Write your life story: routes, a template with prompts, photographs and sharing

Where do you start when you write your life story?

Start small and start with a person, not a page. Decide who the story is for: yourself, your children, a grandchild who has asked, or a parent you want to write for. That one choice settles the tone, the length and what you can leave out.

Then pick a modest first target. Fifteen short pieces of a page each is a book. A single page about the house you grew up in is a start. You do not need to begin at your birth, and you do not need to be a writer.

If you are writing for a parent or grandparent rather than yourself, the project changes: you become the listener. Our guide to questions to ask grandparents gives you the questions, and the memory book for grandma guide covers the gift version.

What are your options: doing it alone, a workbook, an app, a writer or a volunteer?

There is no single right route. The table sets out five, with only what the sources read for this page can support. Where nothing was read, the cell says “Not stated” rather than guessing.

The volunteer route is worth knowing about, because it suits people who find writing hard. The Age UK Oldham service works by weekly visits or phone calls to talk through memories. Volunteer typists then compile a printed book, and two copies are provided free.¹ Ask your local Age UK branch whether it runs something similar, since this page cannot tell you where else it does.

The same branch also offers a template and hints and tips to people who want to write their own life story, or one for family or friends.¹ And it makes a point that is easy to forget: life story work does not have to produce a printed book. Memory boxes, picture collages and music collections are alternatives.¹

If you want to understand craft, publishing and the legal basics before you commit, our guide to writing a memoir covers them. This page stays with the personal and family version.

How do you structure it: timeline, themes or letters?

A timeline is the obvious choice, and it works well when your memory for dates is good and you want a record. Its weakness is that childhood can swallow the whole book, and later decades get a paragraph each.

A theme-based structure avoids that. You pick five or six areas of life and write short pieces on each, in any order. It is also kinder to memory, because you can write the piece you remember best today and leave the rest.

You can mix them. You can use themes for the writing and a one-page timeline at the back so that readers can place each piece.

What prompts get you writing? A five-theme template

Use one prompt per sitting. Set a timer for fifteen or twenty minutes and write without correcting. Each theme below has three prompts, so the whole template is fifteen pieces.

Home

1. Describe the kitchen in the house you grew up in. Where did everyone sit?
2. What did the street sound like at six in the evening?
3. Which room would you walk into first if you could visit again?

Work

1. Describe your first day at your first job, hour by hour.
2. Who taught you the most about doing your work well?
3. What are you proudest of that nobody ever thanked you for?

People

1. Tell the story of how you met someone who mattered to you.
2. Write about a person who helped you when they did not have to.
3. Which saying in your family do you still hear in someone’s voice?

Places

1. Describe the best holiday you ever had, or the worst one that became a good story.
2. Write about the first time you went somewhere new on your own.
3. Which place do you still think of as home, and why?

Turning points

1. Write about a decision that changed the direction of your life.
2. Describe a hard time and one thing that helped you through it.
3. What do you want the next generation to know about how you chose?

Fifteen pieces of one page each is fifteen pages. At one piece a week, that is fifteen weeks, and at two a week it is eight (the last week with one piece). Those are planning sums, not a norm. This page does not claim a standard length for a life story, because no source on that was read.

Is a life story book a good gift for a parent or grandparent?

It can be a lovely gift, as long as it is offered rather than imposed. A blank book handed over with the words “write your story” can feel like homework. A better gift is time: an offer to sit with them, ask the questions and write it up together.

• Offer a first conversation, not a whole book. One afternoon and a recorder is enough to start.
• Let them choose the themes. Some people want to talk about work and nothing else.
• Keep it optional. Not everyone wants to revisit every period of their life.
• Bring photographs. Pictures can prompt memories that questions do not.
• Give a finished page back quickly, so they can see what the effort produces.

If your relative finds writing hard, the volunteer route above may suit better than a workbook. And for a gift aimed at a grandmother in particular, see our memory book for grandma guide.

How do you keep photographs, dates and names right?

Keep a simple list as you go: a name, a rough date and a place for every photograph you use. Mark anything uncertain with a question mark and sort it out at the end. Ask an older relative to look at the pictures with you, since faces and street names go when the last person who knew them has gone.

Looking after the originals

Keep the originals in a box and put copies in the book. The National Archives advises against writing on a photograph in ink and against tape, clips and rubber bands.³ Our family history book guide sets out its full list of dos and don’ts for old photographs.

How do you share or print it, and who owns it?

Start with who will read it. A few printed copies for relatives is simple. Sharing more widely means thinking about the people in the story.

On ownership, GOV.UK explains that copyright in your written work arises automatically. You do not have to apply or pay a fee, and there is no UK register of copyright works.² That covers your own words. It does not tell you whether you may reproduce someone else’s photograph or document in your book, and this page does not cover that.

On privacy, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) says purely personal or household use of personal data falls outside the UK GDPR.⁴ If you plan to sell the book, or publish it as part of a business, that does not apply, and our memoir guide sets out the points to check first.

If a company or service holds your stories, you can ask it for copies of your personal information, and it usually has one month to respond.⁵ You can also ask it to delete your data in listed circumstances.⁶ Our guide to writing a life story with AI gives the detail, including a warning that the deletion page was under review when read.

Where Memory fits

Chutex offers Memory, a service in preparation in which Aria, an AI, helps a person tell their life story, keeps the memories they choose to share and can prepare a book they review together. The service has its own page on this site: Chutex Memory. Memory gives no diagnosis. It is not a health professional and does not replace one.

Whichever route you choose, the plan on this page still applies: a reader in mind, short pieces, photographs labelled as you go. If you are weighing up AI help, our guide to writing a life story with AI explains what to check first. If you would like to seal a few pages away for a future date, see our time capsule ideas.

Frequently asked questions