Last week we discussed what is the inciting incident and the importance in your story, along with 3 types of to consider. If you missed it click the link below to watch first. This week, I’ve got 6 tips for you to consider when crafting your inciting incident and placing it in just the right moment in your story to engage your reader and launch your plot.
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I’ve heard it preached many times, write for yourself. While this is a lovely thought, it can be very misleading advice. While it is important for you to be emotionally invested in your story, it is unrealistic to only write for yourself, especially if your goal is to get your family to read your ancestor’s stories. You can’t write your family history stories without considering your audience.
You want your stories read after all isn’t that the point of writing them. Therefore, when you choose your subject, how to structure the story and what you include in the story it must all come back to your reader. Will your choices encourage your family to read your stories?
Today, I’ve got five writing tips that demonstrate why you always need to consider your readers when writing your family history stories.
Don’t make your story too broad including a lot of ancestors and covering a lifetime of events. The more you focus your narrative on one ancestor and a specific accomplishment in your ancestor’s life the more likely your readers will connect with that ancestor. Concentrate your story on one ancestor and zero in on the struggles that one ancestor faced in his or her life. When you concentrate your story in this manner, you give your reader an opportunity to connect with that ancestor. When the reader connects, the story gets read.
Think about the choices your ancestor made. What would have happened if your ancestor had made a different decision? What if your ancestor had chosen a different path? What kind of devastation would they have encountered? How would their life have changed? How would your life had been different? When you reveal the risks that your ancestor faced in their lives and convey that in your story, you create tension. Tension is a critical ingredient in any story to keeping the reader engaged. For instance, let’s speculate what risks were involved if your an ancestor hadn’t immigrated? Perhaps, your ancestor would have ended up in the poorhouse, or fighting in the war or remained poor with no opportunities for improving their financial or societal status. Maybe your ancestor would have died in a war or from disease? When you reveal the alternatives, you increase the tension for your readers and make your stories far more appealing. Your readers are likely to stay committed to the end of the story because they want to read how their ancestors succeeded.
When you take the time to arrange your story in such a way that it increases the tension, then you keep your reader tuned in. Often, family historians fall into the pattern of writing a birth to death story about their ancestor. Don’t fall into this trap. Instead, structure the story around a significant accomplishment that your ancestor achieved. In your story, show how your ancestor overcame obstacles to reach this achievement. This will create what we call rising tension. Structuring a story with increasing tension will keep your readers interested and turning the pages.
We live in the days of immediacy. We want everything fast. The same can be said for reading your family history. Give your readers quick easily digestible and shareable stories. Today’s generation isn’t interested in a 500-page family history. Write short stories about a variety of ancestors to draw in your reader and keep them engaged. Don’t discount what your family likes to read, and how they want to read. What will it take to get them interested? It might mean writing a blog post or short story instead of an epic novel or a dry genealogy. You must be willing to adjust accordingly. Keep it short and throw in a few pictures and you’re more likely to attract them into reading your story.
The more you can help your readers relate to their ancestors the more likely they are to connect with them and take a further interest in their family history. Keep the content relevant to the times but also try to show how your ancestor’s lives might parallel your readers’ lives today. Consider how your reader can see themselves in your ancestor. How will they relate to them? The more relatable and likeable the ancestor the more engaged the reader.
You can’t dismiss your reader’s likes and needs when it comes to reading their family history stories. When you take the time to learn and write family history stories that entertain and engage your reader you are more likely to find your readers taking a more in-depth interest. If you would like your family to read your family history stories, then you need to keep them top of mind when you write.
Let’s create stories that give you the greatest chance of having them read and enjoyed by your readers.
Before you begin to write your family history stories, you have a couple of decisions to make. One of those decisions: What kind of nonfiction narrative do I wish to write?
Family History Narrative Using Third Person
In this format your ancestor is the main character of your story, he has a conflict in his life, and he overcomes obstacles towards a resolution. He has a goal, and the obstacles are keeping him from that aim. This objective may take many shapes, emigration, finding a job, surviving a war, starting a family, owning land, love, fortune, fame. The list is as plentiful as our ancestors. The story is the journey to overcome the obstacles standing in the way of the goal. The story serves as a vehicle to share your family history research in an entertaining format rather a dry summary of facts.
Family History Memoir Using First Person
You as the storyteller and your ancestor, as the main protagonist, share the story. Your ancestor struggles with a conflict towards an end goal, much like in the first-person narrative above. In addition, you, the narrator struggles to find records or understand decisions your ancestors made, uncover a family secret or dispel folklore and correct misinformation. This format provides you with the opportunity to reflect, offer an opinion, and share your theories and speculations.
The two stories, your genealogical journey, and your ancestor’s story are weaved together to create an engaging tale for your readers.
Both formats will enlist the help of narrative nonfiction to craft those stories.
You’ll often hear me refer to the tools of creative nonfiction or narrative nonfiction. Creative nonfiction is the genre closest to fiction in its structure, but unlike fiction, in that, every detail must be factually true.
Lee Gutkind, nonfiction writer, and author of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, sums it up best.
“ The words “creative” and “non?ction” describe the form. The word “creative” refers to the use of literary craft, the techniques ?ction writers, playwrights, and poets employ to present non?ction—factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid, dramatic manner. The goal is to make non?ction stories read like ?ction so that your readers are as enthralled by fact as they are by fantasy.”
Your job as a family history writer is to tell and educate the reader while at the same time entertaining them. Many may write family history using nonfiction to present their research. However, the use of creative nonfiction offers the writer the ability to use a narrative arc, with scenes, setting, characterization and description to engage the reader in the story. The goal is to help your reader make an emotional connection with your ancestor through your words.
You still need extensive research to support your story. You remain faithful to the facts, but in using the tools of creative nonfiction, you give a rich, engaging and entertaining story that will capture the interest of your family. It is no longer enough to offer a narrative summary and hope someone will read it. We must deliver a story that brings the reader along on a journey.
You have me thinking all the time Lynn. Thanks for another insightful episode.
Thanks Cynthia, I try.
I am challenged by these videos – in an interesting way! The books you referenced are fictional works in which the inciting incidents have been created as part of the fictional story; my family history is a series of real mini-stories from various families which I patch together with fictional elements to glue it all together. Since I’m not trying to create a fictional family history, the inciting incident has to be either true or probably true. I guess the challenge will be to find a mundane event that was real and can be slightly adapted to create an exciting “pop” at the start of the history – the reason that everything changed for my ancestor. I’m trying to process this whole idea!
Hi Pat, when writing true stories, we borrow from the techniques of fictional writers to bring our stories to life on the page. This is at the very nature of what we are writing; creative nonfiction. The creative refers to the fictional writing techniques that we use to write our true stories. However, a fictional writer can just make things up, but as a creative nonfiction writer, we are challenged with the task of looking at the research we have accumulated about our ancestor and finding the story that lies within. We then use story structure to deliver it to the reader in an entertaining and compelling way. The inciting incident is a important element of that story structure. So, yes, you need to look to the life of your ancestor and find the event that propelled him or her on their journey for the story you’ve decided to tell.