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Where Do I Begin and End My Ancestor’s StoryWhere Do I Begin and End My Ancestor’s Story
Often we are held back from writing our family history stories because we just don’t know where to start and in turn, where to end it.
If we’ve managed to find a starting point, we often find ourselves in the middle, floundering, being pulled in different directions. This is often because we’ve picked our starting pointing out of midair giving little thought to why we chose that starting point and how we are going to proceed. That’s why it’s important to have a plan.
Identify a Goal
Sometimes we immediately think that our ancestor’s stories begin with their birth and naturally should end with their death. While you can take that approach, a far more interesting and engaging way to tell your ancestor’s story is to highlight a period, an event, a day or a pivotal moment in your ancestor’s life. This time-period should show when he or she has overcome significant obstacles in obtaining this want or a goal in their life.
We can discover these goals by looking at the events that played out in your ancestor’s lives, immigration, marriage, land owner, business owner, education, children, freedom, the list goes on. Start by identifying a goal your ancestor pursued in their life and structure your story around it.
Once you’ve identified that goal, you should easily be able to find the obstacles your ancestor overcame in pursuit of his goal. Click here to learn how to find the conflicts and obstacles in your story.
Where to Start Your Story
Start your story just before your ancestor made a change in his life in seeking the identified goal. When did he make a conscious change in his life to pursue his goal?
Show us your ancestor in his normal life before he made that change before he began to reach for that goal. Let us see the motivation for this goal. What in his history drives him to achieve this goal. This helps your reader to understand your ancestor’s state of mind, and why this objective is so important to him.
As you proceed through your story, you can share the struggles he overcame, one after another, all while also sharing some insight into his decisions, his motivations and what is at stake should he fail. Click here to learn more about goals, motivations and stakes.
There was always plenty at stake if our ancestor failed, poverty, freedom, jail, poorhouses, conscription are just a few. Allow the reader to see the possible risks it keeps them tuned into your story.
Where to End Your Story
Your story ends when your ancestor achieves his goal. In the conclusion of your story, you can show your reader how his ambition changed him and his life. While it will be natural to show us how his life changed physically, don’t forget to tell us how he changed emotionally. In your resolution, you want to demonstrate not only how the outward circumstances of his life altered but how does he perceive his life and the world around him after achieving his goal.
Structuring your ancestor’s story around a particular event, a monumental moment or an achievement helps you to write an engaging tale with highs and lows, rather than a linear plot of birth to death. Give your reader a reason to root for your ancestor, engage in the story, all the while delivering the information and facts of your research.
When you take some time to share your ancestor’s story around a goal, with obstacles, you give 
your readers an ancestor they can relate to, and when they can relate they will be more inclined to absorb your story and take away its meaning and importance in their life.
Ultimately isn’t that what we want from our stories to affect how our readers think about their ancestors and ultimately themselves.
To learn more about structuring your ancestor’s story pick up a copy of Finding the Story in our shop or learn more about our upcoming course Plotting a Family History Story.
Turning Back TimeTurning Back Time
When compiling a family history story, writers often get tripped up by time. They start writing and quickly find themselves time traveling and before you know it the flashback has become the story, or the present story has been taken over by the backstory.
Backstory and flashbacks are both used in writing to convey an event before the present story. However, backstory and flashbacks are often confused. Both should be used in your family history with caution. Let’s take a look at each so we can understand how they each play a different yet important role in telling a family history story.
Backstory is the story before the story. It is the accumulation of earlier events and accounts of your ancestor’s past that transpired before the current story events. It is the baggage, the effects of these events that your ancestor carries with them into your story and motivates them in the present action. Backstory is at the root of your ancestor’s personality and motivation. Remember that motivation we talked about in Goals, Motivations, and Stakes. It is the reason for the events happening in the present story. Backstory is conveyed through exposition and is everything that happened in your ancestor’s world prior to the point you open that world to your readers. However, backstory is not the place to unload your ancestor’s history. It’s not a place to dump all your research, but the place to reveal your ancestor’s motivations that stem from their past and drives the storyline.
Flashback is a tool writers use to give the reader a window into the ancestor’s past. It is employed by the writer to bring the past into the present usually through a scene. Family history writers often misuse flashbacks in conveying their story. They tend to use flashbacks as the story. However, flashbacks are not the story but a tool to help add another layer to the story, an opportunity for the character to recall a memory that is relevant to something happening in the current story. Flashbacks should not compete with the current story, or become the current story but enhance it. Flashbacks are also not backstory but can be used to deliver backstory. They are similar in that they allow writers to interrupt the current story to add an explanation or answer a question.
When to Choose Flashback over Backstory
Choose a flashback when you wish to evoke an emotional response to an event that happened before your story line.
Choose a flashback when you want to convey a detailed picture of the past.
Choose a flashback when a scene is needed rather than more long narrative summary.
Choose a flashback when you need to break up the pacing.
Choose a flashback when the reader has to remember this information because it’s important to the rest of the story.
Choose a flashback when you want to tell another story, another part of your ancestor’s life.
If you want to know how to write flashbacks effectively in your family history story, read this post for some suggestions.
Posted in: Writing A Scene