Recording a parent or grandparent’s life story is one of the most meaningful things you can do, and one of the easiest to keep putting off. It can feel daunting. Where do you start, what do you ask, how do you capture it, and what do you do with hours of rambling, precious conversation afterwards?
1. Decide how much you want to capture
Be realistic. A whole life is a lot. You might focus on one chapter, such as their childhood, the war years, or how they built the business, or you might aim for the full arc. Deciding the scope up front keeps the project from feeling endless and helps you choose your questions.
2. Prepare your questions
Go in with a plan, but hold it loosely. Group your questions by era or theme, covering childhood, family, school, love, work and later life, and let the answers lead you off script. Our free list of over 150 questions to ask your parents is a good place to start.
3. Choose how to record
You do not need special equipment. A phone voice memo captures audio well enough, and it lets you be present rather than taking notes. If you want video, prop the phone on a small tripod and frame them comfortably. Test it for a minute first and check you have storage space. Audio is often better than video, because people relax and say more when a camera is not staring at them.
4. Set the scene
- Pick a quiet room with soft furnishings. Hard, echoey rooms make recordings hard to hear.
- Turn off the television, and silence phones and notifications.
- Have a cup of tea and old photographs to hand. Photos are the best memory joggers there are.
- Sit beside them rather than across a table, which can feel like an interrogation.
- Keep sessions to about an hour. Several gentle sittings beat one exhausting one.
5. Interview well
The art is in listening more than asking. Ask one open question, then stop talking. Let silences breathe, because that is when the real memories surface. When something moves them, follow it. Ask what that was like, or what she was like. Do not correct or hurry them, and do not worry if they wander. The tangents are often the treasure.
6. Turn the recordings into something lasting
This is the step most people underestimate, and it is where these projects usually stall. Hours of audio sitting on a phone is not a keepsake. It is a task waiting to be done, and it rarely gets done. To become something the family will treasure, it needs to be transcribed, organised, edited into chapters, and laid out with the photographs.
Transcription alone typically takes four to six hours for every hour of audio. Editing the result into something that reads well takes longer again, and it is genuinely hard to do to your own family without either flattening their voice or leaving in every digression.
The interview is the fun part. This is the part that stalls.
Doing it yourself
- Transcribe several hours of audio, or pay for transcription.
- Cut, order and edit it into chapters that read well.
- Write connecting narrative so it is a book rather than a transcript.
- Lay out the photographs and arrange printing.
With Chapternity
- Sage runs the conversation, so you do not have to interview at all.
- The book is written in chapters, then checked for consistency as a whole.
- Photographs are placed throughout, and printing is handled.
- You read every word before you pay, and can change anything.
If you would rather do it all yourself, everything above still works, and the result will mean a great deal to your family. If the writing is the part standing in your way, that is precisely the part we take on.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the best way to record my parents’ memories?
- A phone voice memo in a quiet, soft-furnished room is all you need. Ask open questions, let silences sit, use old photographs to prompt memories, and keep sessions to about an hour. Audio usually works better than video because people relax more without a camera on them.
- How do I turn recordings of my parents into a book?
- The recordings need to be transcribed, organised by theme or era, edited into readable chapters and laid out with photographs. Transcription alone takes roughly four to six hours per hour of audio. You can do this yourself, or use a service like Chapternity, which conducts the conversation and writes the finished book for you.
- What if my parent finds it hard to talk about themselves?
- Many people do. Start with easy, factual questions such as where they were born and what their home was like, before anything emotional. Photographs help enormously, and short, regular sessions feel far less intimidating than one long interview.
Explore more guides or read about life storys.