Dignity Therapy.
A short interview developed for patients in palliative care: nine prompts, each one phrased to invite rather than extract. The prompts open with "Are there things you would want…" rather than "Tell me about…" — a small grammatical decision that gives the speaker permission to say no, not really without it feeling like failure.
What we took. The grammar of permission. About a third of Animus's questions begin with Is there or Was there — never describe, almost never tell me about. If you have nothing to say, the question itself agrees with you.
From Animus · wisdom
"What's the smallest thing you'd want them to remember about you?"
"Smallest" is doing the same work as "are there" — it lowers the stakes. You don't owe the question a grand summary of your life.
Reminiscence Therapy & Life Review.
Butler's 1963 paper argued that looking back at one's life is not nostalgia but cognitive work — and that it tends to organize itself into recognizable life-areas: origins, turning points, relationships, beliefs, daily habits, things one wants to pass on.
What we took. The bucket structure. Animus organizes its prompts into six of those areas: roots, turning points, people, beliefs, days, wisdom. When you answer, the answer goes into the bucket it belongs to — which means as you keep going, Animus can tell which parts of your life are still mostly empty, and quietly weight new questions toward those areas.
From Animus · turning points
"Was there a loss that didn't look like a loss until later?"
A turning-point question without using the word "decision." Butler observed that many of the moments that shape a life are recognized only in retrospect — so the question doesn't ask you to choose, only to look back.
The Great Questions list.
StoryCorps has, over two decades, recorded hundreds of thousands of conversations between ordinary people. Their public question list — eight hundred and counting — is the closest thing the field has to a working canon. The thing that struck us most: how often the best questions are about the senses, not the events.
What we took. Sensory pivots. The fourteen questions in the days bucket and a quarter of the roots bucket all hinge on something you could smell, hear, taste, or touch. A specific kitchen smell will pull a story out of someone faster than "describe your childhood home" ever will.
From Animus · roots
"Is there a meal that tastes like someone you knew?"
"Whose hands do you remember?"
Both questions are doors. The story isn't about the meal or the hands — those are how you get in.
Pairing positive and difficult.
StoryWorth's fifty-two-week family-history project organizes prompts as deliberate pairs: a fear and a courage, a kindness given and a kindness received, a goodbye and a beginning. The pairing isn't decorative — it's there so that one week's prompt doesn't accidentally cluster with last week's into a single emotional register.
What we took. Bucket-internal pairing. Within each Animus bucket, prompts are written so that the bucket itself is balanced — not all hard, not all soft. The turning points bucket pairs "What's a fear you outgrew?" with "What's a risk you took that no one applauded?"; people pairs "Whose laugh do you wish you could hear right now?" with "Is there a thank you you owe someone, that you never gave?"
From Animus · pairing in practice
"Was there a stranger who was kind to you when you needed it?"
"Is there someone you were kind to who never knew?"
Two prompts in the same bucket. Same act, two directions. You answer one and the other waits.
