How to Get Ideas for Stories to Write for Family History

Written by Diane Haddad, unless otherwise noted.

In one case you've been doing genealogy enquiry for a while, and you have a family tree or a reckoner hard drive or a filing chiffonier with a bunch of notes and sometime records, you might wonder what to practise with it all. Or perhaps you lot've always harbored the dream of sharing your family history, and you're non certain how.

It'south a hard truth: Few people have much use for an unstructured assortment of documents and computer files. Even folks who are curious about their family history—and that describes almost I've met—aren't probable to sort through your research and rebuild the store of cognition you've amassed over years.

Apply this worksheet to aid you collect your thought before commencement a family history writing project. Record which stories you want to include, who your audience volition be and more.

If your family unit research is to live beyond you, you'll need to do the work of putting it into some shareable, lasting form. That commonly means summarizing your finds in writing, perchance enhanced with photos and images of interesting documents. Whether you get all-out with a cocky-published hardback or only pass out stapled pages at the next family reunion, you'll create a legacy—a framework others tin use to understand your family'south story and the genealogical prove you lot've gathered.

Nosotros can't promise the project will be a breeze, but nosotros can hope information technology'll be easier when you follow these tips and use our handy organizing worksheet.

1. Know Your Purpose

Earlier you brainstorm, information technology's important to know what y'all promise to accomplish with this writing project. Exercise y'all want to summarize all your research, share your family unit legacy, pass down the stories Grandpa told, tell how your family fits into local history, share the story of an antecedent or family you lot admire, celebrate your ethnic heritage, or something else?

A strong focus makes the projection more manageable, says Sunny Jane Morton, author of Story of My Life. "A small, finished project is better than a three-book tome that exists merely in your dreams."

Demand help narrowing the scope? Morton advises looking at your research for the about compelling story or interesting person. Author Sophia Wilson, who penned an 160,000-give-and-take history of her family unit, started her projection past writing every bit many family stories as she could think of, so turning them into brusk biographies of the people involved. She wrote every twenty-four hour period for at to the lowest degree 15 minutes, but sometimes for hours at a time. Taken together, those biographies served as the starting point for her projection.

Alternately, you could cull a topic that commemorates an upcoming family unit milestone, such as your parents' 40th wedding anniversary. Or you lot might start with any's nearly doable.

Your audition is an important aspect of your goal. For a projection just family unit will see, you might use a coincidental writing style, refer to relatives with familiar titles ("Great-grandpa Thornton"), and use in-text source data. If other genealogists volition read your work in a newsletter, journal or published volume, y'all'll want a more than authoritative style with an emphasis on your enquiry procedure, and formal source citations in footnotes and source lists.

Remember about your audience's age (or level of maturity), besides. Wilson recalls how her research turned up stories that might not be advisable to a younger audience. "Instead of shifting the focus of my book, I decided that children could simply read the unvarnished truth once they were mature enough," Wilson says. "Age-appropriate stories could be extracted and adapted for a younger audience, for whom I would too write at a lower reading level."

"I kept coming back to what I wanted the project to accomplish (preserving and sharing memories for the younger generation) and letting that guide my decisions," she says.

2. Make a Programme

An outline gives you lot a framework for building your projection, especially if it involves multiple people or a long time bridge. Make a list of elements y'all want to include. Don't worry nearly organizing the list all the same.

Hither's an example for my maternal family history opus:

• a family tree of Mom'due south family
• information about the places the family came from with a map, including why so many immigrated from each identify
• names and immigration details of all the immigrant ancestors: Henry Seeger, Eduard Thoss, Mary Mairose, Thomas Frost, Edward Norris, Elizabeth Butler, Henry Hoernemann, Anna Maria Weyer, and and so on.
• where these families settled in the United States, their jobs and their children
• Eduard Thoss tavern in Northern Kentucky
• info on Cincinnati Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, where so many settled
• Dierkes boys in family cemetery plot
• Henry Seeger's cigar store, with photos and timeline, and two babies who died equally infants
• Thomas Frost/Mary Wolking divorce
• Ade Thoss and the Covington Blue Sox
• possible family connectedness to Windthorst, Kan.
• death of Elizabeth Teipel Thoss and several of her children
• Benjamin Teipel trap-shooting invention and expiry
• Civil War service of Frank and Benjamin Thoss
• firefighter Raymond Norris and Newton Tea & Spice Co. Fire
• how Grandma and Granddaddy met

Your list might cause y'all to rethink your project telescopic. For example, I'm seeing that I could divide up my projection by family unit branches, breaking it downwardly into smaller parts (and this is just part of my list).

When you know the topics you lot want to cover, arrange them in an society that makes sense to yous. Yous could practise chronological social club, geographical order (group all data related to Germany, all immigration data, all second generation information), family branches 1 at a fourth dimension, or some other arrangement. You could opt for a full general overview then add several shorter profiles of specific ancestors or families.

Wilson shares how she thought virtually structure while planning her project:

One choice would exist maintaining individual biographies, organized in the book by nativity yr, generation or location. Or I could combine all biographies into a single narrative chronology, or even organize the stories by theme (women, farming, civilisation, etc.).

