PDF preparation guide
Preparing for a Legacy Interview
For one conversation with a parent, grandparent, elder, or anyone whose voice you do not want to lose.
Download PDFFree & practical
Resource Library
Preparation should make remembering easier, not turn memory into homework. Download the guide that fits the story you are trying to preserve.
What are you trying to do?
Every guide below is free. No email, no account, nothing to fill in online. Find the line that sounds like your situation.
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Someone in my family is ill, and there may not be much time.
Start with one conversation rather than a project. This tells you what to ask first.
Download the free guide Preparing for a Legacy Interview · one page · print it
Or the full manual: Last Conversations — $9.99Working around fatigue, medication and a hospital that runs on its own schedule.
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I have a box of photographs and nobody's name on them.
The photographs will keep. The people who can name them will not.
Download the free guide Photographs, Letters & Documents · one page · print it
Or the full manual: The Photograph Box — $4.99Triage, running an identification session, dating a photograph with no date.
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I want to write down one person, properly, once.
A parent, a grandparent, an aunt nobody wrote about.
Download the free guide Preparing a Family or Life Story · one page · print it
Or the full manual: The Complete Guide Set — $14.99All twenty-two guides in one printable file, with an introduction on how to use them.
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Our church is closing, or marking an anniversary.
Congregational memory disappears in the few weeks when nobody is thinking about it.
Download the free guide Church & Congregation Memory · one page · print it
Or the full manual: The Congregation Anniversary Book — $9.99Committee, timetable, the difficult chapter, budget and printing.
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There is something in our family nobody talks about.
You do not have to open it. But you should know how, before you decide.
Download the free guide Difficult Memories, Loss & Resilience · one page · print it
Or the full manual: The Family That Does Not Speak — $4.99Recording a history across an estrangement without becoming the judge of it.
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I have a family tree and no story.
Names and dates are a skeleton. This is how to put a life back on it.
Download the free guide From Genealogy to Narrative · one page · print it
Or the full manual: The Ones Who Arrived — $4.99The last generation that remembers coming, and what they chose not to pass on.
Use one guide, or several.
Each PDF gives you things to think about, material worth gathering only if it is easy, interview prompts, and a reminder to set boundaries before difficult subjects are opened. You do not need to complete anything before contacting me.
Start here
PDF preparation guide
Preparing a Family or Life Story
For a larger narrative built from several interviews, documents and generations.
Download PDFPDF preparation guide
Photographs, Letters & Documents
How to turn family material into evidence and story rather than a box of unidentified paper.
Download PDFPeople, places & generations
PDF preparation guide
Childhood, Home & Neighbourhood
A guide for recovering the sensory world around a childhood instead of producing only dates.
Download PDFPDF preparation guide
Parents, Grandparents & Ancestors
For writing people who may be known through fragments, stories, documents and inherited habits.
Download PDFPDF preparation guide
Immigration, Migration & Starting Again
For moves between countries, towns, languages or social worlds.
Download PDFPDF preparation guide
Love, Marriage & Family
For courtship, partnership, marriage, parenthood and the private architecture of a family.
Download PDFPDF preparation guide
Work, Calling, Business & Service
For lives shaped by a trade, profession, family business, vocation, public service or volunteer work.
Download PDFPDF preparation guide
Food, Holidays & Family Traditions
For the rituals that carry memory through taste, repetition, language and family habit.
Download PDFCare, evidence & research
PDF preparation guide
Difficult Memories, Loss & Resilience
For material involving bereavement, estrangement, illness, war, trauma or other subjects that require control and care.
Download PDFPDF preparation guide
From Genealogy to Narrative
For families that already have dates, records and trees but need a readable human story.
Download PDFPDF preparation guide
Community, Congregation & Institution
For a synagogue, church, society, school, association, business, federation or other shared institution.
Download PDFFaith & church memory
PDF preparation guide
Christian Family Memory & Faith
For family stories in which faith, church life, vocation and ordinary belief are part of the record.
Download PDFPDF preparation guide
Church & Congregation Memory
For anniversaries, closures, mergers and congregational histories that need the voices behind the minutes.
Download PDFPDF preparation guide
Women’s Groups, Auxiliary & Ministry Memory
For histories of women whose organizing, fundraising, hospitality and pastoral labour often sit outside formal institutional records.
Download PDFPDF preparation guide
Missions, Ministry & Denominational Memory
For missionary families, ministry careers, denominational projects and multi-family histories.
Download PDFAfter we speak
Set the balance with the Story Mixer.
Once I understand the project, the Story Mixer lets you show how emotional, humorous, intimate, historical, document-heavy or faith-centred you want the finished narrative to be. You can also mark subjects as Please explore, Handle carefully or Do not include.
No quotation is given before the first conversation. When the project is a fit, I assess the scope and normally send the written quotation within 24 hours.
Free here · fuller manuals in the shop
Everything on this page stays free.
These one-page guides tell you what to ask. The manuals go further — what a good answer sounds like, what to do when someone will not talk, how to run a congregation's anniversary project, how to record a parent when there may only be one afternoon. Thirteen paid guides, from $4.99.
See the guides & manuals All thirteen in one printable file — $14.99
New guides, when there are new guides.
Every guide on this site is free to download without giving me anything. If you would like to know when I add one, leave an address. Nothing else, no more than a few times a year, and one click to stop.