Storyphile | Your life. Your story. For the people you love.

4A. Interviews: Raw Material for Your Life Story

For most life story packages, our work with you begins with audio-recorded interviews—in your home or in any comfy location you choose.

Interviews can be the starting point for a larger project, or they can be the final product. They get your story on the record for posterity—and that’s what’s most important.

Your interviews with Storyphile will feel like chats with an old and trusted friend—the kind you can share anything with.

Storyphile will gently guide your strolls down memory lane. You can talk about anything you like. You can also choose to be private about whatever you like. It’s your life and your story. You’ll always have the last word.

The interview process

For Storyphile, every hour of interview involves a host of tasks.

  • consulting with you and preparing a plan for what we’ll talk about
  • developing interview questions that draw out the story of your life
  • preparing and testing the equipment
  • travel time
  • recording the interview
  • reviewing our notes and planning the next session
  • producing audio files

Depending on the package you choose, every hour of interview can also require

  • arranging for transcription of voice to text (We use professional transcriptionists.)
  • transcript production (This includes layout, formatting, proofreading, preparing a table of contents, indexing and arranging for printing.)
  • story development (We transform your interviews into a well-written, well-structured story that captures your readers’ attention and imagination.)

“Writers are the custodians of memory, and memories have a way of dying with their owner. One of the saddest sentences I know is “I wish I had asked my mother about that.”

—William Zinsser

Granddad shares his life story book with his beaming granddaughter.