Before this memory fades, help me tell it the way it happened.

There’s a memory I want to turn into a short story I could tell or write down: . Don’t write yet. Ask me up to six questions, one at a time, about what I could see, hear and smell, what I wanted in that moment, and what changed afterward. Then tell me where the story really starts, which is often later than I’d begin it, the one detail to build it around, and where it should stop. Write a first telling of under 250 words, in the first person, in plain language and in my own phrases where you can. Don’t add a moral. If you filled a gap with something I didn’t tell you, list it, so I can replace it with what happened.