How many questions fill a session?

Fewer than you expect. A good question can occupy twenty minutes, so six to ten will fill a 90-minute session comfortably. Preparing fifteen gives you spare capacity without committing you to work through them all.

Should you send questions in advance?

It depends on the person. Some prepare thoughtfully and give richer answers; others rehearse and lose spontaneity. Sending a general theme rather than exact wording often gets the benefit of preparation without the rehearsed delivery.

What if someone is uncomfortable with reflective questions?

Stay concrete. Not everyone is introspective, and pressing produces discomfort rather than insight. Descriptive questions about places, work and daily routine yield plenty for those people, and their character emerges through the detail rather than through self-assessment.

Can you interview someone with memory difficulties?

Often yes, with adjustments. Long-term memory frequently remains accessible when recent memory does not, so childhood questions may work well. Keep sessions short, follow their lead, and treat the conversation as valuable in itself rather than as a task to complete.

Tapestry Blog

What Are the Best Life Story Interview Questions?

Updated June 10, 2026 · 6 min read · The Tapestry Team

TL;DR. The most productive life-story questions are: what was your childhood home like, who shaped you most, what decision changed your life, what are you proudest of, what do you wish you had done differently, and what do you want remembered. Each opens a whole territory rather than requesting a fact.

StoryCorps built its interview method around a small set of questions that reliably produce substantial answers, and the pattern is consistent: they ask for reflection rather than information. Nobody can answer what decision changed your life in a sentence, which is exactly why it works.

Which questions open the most territory?

Who was the most important influence on you, what was the happiest moment of your life, what was the hardest, what decision would you make differently, and how would you like to be remembered. Each invites a considered answer that cannot be given briefly.

The strength of these is that they are unanswerable in passing. A question that could be answered at a bus stop will be, whereas one requiring thought creates the pause that a recorded interview is designed to hold.

How should you order them?

Concrete before reflective. Start with childhood and place, move through work and family, and save the evaluative questions for late in the session once the interviewee is comfortable and has already been talking at length for an hour.

Opening with how would you like to be remembered produces a short, guarded answer. The same question ninety minutes in, after a person has described their parents and their working life, produces something considered. Position matters as much as wording.

Tapestry app showing life story interview prompts arranged in order — Order matters: concrete questions first, evaluative ones once someone is talking freely.

What if the answer is a set anecdote?

Ask a detail question inside it. If a story has been told many times, requesting a specific element, what were you wearing, who else was in the room, what happened immediately afterwards, breaks the polished version and returns them to actual memory.

Set anecdotes are not a problem to avoid; they are worth recording because they are what the family tells about itself. The technique is to record the polished version and then go underneath it, rather than trying to prevent it.

Want the questions ready in order when you sit down? Tapestry guides the interview and records it.

How do you close an interview?

Ask whether there is anything they expected to be asked and were not, and whether there is anything they want to add. Both regularly produce the most significant material in the session, because they hand control to the interviewee at the point they are most warmed up.

Then thank them explicitly and confirm what happens to the recording. Ending clearly matters for whether they agree to a second session, and most life-story work benefits from more than one sitting.

Key takeaways

The best questions ask for reflection and cannot be answered briefly.
Order concrete questions first and evaluative ones late in the session.
Break set anecdotes by asking for a specific detail inside them.
Record the polished family version as well as what lies underneath it.
Close by asking what you failed to ask; it often produces the best material.

Frequently asked questions

How many questions fill a session?: Fewer than you expect. A good question can occupy twenty minutes, so six to ten will fill a 90-minute session comfortably. Preparing fifteen gives you spare capacity without committing you to work through them all.
Should you send questions in advance?: It depends on the person. Some prepare thoughtfully and give richer answers; others rehearse and lose spontaneity. Sending a general theme rather than exact wording often gets the benefit of preparation without the rehearsed delivery.
What if someone is uncomfortable with reflective questions?: Stay concrete. Not everyone is introspective, and pressing produces discomfort rather than insight. Descriptive questions about places, work and daily routine yield plenty for those people, and their character emerges through the detail rather than through self-assessment.
Can you interview someone with memory difficulties?: Often yes, with adjustments. Long-term memory frequently remains accessible when recent memory does not, so childhood questions may work well. Keep sessions short, follow their lead, and treat the conversation as valuable in itself rather than as a task to complete.

The Tapestry Team
Oral History & Family Archives, BigBalli. We draw on oral history practice from StoryCorps, the Oral History Association and the Library of Congress.