Tell Me Again: Choose Your Story Starters
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Everyday Life, Unexpected Stories.
Original prompts developed for Tell Me Again.
Everyday Life, Unexpected Stories
What did you eat for lunch in elementary school? Who did you sit with?
What happened in your house when something broke?
What did your family consider a waste of money? Do you spend money on it now?
What did you do when you heard a particular person’s car pull into the driveway? Whose car was it?
What ordinary possession made you feel rich—or reminded you that you weren’t?
What was the hardest ordinary task during the first year after your divorce?
What object did you keep after a relationship ended? Has its meaning changed?
When did you first notice that another family did things differently from yours?
The World You Can Still Feel.
Inspired by Mary Karr’s attention to sensory memory in The Art of Memoir.
The World You Can Still Feel
What smell would let you recognize your childhood home with your eyes closed?
What did someone you loved always carry in a pocket or purse?
What food tasted different depending on who made it?
Small Scenes, Bigger Stories.
Inspired by Anne Lamott’s approach to gathering memories in Bird by Bird.
Small Scenes, Bigger Stories
What did another child bring to school that you desperately wanted?
What did your family do on vacation that you assumed every family did?
Which item of clothing made you feel conspicuous, confident, or uncomfortable?
The People Who Helped You Become Yourself.
Original prompts inspired by our reading of Stephen King’s On Writing.
The People Who Helped You Become Yourself
When did someone quietly arrange things so you could keep going?
What did you make or attempt before anyone thought you were good at it?
What small kindness do you remember more clearly than a grand gesture?
What Went Unsaid
Original prompts inspired by Hemingway’s discussion of observation and the iceberg principle.
Choose all that apply
How could you tell someone was angry before they said anything?
What did a person in your family do instead of saying “I love you”?
What ordinary object carries a story that nobody would guess by looking at it?
Looking at Yourself Sideways.
Adapted from Mike Birbiglia’s ‘Slow Round’ conversations on Working It Out.
Looking at Yourself Sideways
21. Which smell brings back a particular moment from childhood?
22. What childhood scene keeps returning to you, although you’re not sure why?
23. What assumption about you do people repeatedly get wrong?
24. What part of you do other people tend to underestimate?
25. When did you try to be a version of yourself that, looking back, didn’t feel like you?
26. Which song brings you to tears? What does it bring back?
27. Where, outside your own home, have you felt most at home?
28. Whose life have you envied? What did you imagine they had that you didn’t?
29. What advice did you actually put into practice? Tell me about a time you used it.
30. What do other people enjoy most about you—and what sometimes gets on their nerves?
31. Have you ever been struck in the face? What happened?
32. Was there a period when you acted more outgoing than you felt?
33. At a party, what kind of person do you seek out—and whom do you hope to avoid?
Belonging, Courage, and Changing Your Mind
Original prompts inspired by Brené Brown’s work in Braving the Wilderness, Rising Strong, and Dare to Lead.
Choose your prompts
34. Tell me about a time you changed your clothes, your accent, or your opinions to fit in. What happened?
35. Whose house could you walk into without feeling you had to be on your best behavior? What happened when you arrived?
36. Was there an unwritten rule about what people in your family were allowed to be upset about? Tell me about a time you encountered it.
37. Tell me about a time you asked for help after trying hard to manage alone. Whom did you ask, and how did they respond?
38. What conversation did you rehearse in your head before finally having it? How did the real conversation differ?
39. Have you ever misunderstood someone’s silence, expression, or absence—and learned later what was actually happening?
40. What family story do you understand differently now than you did as a child? What changed your understanding?
41. Tell me about a time you stood by a belief even though it cost you something. What do you remember about that day?
42. When did you surprise yourself by doing something you had always said you would never do?
43. What mistake became easier to talk about after someone shared a mistake of their own?
44. Tell me about a time you let someone see something you usually kept hidden—a messy house, unfinished work, uncertainty. What happened next?
45. Was there a moment when being yourself meant disappointing someone important to you? Tell me about it?
Faith, Doubt, and Finding Meaning
Original prompts inspired by Rainn Wilson’s explorations of spirituality in Soul Boom
Choose your prompts
46. What is your earliest memory of someone talking about God? What did you picture?
47. What did faith look like in your childhood home on an ordinary weekday?
48. Was there a religious question you learned not to ask? What happened when you asked—or what kept you quiet?
49. Tell me about a prayer you remember saying. Where were you, and what were you hoping for?
50. Was there a moment when something you had always believed stopped making sense? What happened next?
51. Have your beliefs ever differed from those of someone you loved? Tell me about a conversation—or a silence—that captures that difference.
