---
name: oral-history-kit
description: "Record a parent's or grandparent's life while they can still tell it — the question arcs that unlock real stories instead of resume facts, the session logistics that keep it sustainable, the follow-up probes that get the texture, and the pipeline from recordings to a book the family keeps. Use when asked to interview my grandmother about her life, record dad's stories before it is too late, questions to ask an elderly parent, or make a family history book. Produces the session plan with question arcs, the interviewer technique guide, the consent and boundaries conversation, and the transcript-to-book pipeline. Warm, unhurried, and honest that later never comes on schedule."
---

# Oral History Kit

Everyone means to do this, and most families are left holding three photographs and a regret. The obstacles are never love — they are logistics (nobody set a date), technique (direct questions produce resume answers: born here, worked there), and scale (the project feels like a documentary, so it becomes nothing). This kit shrinks it to something that actually happens: 45-minute sessions, one arc at a time, questions built to summon *scenes* rather than facts — what the kitchen smelled like, who they were scared of, what the argument was actually about — and a pipeline that turns the recordings into a book without a production company. It also handles the tender parts: the stories they don't want kept, the memories that have shifted, and the sessions where crying is part of it.

## What This Skill Produces

- **The session plan** — 45-minute arcs in an order that builds trust before it asks depth: places and textures first, love and loss later
- **The question arcs** — childhood, the places, work, love, the hard years, the world changing, what they know now — each with openers and the follow-up probes that get scenes instead of summaries
- **The technique guide** — the one-question-at-a-time rule, the ten-second silence, the object trick (photos, recipes, tools as memory keys), and never correcting a date
- **The consent and boundaries conversation** — what gets kept, what stays in the room, and who may hear it, agreed before recording
- **The pipeline** — recording setup anyone owns already, transcription, light editing that keeps their voice, and the book format

## Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:
- **Who** — the storyteller, their relationship to the interviewer, and anything about their energy, hearing, memory, or mood that shapes session length and pacing
- **The state of things** — how much time likely exists, honestly; the plan for a healthy 78-year-old and for a hospice week are different plans, and the kit adjusts rather than pretends
- **What the family most wants kept** — the war years, the migration, the recipes, how they met — the arcs get ordered around what would hurt most to lose
- **The kit available** — a phone is enough; the guide meets whatever exists
- **The sensitivities** — the topics known to be painful or off-limits, and who in the family the record is for

## Framework: Small Sessions, Scene Questions, Their Voice Kept

1. **Schedule the first session before preparing anything else.** The project's real enemy is *later*. One date on a calendar beats a perfect plan; the kit's first output is always this week's session, not the whole series.
2. **Ask for scenes, not summaries.** "Tell me about your childhood" gets a paragraph; "walk me into the house you grew up in — what did the kitchen smell like, who is in it?" gets ten minutes of things nobody in the family has heard. Every arc's questions are built on this conversion: where were you standing, what were you wearing, what did they say exactly.
3. **Use objects as keys.** A photograph, a recipe tin, a medal, a tool — memory is indexed by things. Sessions that start with "tell me about this" outperform any question list.
4. **Hold the silences and never correct.** Ten seconds of quiet is where the real story arrives; a corrected date teaches them to perform accuracy instead of remembering. If versions shift between tellings, keep both — the shifting is itself the record of a mind, and the book can hold it gently.
5. **Agree the boundaries out loud.** Before recording: anything you say stays out if you ask, some things can be for after-I'm-gone only, and you can hear anything before the family does. This is what makes the hard stories possible at all.
6. **End every session five minutes early, with thanks and the next date.** Tired storytellers stop enjoying it, and the project dies of one bad session. The close is always: one thing that surprised the interviewer, said back to them, and when we meet next.
7. **The pipeline stays small:** record on the phone (airplane mode, close to them, a test clip first) → transcribe → edit only for readability, keeping their exact phrases and detours — the "anyway, where was I" is the voice the family wants — → assemble arcs into chapters with the photos that came up → print simply. A bound draft they can hold and correct beats a beautiful book they never saw.

## Output Format

### Oral history plan: [storyteller] · [sessions planned] · first session: [date]

**Session 1 — [arc]:** [opener] · [6–8 scene questions with their follow-up probes] · [the object to bring]
**Later arcs, in order:** [arc — why this position in the sequence]

**Technique card** (one page, for the interviewer's lap): [the rules — one question, ten-second silence, scenes not summaries, never correct, end early]

**The boundaries agreement:** [the exact words to open it with · the three options every story has: keep, keep-for-later, keep-nothing]

**Pipeline:** [recording setup for the kit they own → transcription route → editing rules that keep the voice → book assembly → the correction pass with the storyteller]

**If time is short:** [the compressed version — the three questions to ask this week, because a phone recording of three stories beats a plan for forty]

## Quality Checks
- [ ] The first session has a date before the plan has polish
- [ ] Every question converts to a scene: place, senses, people, spoken words
- [ ] The boundaries conversation happens before recording, in the plan explicitly
- [ ] Technique includes the silence rule and the never-correct rule
- [ ] The pipeline keeps their phrasing — edited transcripts still sound like them
- [ ] A short-time version exists whenever the situation calls for one

## Anti-Patterns
- **Building the documentary.** Gear lists and forty-session outlines are how this becomes nothing; a phone and Thursday is how it becomes real.
- **The chronology march.** Birth-to-now ordering produces a CV; arcs ordered by trust produce a life.
- **Interrogating.** Two questions stacked, silence filled, a date corrected — each teaches them to give shorter answers.
- **Recording without the boundaries talk.** One story they regret telling can end the whole project, and deserves to.
- **Editing them into fluency.** The detours, repetitions, and dialect are not noise; they are the person.
- **Waiting for the right moment.** The kit's whole premise is that the right moment is the one you schedule.

## Example Trigger Phrases

- "Interview my grandmother about her life."
- "Record dad's stories before it is too late."
- "Make a family history book."