150 life story questions to answer about your own life

These questions are for you to answer about your own life. Each one asks about something small and specific, like a room, a person, a meal or a single day. Small questions are easier to answer than big ones, and the answers make better stories.

You don't need to answer all of them. Answer one a week, or three in one afternoon and none for a month. To ask a parent or grandparent about their life instead, use these questions to ask your parents and grandparents.

How to use these questions

Pick one question that brings a picture to mind, answer it in your own words, then ask yourself a few follow-up questions.

1. Find a question that brings up a picture. Read down a list until you can see a place or a face, and start there.
2. Answer it out loud or on paper. Write in a notebook, type, or talk into the voice recorder on your phone. If typing is hard on your hands or eyes, here is how to write a memoir without typing.
3. Ask yourself follow-up questions. Your first answer is usually a summary. These get you to the story:
   • Who else was there?
   • What happened next?
   • What did you do afterward?
   • What would you do differently now?
4. Skip anything. If a question brings up something you'd rather not write about, move on. You can come back to it later, or never.
5. Go in any order. You can sort your stories by date when you're done.

Describe what happened instead of summing it up. Instead of "my father worked hard," describe the morning he left in the dark with his lunch pail. Here is how one answer grows with follow-ups:

Question: Where did you go when you wanted to be alone?

First answer: The back porch.

After the follow-ups: The back porch, on the old glider with the torn cushion. I could hear the radio in the kitchen, but nobody could see me. I went out there the night my brother left for the Army and stayed until my mother called me in for supper. Nobody said his name at the table that night.

The family you grew up in

Answer these about whoever raised you: your parents, a grandparent, an aunt, a stepparent or someone else.

• Where did everyone sit at the dinner table, and who sat at the head?
• What is one thing your father always said, and how did he say it?
• What was your mother usually doing when you came home from school?
• Were you the oldest, the youngest or in the middle, and what did that mean in your house?
• Who was the funny one in the family, and what did they do that still makes you laugh?
• What did you get in trouble for, and what happened next?
• How did the grown-ups in your house act when they disagreed?
• Which grandparent did you know best, and what did you do together?
• Which relative did the family tell stories about, and what were the stories?
• What did an ordinary Saturday look like in your family?
• What did your family have that the neighbors didn't, or the other way around?

The house and the street

Picture the place you remember best from childhood and walk through it room by room.

• If you walked in the front door of that house, what would you see first?
• Where did you sleep, and who did you share a room with?
• What was cooking in the kitchen on a Sunday, and who was cooking it?
• Where did you go when you wanted to be alone?
• What sounds could you hear from your bed at night?
• What did the house have that houses don't now, like a coal furnace or a party-line telephone?
• When did your family get its first television, and what did you watch on it?
• Who lived next door, and what were they like?
• Where did the kids on your street play, and what games did you play?
• Where did you spend your first pocket money, and what did you buy?
• If you went back to that street today, what would you look for first?

School

Think of one school building and one year in it, then answer from there.

• How did you get to school, and who did you walk or ride with?
• What did your first classroom look like, and where did you sit?
• What is one thing a teacher said to you that you still remember?
• What did you bring for lunch, or what did the lunchroom serve?
• Which subject came easily, and which one did you dread?
• Who was your best friend in grade school, and what did you do after school?
• What games did you play at recess, and who picked the teams?
• What was the worst trouble you got into at school, and what did your parents say?
• What did you wear to school, and what did you wish you could wear?
• Which school event did you look forward to all year?

Your teenage years

These questions cover the years when you started making your own choices.

• What music did you play loud, and what did your parents think of it?
• Where did teenagers in your town go on a Friday night?
• Who taught you to drive, and how did the first lesson go?
• What clothes or hairstyle did you think looked sharp at the time?
• Who was your first crush, and did they ever find out?
• What did you and your friends do that your parents never knew about?
• What did you want to be when you grew up, and who did you tell?
• What did you and your parents argue about more than once?
• What did you do all summer?
• What news from those years do you remember, and where were you when you heard it?
• What were you good at that surprised people?

Leaving home

Leaving home might have meant college, the service, a job, marriage or a rented room across town.

• How old were you when you left home, and what did you take with you?
• What did your mother or father say the day you left?
• Where was the first place you lived on your own, and what was the rent?
• What was the first meal you cooked for yourself, and how did it turn out?
• Who helped you when you were new in a place?
• If you served in the military, what was your first day like, and who was the first friend you made?
• What did you miss about home, and what didn't you miss at all?
• What was the first big thing you bought with your own money?
• What surprised you about living away from your family?
• When did you first feel like an adult?

Work

Count every kind of work: paid jobs, the farm, the family business, keeping house and volunteering.

• What was your first paying job, and what did you do with your first paycheck?
• How did you get the job you stayed in longest?
• What did an ordinary day at that job look like, from arrival to quitting time?
• Who was the best boss you ever had, and what did they do differently?
• What was the hardest work you ever did, and why did you keep at it?
• What tools, machines or uniforms did you use that young people have never seen?
• What is a day at work you'll never forget, good or bad?
• Did you ever quit a job or lose one, and what happened next?
• What skill did you learn at work that you still use?
• If you ran a home and raised a family, what did a full day of that work look like?
• What did you do at work that you're proudest of, and did anyone notice?

Love and marriage

Answer these about anyone who mattered to you, married or not, and skip any that hurt to answer.