52. What hymn, prayer, ritual, or religious object brings back a particular person? What do you remember about them?
53. Tell me about a time a religious community made you feel welcome—or made you wonder whether you belonged.
54. Have you ever found something meaningful in a faith or tradition different from the one you knew? How did you encounter it?
55. After someone died, was there something people said about faith that comforted you—or that you wished they would stop saying?
56. Was there a time you stepped away from religion, returned to it, or found a different path? What do you remember about that period?
57. Have you ever felt a sense of wonder or connection that you struggled to explain? Take me back to that moment.
58. When life became uncertain, what did you actually turn to? Tell me about a particular day.
59. What question about faith, death, or the meaning of life are you still carrying? When did it first become important to you?
When Life Changes Shape
Original prompts inspired by Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward and The Wisdom Pattern
Choose your prompts
60. What did you once believe you had to accomplish before your life could count as successful? Where did that idea come from?
61. Tell me about a day when a title or role—parent, spouse, provider, professional—no longer fit the way it once had. What happened?
62. Was there a rule you followed faithfully until life presented you with an exception? Tell me about the person or experience that complicated it.
63. What did you keep doing for a while after you realized you no longer wanted to do it? What finally changed?
64. Tell me about something you were a beginner at later in life. What was the first day like?
65. Have you ever received kindness from someone you had been taught to distrust or avoid? What do you remember about the encounter?
66. When did you discover that two things you had considered opposites could both be true? What brought you to that realization?
67. What belief from your upbringing have you kept, but come to understand differently? Tell me about an experience that changed its meaning.
68. Was there a time when familiar religious words or practices no longer helped? What, if anything, reached you instead?
69. What did you once feel you had to hide or correct about yourself that you now regard more gently? Can you remember a moment when that began to change?
70. Tell me about something you let go of without knowing what would replace it. What did the following weeks look like?
71. What ordinary moment would your younger self have overlooked that you now treasure? Take me into that moment.
Love, Care, and Being Heard
Original prompts inspired by bell hooks’s All About Love and her conversations about love and community
Review your selected story starters and any custom prompts before sending.
Choose your prompts
72. When you were growing up, what counted as proof that someone loved you? Tell me about a particular moment.
73. Who took your childhood opinions seriously? What do you remember telling them?
74. Was there someone outside your immediate family who helped raise you? What ordinary thing did you do together?
75. What did the adults around you teach you about crying? Can you remember a time that lesson mattered?
76. Tell me about a friendship that changed what you expected from love.
77. Was there a time you disagreed with someone you loved and still felt secure in their affection? What happened?
78. What work kept your household going that people rarely noticed? Who did it, and when did you begin to understand it?
79. Tell me about a time someone cared for you in a way you hadn’t known how to ask for.
80. What did you decide to do differently from the way you were raised? Tell me about an occasion when you put that decision into practice.
81. Where did people gather in your neighborhood? Who made you feel that you had a place there?
Your Voice, Your Choices
Original prompts inspired by Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road and her reflections on listening and self-determination
Choose your prompts
82. What were you told a girl or boy should never do? Tell me about a time that rule affected you.
83. When did you first earn money you could decide how to spend? What did you do with it?
84. Tell me about a time someone assumed you couldn’t do something because of who you were. How did you respond?
85. Was there a woman in your family whose ambitions you learned about only later? How did you find out?
86. What conversation made you realize that something you considered a private problem was happening to other people, too?
87. Tell me about the first time you went somewhere alone that mattered to you. What do you remember about arriving?
88. Have you ever heard someone describe your life or community and thought, “That isn’t our story”? What were they missing?
89. What did a stranger tell you that you have never forgotten? Where were you?
90. Tell me about a time you spoke up without knowing whether anyone would agree. What happened immediately afterward?
91. When did you choose something for yourself that surprised the people who knew you? What did you choose, and whom did you tell first?
The Stories That Survive
Questions based on the writing of Toni Morrison
Original prompts inspired by Toni Morrison’s “The Site of Memory” and her reflections on memory and storytelling
Choose your prompts
112. Who told the stories in your family? Where did people sit, and what happened when the storytelling began?
113. Was there someone everyone described with the same word—“difficult,” “good,” “wild,” “selfish”? Tell me about a moment that complicates that description.
