A full house is the worst place to interview somebody and the best place to find out what is worth interviewing them about.

A group will not sit through a life story. What a group does, better than any one-to-one conversation, is argue. Two siblings remembering the same holiday differently will produce more detail in five minutes than either would alone in an hour, because each is correcting the other.

So do not try to run an interview at the table. Run something else.

What changes in a group

Nobody wants to hold the floor. In a room of nine, a question aimed at one person makes them perform. Most people will give you a short answer and hand the attention back.

Correction is easier than recall. Somebody who cannot produce a memory on request will happily tell you that the car was green, not blue, and that it was the summer Dad broke his wrist.

The best material is sideways. The thing you learn at a family gathering is usually not the answer to your question. It is the remark somebody makes while the answer is being given.

Children change the room for the better. An older relative who will not tell their own child anything will often answer a nine-year-old at length, because the question is not loaded.

Questions that work in a crowd

Aim for questions the whole table can answer, where the answers differ. The value is in the comparison.

What is the first house you remember?
Who in this family was frightening, and were they actually?
What did we always eat that nobody else’s family ate?
What did Sunday look like when you were ten?
Who did I get this from? Pick any trait.
What was the family car? Argue about it.
What is the story everybody tells wrong?
What did Grandad do that nobody has ever explained?
Where did the money come from originally?
Who was the first in this family to leave?
What was said about the war, and what was not said?
Which of us is most like her?
What happened at the wedding that we do not talk about? Judge the room first.
What is the oldest thing in this family that still exists?

“What is the story everybody tells wrong” is the most productive question on this list. It gives permission to disagree, which is what a group does best, and the disagreement is usually where the real account is.

Questions to avoid at the table

Anything requiring a difficult answer in front of others. Illness, money trouble, a rift, a death. Those are one-to-one conversations, and asking in a group is a way of forcing an answer. If the material matters, come back for it properly: how to ask about difficult family history.
Anything that makes somebody the subject for more than a few minutes. Watch for the shift from talking to being interviewed and change the target.
Anything that opens a live argument between people who have to sit together for another two hours.
Testing questions, particularly with older relatives. Nobody should be asked to demonstrate their memory in front of the family.

Do it while people are doing something

The single biggest improvement you can make is to stop asking at the table and start asking during an activity.

Washing up. Two people, side by side, hands busy, no eye contact, a natural end. Volunteer for it and choose who you volunteer with.

Cooking. Ask to be shown, not told. This is the highest-yield setting in the house and the recipe is worth keeping in its own right: how to record a family recipe and its story.

A walk after lunch. Long enough for one proper subject, side by side, and it removes the audience.

Photographs on the table. Print a dozen old ones and leave them out. You will not have to ask anything. Have a pen and a soft pencil ready, because a room full of people who can identify the faces is exactly what unlabelled photographs need: how to label old family photos.

A drive to the station. Fifteen minutes, alone, with a fixed end. Volunteer for every lift.

Capturing it without ruining the room

Do not put a recorder on the table. It changes a family lunch into an event, people become self-conscious, and you will get performance instead of conversation.

What works instead:

Notes on your phone, in the moment. Step out for two minutes and write four lines. Names, phrases, the thing you want to follow up. Nobody minds somebody checking their phone; everybody notices a notebook.

A voice memo to yourself in the car afterwards. Five minutes, unedited, while it is fresh. This is the single most useful habit for gatherings, and almost nobody does it.

Record one-to-one, with permission, away from the table. If somebody starts telling you something substantial in the kitchen, it is entirely reasonable to say “can I record this, I will forget it otherwise”. Most people say yes. The practical side takes ten minutes to get right.

Write it up the same night. Not the next day. The specific phrasing is gone by morning and the phrasing is the part worth having.

Give people a job

Anybody standing around will help if asked for something concrete.

“Write your name and where you were born on this card.” Ten cards is a family tree.
“Name everyone in this photograph in pencil on the back.”
“Tell me the four dishes we always had at Christmas.”
“Who is the oldest person you actually remember meeting?”

The last one is worth asking every adult in the room. It reaches back further than most families realise, and it produces names nobody has said aloud in decades.

Do one thing before everyone leaves

Pick the oldest person there and arrange a specific date to come back and see them properly, one to one. Say the day out loud and put it in your phone in front of them.

That is the whole point of a gathering, from this project’s perspective. The room tells you what to ask. It cannot tell you the answers, and the person who can is now standing in front of you and has just had a pleasant afternoon.