Not the big events. The kitchen. The walk to school. What their mother’s voice sounded like. Those go quiet without warning, and no photograph brings them back.
This is an interviewer that never gets tired and never stops being curious. One question at a time, for as long as they want, until there is a book.
It is software, and everyone using it is told so plainly. It writes nothing the speaker did not say. Where a fact is missing it leaves a gap for you to ask about rather than filling it in.
Worth the Telling
What did your mother's voice sound like?
Heard: Mother, sings, kitchen, private
A scripted sample, not a live recording.
Open it on their phone, sign in, add it to the home screen. Run one question together so the microphone prompt is answered while you are standing there. That is the entire setup and it never has to be done again.
A question waits on screen in large type and is read aloud. They tap once and talk for as long as they like, with no timer and nothing to cut them off. If they would rather tell you something else entirely, they do, and it follows them.
Every person and place they name is kept. Something mentioned in passing in March is returned to in May, deliberately. Two questions in three follow what was just said, which is why week ten is better than week one.
Every answer transcribed and written into stories in their own words, gathered into chapters. Download it as a Word document, Markdown, or a print-ready PDF. It is yours. Take it to any printer you like.
Record one story before you spend anything. If they enjoy it, and most people do once they start, the rest is one payment.
Tell one story and see it written up. No card, no commitment.
Free
No card required
A whole life, recorded and written into a manuscript.
$150
One payment, no subscription
For people who are not finished talking.
$19/month
Cancel any time
We do not print or ship books, because we would rather not mark up someone else’s printing. You get the finished file and take it to whichever printer you like, which is almost always cheaper and usually better.
Every fact on the page has to have come out of their mouth. No guessed years, no invented weather, no feelings assigned to anyone. Where a sentence needs something that was never said, it leaves a mark:
We moved out to the farm in [? what year was this] and I remember the cold in that kitchen.
Those marks become a short list you can take to them and simply ask. A draft with six of them is a good draft. A smooth, complete, partly imagined one is a failure, because a book of memories nobody had would be worse than no book at all.
One story costs nothing and takes about half an hour. That is enough to find out whether they enjoy it, which is really the only question.
Tell one story, free