114. What family saying made perfect sense at home but needed explaining elsewhere? When do you remember someone using it?
115. Whose version of a family event usually became the accepted story? What do you remember differently?
116. Is there a person in an old photograph whom you wish you knew more about? What do you know, and what would you ask?
117. What did you learn about your family through a recipe, song, name, or object rather than through a direct explanation?
The Places That Shape Us
Questions based on writings by Barbara Kingsolver
Original prompts inspired by themes of place, food, community, and the natural world in Barbara Kingsolver’s writing
Choose your prompts
118. What did someone in your family make beautiful even when money was short? Describe watching them work on it.
119. Was there a skill passed down in your family that you resisted learning—or wish someone had taught you? Tell me about it.
120. What happened to a family possession when the person who treasured it was gone? Who wanted it, and who saw it differently?
121. Was there a letter you wrote that said something you couldn’t say aloud? What do you remember about writing it and deciding whether to send it?
122. Tell me about a time you wore, displayed, or used something from your background that you had once felt embarrassed by. What had changed?
123. Was there a person you knew mainly through other people’s complaints until you spent time alone with them? What did you discover?
Work, Dignity, and Choosing Who We Become
Questions based on the writing of John Steinbeck
Original prompts inspired by themes of work, dignity, fellowship, and moral choice in John Steinbeck’s writing
Choose your prompts
124. When you moved somewhere new, what ordinary task suddenly required instructions? Who helped you learn how things worked there?
125. What did the weather decide in your household—when people worked, what you ate, whether you could leave? Take me through a day when it took charge.
126. What did you eat because it was available only at a certain time of year? How did you know the season had arrived?
127. Tell me about something you tried to grow, raise, or keep alive. What did caring for it require that you hadn’t expected?
128. Was there a local place you watched change—a field, creek, shop, or stretch of road? Describe the last time you saw it as it used to be.
129. Tell me about a time neighbors had to solve a problem together. What did each person bring, and where did you fit in?
What Is Ours to Choose
Original prompts inspired by themes of judgment, attention, and response in the writings of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca
Choose your prompts
130. Tell me about a day when something you had carefully planned fell apart. What did you do in the first few minutes?
131. Was there a time you decided not to answer an insult or accusation? What do you remember wanting to say, and what happened instead?
132. What did you once treat as an emergency that you would handle more calmly now? Take me back to a particular occasion.
133. Tell me about a time you had to wait for news you could do nothing to hurry along. How did you spend the hours?
134. Was there something you practiced regularly that helped you through a difficult period? Describe what that practice looked like on an ordinary day.
135. Have you ever realized, in the middle of an ordinary moment, that you wouldn’t always have that person or experience in your life? What did you notice?
Curiosity, Discovery, and How Things Work
Original prompts developed for Tell Me Again about encounters with science and technology
Choose your prompts
136. What did you take apart because you wanted to know how it worked? What happened when you tried to put it back together?
137. Tell me about something you tested for yourself instead of accepting someone’s explanation. What did you try, and what happened?
138. What scientific event do you remember following as it happened—a space mission, a discovery, an invention? Where were you, and whom did you talk to about it?
139. Was there something you could see only after someone showed you how to look—through a microscope, a telescope, or simply by paying closer attention? Describe that first look.
140. What new technology entered your home or workplace and changed an ordinary routine? Walk me through how you did things before and after.
141. Tell me about a time something you observed didn’t fit what you had been taught. How did you try to make sense of it?
142. Did you ever keep a collection, notebook, or record of something you were curious about—rocks, insects, weather, stars? Take me through what you gathered and how you organized it.
143. Tell me about a scientific prediction you remember hearing about the future. What did you imagine your life would look like if it came true?
The Things Nobody Thinks to Ask
Original prompts developed for Tell Me Again, inspired by David Sedaris’s curiosity about the peculiar details of everyday life
Choose your prompts
144. What is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done to avoid a perfectly ordinary conversation? Did it work?
145. What minor offense committed years ago would you still like entered into the official record? Tell me your side.
146. What is the strangest thing you’ve ever been paid to do? What did you tell people afterward?
147. If someone had secretly filmed your family getting ready to leave the house, what would the audience have witnessed?
148. What did you confidently explain to someone before discovering you had absolutely no idea what you were talking about? How did you find out?
149. What is the worst possible moment you’ve been unable to stop laughing? What happened when you tried?
150. What encounter would you insist you’d invented if it hadn’t actually happened? Take me through it from the beginning.
Send My Story Starters
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