• How did you meet, and what did you notice about them first?
• What did you do on your first date, and who paid?
• When did you know you wanted to spend your life with this person?
• How did the proposal happen, and who asked whom?
• What did your parents think of the person you married?
• What do you remember about your wedding day, including what went wrong?
• Where was your first home together, and what furniture did you have?
• What was your first big argument about?
• What did your partner do that always made you laugh?
• What did you learn about marriage that nobody told you beforehand?
• If you loved someone before you married, what happened?

Raising children

If you raised children, your own or someone else's, these questions are about those years.

• Where were you when you learned you'd be a parent, and what did you do next?
• What do you remember about the day your first child was born or came home?
• How did you choose your children's names?
• What did a weeknight evening look like when your children were small?
• What did one of your children do that tested your patience, and how did you handle it?
• Which family vacation or day trip do your children still bring up?
• What did you do differently from your own parents?
• What did you worry about most as a parent?
• What is a funny thing one of your children said when they were small?
• What did you get right as a parent, and what would you change?
• What did one of your children teach you without meaning to?

Hard times

Answer only what you want to, and leave out any details you'd rather keep to yourself.

• What is the hardest thing you have lived through, and who helped you?
• Was there a time money was so short you went without, and how did you manage?
• Who did you lose too early, and what do you remember about them now?
• When did you have to make a decision with no good options?
• What did you do to keep going on the worst days?
• When were you afraid for your safety or someone else's?
• How did your family talk about hard things, or did they not talk about them at all?
• Who do you owe an apology, or who owes you one?
• What do you know now about getting through hard times that you didn't know then?
• What would you tell someone going through the same thing today?

Faith and what you believe

Answer these in whatever way fits you, with a religion or without one.

• If your family went to services, what do you remember about getting ready and going?
• Who taught you right from wrong, and how?
• What prayer, verse, hymn or saying do you still know by heart?
• Has what you believe changed over your life, and what changed it?
• When was your faith tested, and when did you feel most sure of it?
• What rules do you live by that nobody wrote down for you?
• Whose way of living do you most admire, and why?
• What do you think happens after we die, and has that changed?
• What do you still wonder about?
• What do you want your grandchildren to understand about what you believe?

Places you lived and traveled

List every address you can remember, then pick one and answer these about it.

• If your family came here from another country, who came first, and how?
• Of all the places you've lived, which did you love most, and why did you leave?
• What could you see from the window of the place you lived longest?
• Which move was the hardest, and what did you leave behind?
• What was the first trip you took far from home, and how did you get there?
• What is the farthest you have ever traveled, and what surprised you there?
• Have you ever been lost in a strange place, and what happened?
• Where did you go on your first vacation as an adult?
• What town did you only pass through but never forgot?
• What place would you go back to for one more day?

Food, holidays and traditions

Describe one meal or one holiday at a time, as if someone were sitting at the table with you.

• What dish did your mother or grandmother make that nobody has managed to copy?
• At holiday meals, who carved, who said grace, and who did the dishes?
• What did your family eat when money was tight?
• What was a birthday like in your house when you were a child?
• What was the best present you ever got, and who gave it to you?
• Which family tradition did you keep, and which did you quietly drop?
• What did your family do on the Fourth of July?
• What recipe do you want your grandchildren to make, and what's the trick to it?
• What food from your childhood can you no longer find?
• Which holiday went wrong in a way the family still talks about?
• What did you order at the diner, drive-in or soda fountain in your town?

Later years

These questions are about life after your busiest years of work and family.

• What did you do on the first Monday after you retired?
• What does an ordinary day look like for you now?
• What do you do now that you never had time for before?
• What have you learned to do since you turned 60?
• Who are your close friends now, and how did you meet them?
• What has surprised you about getting older?
• What do you understand about your parents now that you didn't when you were young?
• What has changed in your lifetime that you never expected to see?
• What do you still want to do or see?
• Who do you call first when you have good news?
• Which part of your life do you think about most these days?

Things you want your grandchildren to know

Answer these as if a grandchild asked you over dinner, and keep your best answers for a legacy letter if you plan to write one.

• When you were their age, what did a movie ticket, a soda or a gallon of gas cost?
• At their age, how did you keep in touch with friends and make plans?
• What mistake did you make that you hope they won't repeat?
• What were you wrong about for a long time?
• What do you want them to know about the family they come from?
• What do you want to tell them about money?
• What do you want to tell them about choosing a partner?
• What is something about you that would surprise them?
• Which family story do you want them to pass on to their own children?
• What do you see in them that reminds you of someone else in the family?
• What do you hope they never stop doing?
• What everyday thing about you do you hope they remember, like how you take your coffee or the song you hum?

Turn your answers into stories

One answer with its follow-ups is already a short story. Give it a title, say where and when it happened, and tell it in order.

When you have a pile of them, sort them under the headings on this page. How to write your life story covers what to do next.

If you'd rather talk than write

You can answer out loud and let someone else do the writing. A grandchild can read you a question, record your answer on a phone and type it up for you to check.

Biographer does this without a helper. It is an AI interviewer and writer you use in a web browser on a phone, tablet or computer, by typing or speaking, and it can read its questions out loud. It asks questions like the ones on this page, then asks follow-ups based on what you just said, and it remembers what you told it in earlier conversations.

When you press Write Story, it writes the story from your conversation. You choose first person ("I") or third person ("he" or "she"). Read each story before you share it, because it can get a date or a name wrong, and tell it what to fix. See how it works.