Why fifteen questions are enough
A twin doesn’t need your life story. It needs to know what you love, what you’re into right now, and how you sound. Fifteen questions cover it.
The first instinct, when you build something that speaks for you, is to give it everything. More input, better output. It feels obviously true, and it isn’t.
A twin isn’t there to reproduce you. It is there to answer what people actually want to know about you, whether they met you last week or have known you for years. Those questions are few, and they repeat. Who are you. What are you into. What do you love. What are you like. What are you up to. Everything else is a follow-up, and a follow-up can be pointed back at you.
A twin can know your whole history and still not know you. To speak for someone, it has to know what they love. That is also the part nobody gets tired of writing. So most of these questions are about what you’re into, because people never run out of things to say about that.
The fifteen for a person, exactly as they appear, with what each lets the twin answer. A business gets its own ten, about where it is, when it opens, how prices work and what it doesn’t do.
The fifteen
Who are you? Say it the way you'd tell someone you just met. The opening line, in the words you would use out loud, so the twin can introduce you without a job title doing the talking.
What's going on in your life these days? What you are up to now, not two years ago. It is the answer that goes stale first.
What are you most into right now? The thing you keep reading about, working on or bringing up. The first thing a friend wants to know. It is also what makes a twin sound alive this month instead of frozen last year.
What could you talk about for hours? What lights you up. Usually the best answer on the page, and the one visitors remember.
What are your hobbies? What do you do when nobody needs anything from you? Who you are when nothing is required of you. A CV can’t tell anyone this.
What are you listening to, watching or reading these days? Name them. Taste. Names give a stranger something to grab: “wait, you watch that too?”
What are you a fan of? A team, an artist, a writer, a game, a show. How did it start? People are never more themselves than when they talk about what they love. How it started is usually a story of its own.
What do you love, and what can't you stand? Food, places, habits, anything. The fastest way to know someone. A twin that knows what you can’t stand won’t sound like it likes everything.
What do you always tell people to try? A film, a place, a book, a dish, a trick. What the twin can give away. People love asking a friend for a recommendation.
A friend texts you: “what are you up to tonight?” Type exactly what you'd send back. How you sound. People are honest in texts and stiff in forms, so this is where the twin picks up your rhythm.
What do people come to you for? Advice, a laugh, help, a plan? What you are good at, without having to say “I am good at”. Other people have already told you.
What are you like once people really know you? One good thing, one hard thing. The hard thing is the point. A twin that only says nice things is a brochure. One honest flaw makes the rest believable.
What's something about you most people would never guess? Something surprising, so the twin reads as a person rather than a profile, and visitors have something to open with.
What do you believe that most people around you don't? A view of your own. It gives people something to agree with, or to argue about.
What are you chasing right now? Work, love, a place, a feeling, or nothing at all. What you want. The twin can repeat what you wrote and stop there. It can’t promise anything for you.
Why the sixteenth is optional
After the fifteen there are forty more, in eight packs: your life, your people, your story, how you think, your work, the hard questions, what is next, and your twin’s manners. They are for people who want the twin to go deeper.
They are extras for a reason. The fifteen already carry the conversations that happen. A twin with fifteen answers can tell someone who you are, what you love, what you are like, what you believe and what you want. A sixteenth answer lets the twin cover one more thing; it doesn’t make the first ten work any better.
A quieter reason, too. Everything you write is something the twin will say to a stranger. Fifteen answers is a page you can read back in a few minutes and stand behind. Fifty-five is a document you forget you wrote.
What the twin does with the gaps
Anything the fifteen don’t cover, the twin doesn’t answer. It says you haven’t written about it and points the visitor to you. That isn’t a gap to patch with more questions; it is what makes the ten safe to use. You also get a list of what it was asked and couldn’t answer, so you can decide what, if anything, to write next.
That is where we start you: fifteen questions, your words, one link. If you want help with the words, here is what to write in your answers. If that sounds like enough, you can make your own twin now.