I opted for the most straightforward and comprehensive order: chronological. With this approach, I gained a deeper understanding of how my ancestors' lives adult over fourth dimension, and how one event flowed into another.

Adjacent, create an outline past organizing topics into sections or capacity. Read published family histories for examples. One of my favorites is Family by Ian Frazier.

iii. Say Information technology with Pictures

Pictures and graphs will engage your readers, assist them follow complicated lineages and show what you lot're talking nigh. "Plan as you lot get which pictures, documents, maps, charts and genealogical reports will best illustrate your narrative," Morton advises.

Depending how many photos and documents yous've constitute, yous'll want to winnow the options to those from key moments in your family unit history, selecting those that will reproduce well in the finished product. Consider calculation transcriptions for hard-to-read or foreign-language documents.

Go on copyright in heed. If you programme to publish your work (including on a website), go permission from the copyright holder or possessor of any images you didn't create or that aren't in your personal collection. For a quick read about understanding copyright laws, check out this article.

4. Go Organized and Utilize Apps

At present you're fix to write. Equally you work, go over your records for families and people y'all're writing nearly. Wilson adult a filing system that automatically sorted documents by individual. "I created a separate document for every effect so I could easily insert new findings, titling each with the upshot, the date and the location," she says. "I so grouped the documents into folders, i binder for each year."

To help you organize source references, add together in-text references with the title, author and page or tape number in parentheses when you utilise information from a record, article, book or website. Also create a bibliography of sources as you go. This should include everything needed to observe that source again: championship, author, publisher or creator (such as the National Archives), publication date and place, website, etc.

Later, when your project is mostly complete, you tin can keep the in-text references, or number the references and create footnotes (brusk-class citations at the bottom of the page) or end notes (short-grade citations at the end of a chapter). Include the bibliography at the finish of your work. For help with source citations, use the book Evidence Explained past Elizabeth Shown Mills (Genealogical Publishing Co.).

Y'all might accept a writing head start if you tin pull together blog posts or brusque essays you've already written nigh your family history. Your genealogy software or online tree might offer a timeline you tin follow, or even generate a narrative report for you. For an aggressive projection or if you do a lot of writing, you might invest in software such every bit Scrivener. Additionally, writing apps can aid yous create an outline, organize and edit your story.

Read: How to Create a Genealogy Source Citation

v. Generate Ideas through Prompts and Research

If you lot're still having problem knowing what to write, effort answering the family history writing prompts in a book such every bit Stories From My Grandparent or from Family Tree Magazine. These volition help you flesh out ideas and take your family unit stories in new directions.

Revisit your enquiry for story ideas, and let what yous find in documents inspire you. Wilson consulted books (both digital and physical) about her ancestors' location and ethnic group, every bit well equally documents on genealogy websites like Beginnings.com and Newspapers.com. 1 book on Ancestry.com contained all the church records for her ancestors, some written past her great-bully-great-grandfather's best friend.

Wilson also revisited local histories and newspapers she had found early in her projection. "At present that I was further in my research, I recognized more names and better understood the relationships amidst them," she says. "People I had dismissed as "townsfolk" turned out to be in-laws and shut friends of my lineal ancestors."

6. Seek Out Help

Look for writers' groups and classes in your customs. From online groups to friends and family members, having a community you can rely on for feedback and encouragement is essential.

Reaching out can likewise atomic number 82 to new research finds, important for sourcing the details in your stories. Wilson connected with other family unit historians, likewise equally genealogical societies and libraries (who scanned entire capacity of reference books for her to consult). I cousin-in-law even sent her photos and a relevant family unit keepsake they found on eBay.

vii. Brainstorm in the Eye

Don't let the "how to outset" roadblock stall your project right out of the gate. If you don't know how to begin, just kickoff writing a story you lot like—maybe it's nearly an ancestor'southward immigration, military machine service or venture to the wrong side of the law. The words will flow from there.

"My goal wasn't perfection, just to go memories on the folio," Wilson says near her get-go step of writing family biographies. "I didn't waste matter time checking spelling and grammer—that would come later." An interesting or dramatic event is often the best mode to begin a story, anyway. Remember, you're not carving in stone: You tin can e'er rearrange things afterwards.

8. Write Naturally

If you're writing for relatives, pretend you're telling your family unit story to a friend. If you're writing for a publication, tailor your work to that publication'southward manner.

Wilson had to wrestle with how to balance facts she found in her research with storytelling. "I thought of how much I hated history course growing up—all those names-places-dates to memorize, and no story to latch onto," Wilson says. "I resolved to … strive for historical accuracy without resorting to the dry tone of a textbook."

9. Take Your Time

A deadline can motivate yous, merely give yourself plenty of fourth dimension. You desire this project to add fulfillment to your family research, not cause stress. Commencement now and work on your writing project a piffling at a time, once a week or every evening if you lot can manage it. Imagine where you'll be a year from now.

A version of this article appeared in the December 2018 upshot of Family Tree Magazine, written past Diane Haddad. Sophia Wilson'south article on the steps she took to write her family history narrative appeared in the March/April 2022 issue of Family Tree Magazine.

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Source: https://www.familytreemagazine.com/storytelling/tips-getting-started-writing-family-history/

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