?
2. What was your family like when you were small? Who lived in the house?
3. What is your earliest memory?
4. Tell me about one of your grandparents -- what they were like, what they did, how they made you feel.
5. What was school like for you? Was there a teacher who mattered?
6. What did you want to be when you grew up, and how is that different from what happened?
7. Tell me about a time in your life when things changed direction, expected or unexpected.
8. How did you meet [partner / closest friend / the person who shaped you most]?
9. What has been one of the happiest moments of your life so far? And one of the hardest?
10. What are you most proud of?
11. What are the most important lessons you have learned?
12. Is there something about yourself that you think no one in the family really knows?
13. If you could pass on one piece of wisdom to your children or grandchildren, what would it be?
14. How would you like to be remembered?

The last question, "how would you like to be remembered," is the StoryCorps signature closing question. It tends to produce the line that families later quote at funerals. Ask it last, not first.

If you are recording your own story, alone, the same list works. Sit with the recorder, read one question out loud, and answer it as if a grandchild were sitting across from you. It feels strange for the first three minutes and then it stops feeling strange.

What to do with the recording

A recording that lives only on the original phone will, statistically, be lost. Phones are dropped, accounts are closed, cloud backups expire when nobody pays the bill.

A simple plan works:

• Save the file with a clear name: LifeStory_[name]_[YYYY-MM-DD].m4a or similar.
• Make at least three copies: original device, a second device or laptop, and either a USB stick in a paper folder or a cloud account that someone other than you knows the credentials to.
• Tell at least one nabestaande (someone close who would be next of kin) where the file is. A recording no one knows about does not count.
• Optional, and worth it: have it transcribed. Modern transcription is cheap and fast. A written transcript means the story is searchable, quotable, and survives the disappearance of any one audio format.

For the families who want the full Humanitas-style version -- a printed book with photographs, edited and bound -- some local Humanitas branches offer the levensboek programme, run by volunteers and usually for a contribution (for example around €100 plus a fee per printed copy); ask your local branch. It is especially valuable for older adults whose memories have started to fade. It takes longer, but the result is a physical object that lives on a shelf for generations.

The version your future family will actually use

A useful test, when you finish: imagine the person on the recording is gone, and a grandchild who never met them is twelve years old and curious. Would this recording let them hear who that person was? If yes, you are done. If not, do one more sitting on the part you skimmed.

The recording does not need to be polished. It needs to be made.

Plan it

• ☐ Pick a date: block ninety minutes, phone in another room.
• ☐ Before you sit down: choose the five questions that matter most to you.
• ☐ During: record, do not edit. Editing is for never.

On the first quiet Sunday I have, I will start with question one, and let it be imperfect.

In the app

In the My Story module you answer short questions, at your own pace, across seven themes: places, people, what you can do, pride, what you learned, roles and how you live. Once you have written five pieces, you can make a one-page "About me" PDF. For words addressed to one person, Letters to Loved Ones lets you write a letter or record it in your own voice in the app (recordings are not in the PDF). What you write becomes part of your Zorgmap, a private PDF you print or hand over yourself; your family cannot open the app itself.

Request access →

Closed beta -- access by invitation.

Sources

1. StoryCorps -- Great Questions list and interview methodology, since 2003. https://storycorps.org/participate/great-questions/
2. Humanitas -- levensboek programme, life-story writing with volunteers, offered by some local Humanitas afdelingen (e.g. Zaanstreek-Waterland), usually for a contribution. https://www.humanitas.nl/