We will soon be opening up the path to participate with Stories of Our Journeys. Thanks for your patience.In the meantime, if you would like to recommend someone to be on our show, or have an interview you would like to see featured on Stories of Our Journeys, please let us know.

Tips for Interviewing for Stories of Our Journeys

Sharing a story is often the most precious gift people have to offer others. To help you share your story or help another share theirs, here are some tips from Stories of Our Journeys.Stories of our Journeys are not just hours of interviews for a biography. They are snapshots of stories about a moment, experience, or event in a person’s life and how their life was impacted. Storytelling interviews normally last from 15 to 45 minutes, with few lasting more than an hour.

The Interview

• Get permission from the subject to record them.
• State the date and time of the interview, full name, location, and any description or notes at the beginning of the interview as a reference.
• Begin with a simple but powerful question. We often start with “Who are you?” Then shut up. Let them do all the talking.
• Keep questions down to 10 words or less.
• Ask “why” and “how” often.
• Let there be comfortable moments of silence as the other person gets their thoughts together. What they say next usually surprises.
• Let the story go where it may. The end might surprise you.
• Stories tend to bring out emotions. Let them take the storyteller where they may, and be patient.
• Listen actively by paying close attention to what they are saying and nodding along with the story. You do not have to make sounds or speak to encourage them. Just let them talk in silence until it is clear they are done.
• If the storyteller runs off on too many tangents, gently guide them back to the key story they need to tell.
• If they need some help to get started, start them with something easy, like a question from below, then move to the key story you are helping them tell once they get warmed up.
• If there are many players in the story, help the storyteller clarify who they are and how they impact the story being told.
• How do you know when they are done with the story? All stories have a natural end, but some people aren’t good storytellers. Ask if you can’t tell when the story is finished.
• Thank the storyteller before, during, and afterwards for sharing their stories. Some stories are very hard to share, so show appreciation for the effort.
• Some stories need research, most don’t. We’ve included our favorite questions below as a guide.

While it is important to take notes before, during, and after an interview, take time as soon as possible after the interview to write up some paragraphs on your own experience and lessons learned from the interview subject. What impressed, surprised, or awed you? What moved you? Share how you felt as well as what you remember them saying. Save this with the recordings for your notes when it’s ready to share the story.

The Interview Setup and Equipment

• Use an unobtrusive method of recording the story, by audio or video. Let the story take center stage, not the equipment or setup.
• Record in a room as quiet as possible with little background noise. If necessary, turn off the refrigerator, fans, air conditioners, and other noise making items in the room during the interview.
• Thoroughly, and repeatedly, test the equipment before you begin.
• Have extra batteries at hand as well as extra storage media.
• Consider recording a backup at the same time. If you don’t have double the equipment, if you are doing video, make a digital recording at the same time, or vise versa, to ensure the precious moment is preserved.
• The minimal equipment needed for a quality audio recording may be a microphone attached to a computer or a portable digital microphone. The digital microphone should have a wind screen on the microphone to protect it from vocal pops, and a mic stand or tripod to hold the microphone steady and/or close to their mouth. Ensure there is adequate storage for the portable digital microphone.
• The minimal equipment needed for a quality video recording is a video camera attached to a computer or a portable digital camera with good to high resolution quality (HD optional) with a good audio digital microphone. Mount the camera on a stable mount or tripod. Light the subject with adequate lighting, preferably natural or day light bulbs, or even and soft natural light. Ensure there is adequate storage on the digital camera to record the entire interview.
• Have someone take pictures of the storyteller while they are telling the story to record the moment.

Preparing the Interview for Sharing

• Once recorded, make at least one backup of the original and put it in a safe place. Do not edit the original. If editing, keep version backups along the way just in case.
• Editing is optional. Provide an introduction listing the details of the interview and a summary of the person talking at the beginning and briefly at the end. Remove distracting noises and sounds or interruptions. Edit the interview for good listening, if necessary, reordering the story to remove tangents or distractions so the flow of the story is coherent.
• Ums and stutters are natural language features. You can include them or edit some of them out if they make it difficult to listen and enjoy the story.
• For sharing online, export the final audio or video to a common format. For audio, MP3. For video, WMV, AVI, MPEG, or QuickTime formats are most common. Avoid Shockwave Flash and RealVideo formats as those are not as common today and require special software to play.
• To share offline through CDs and DVDs, use common audio and video formats or self-playing software that requires no additional software to play, often created by the editing software automatically.
• For long term storage and backups, store audio in WAV files and video in their raw format or common video formats.

Questions Guide

The following guide of questions to ask during an interview are not meant to be a script. Our interviews begin with “Who are you?” and rarely ask more than a short question to prompt the person to continue with their story. This is because we’ve prepped our guests to help them sort out their thoughts before we turn on the recorders.To help you prep your interview subjects, choose one to three questions to get the storytelling process going.Remember, for every story these are the basic answers to the questions to flesh out the details of the story: who, what, where, when, why, and how?Examples questions to help you get the storyteller started are:

• How did you get here?
• What did you do?
• What did you think of your parents?
• What did you think of your family?
• When times were tough, how did you hold yourself together?
• When life fell apart, how did you survive?
• What were your dreams?
• What have you learned from your experience?
• What did you want?
• When did you realize that things were going wrong?
• Where were you when X happened? (pick a cultural or historical moment)
• What do you love the most about your life?
• What do you think the world would lose when you leave it?
• Describe an “ah-ha” moment in your life.
• Tell me about your birth.
• Describe how others would describe you.
• Describe a moment in your life when you had total clarity over your mind and actions.
• Did you move a lot during your childhood or stay in one place?
• Describe your best friend when you were a child.
• Describe your first love.
• Describe your first job.
• Where is your favorite place to visit and why?
• Where did you live that you would go back to time and time again?
• Describe your parent’s jobs.
• When you were young, what did you do for fun?
• Now that you are older, what do you do for fun?
• Describe a time when you made a risky decision in your life.
• Describe your hobby?
• Describe your family.
• Describe your favorite teacher.
• What is the most important life lesson you learned?
• Describe your childhood neighborhood.
• Who changed your life and how?
• What is your favorite personal item in your home and why?
• What was your proudest moment at work?
• What was your proudest moment as a parent?
• How did you meet your spouse?
• If you could do it all over again, what would be different?
• What was the best lesson you learned from your family?
• What historical event impacted your life the most?
• What do you want people to remember you for?