Scene Writing | The Family History Writing Studio

5 Tips for Writing a Family History that Entertains Like a Movie5 Tips for Writing a Family History that Entertains Like a Movie

April 3, 2018 0 Comments

Most of us start writing our family history as summary. Summary is not a bad thing, and it serves a purpose in our family history stories. However, it is only one part of the equation.

Narrative Nonfiction = Scene + Summary

Eventually, we realize that to engage our family in our story and thus their family history, summary is not enough. We must entertain as well. It’s then that we must develop our knowledge of narrative nonfiction – the writing of true stories.

One aspect of narrative nonfiction that beginning family history writers struggle to understand is the difference between scene and summary.

What is Summary?

Summary, by its very name, encompasses a significant amount of information in a condensed form.

Summary is also known as exposition, and it is condensed narrative covering perhaps many events in just a few sentences, sparse details and may transcend a considerable amount of time. Summary is useful for going over information that we need to know but is not as exciting but still may be necessary to understand the story. Most times, the beginning family history writer overuses summary, often to the point of exclusivity.

What is Scene?

A scene, however, is an event, place or action that the reader experiences first-hand. In a family history story, a scene is an event chosen from your ancestor’s life retold in the fullness of time and place. Scenes are the ultimate tool for showing and not telling. A scene is a single, specific setting that creates the event as an experience for the reader. A family history scene is constructed from the documents of an event. The details are filled in with historical context, social history, eyewitness account and or diaries and letters. (If you’re lucky enough to have them. Most of us will piece together a scene through documents and social history. While you can write a great story that is all scene and no summary the reverse is not true. All summary and no scene makes for a very boring story.

Think of the difference between scene and summary this way. It’s the difference between being told about a car accident (summary) and watching it happen before your own eyes (scene). You may be able to imagine how horrible it was if someone tells you about it, but when you see it happening first-hand, you never forget it.

The best way to write a scene that will engage and entertain your readers is to think of your writing cinematically. Like movie playing in your mind’s eye. Of course, just thinking in your mind’s eye is one thing, getting it down on paper is a whole other matter.

Here are five tips for writing a scene that will entertain your readers like a movie.

5 Tips for Writing a Scene Like a Movie

1. Slow down. Don’t cram ten years into one paragraph, pick a single moment, a single event in your story and show it happening.

2. Make sure the event you choose is important, pivotal and will reveal relevant information about your ancestor or the story.

3. Show your ancestor in action either through physical movement or with dialogue or both.

4. Set your ancestor in their surroundings using all the senses. There should sights, sounds, smells even taste and touch if relevant.

5. Give the reader insight into your ancestor’s personality and state of mind through their actions, the look on their face, their voice and the words they speak.

When we take the time to learn to write a scene as part of narrative nonfiction, to show the crash rather than tell about it, we transform our family history stories into an experience for the writer and not a summary of facts.

Learn how to take an event in your ancestor’s life and bring it to the page in the Masterclass.

How to Show Instead of Tell: A Writing LessonHow to Show Instead of Tell: A Writing Lesson

September 13, 2017 0 Comments

“Writing in scenes represents the difference between showing and telling. The lazy, uninspired writer will tell the reader about a subject, place or personality, but the creative non-fiction writer will show that subject, place or personality, vividly, memorably-and in action, in scenes.

Lee Gutkind, You Can’t Make Stuff Up

Writers are told all the time to show not tell. What does that exactly mean? How does that apply to narrative nonfiction and specifically family history stories?

Narrative nonfiction is comprised of summary and scenes. Simply put, summary is telling, and scenes are showing. To show in nonfiction, we must include scenes and not just summary. Your family history stories are likely boring because you are only using summary, you are only telling. To make your stories entertaining and compelling, so that they read like a good book you must embrace scenes. Scenes are the half of the nonfiction equation that brings a family history story to life.

What is a family history scene?

In the case of family history, a scene recreates an event or an experience for the reader from your ancestor’s life. For example, getting on a ship to America, voting for the first time, giving birth, getting married, proposing to a future spouse or signing documents to own their first land.

These scenes are recreated from details pulled from a document, a picture, a diary, a letter. Maybe details are derived from a newspaper article, or an interview or a recalled conversation. These scenes might rely on social, local, regional or world history to help recreate them on the page. You’ll likely require a combination of these sources to bring a scene to the page.

A scene shows the action in real time. The reader is placed immediately in the event as if it is playing out before our eyes. A scene is filled with description, detail and dialogue, necessary to bring the scene to life. The more specific you can be the more real it becomes for the reader.

Jumping into writing scenes can be overwhelming for new writers. The best place to start is by learning to show, one sentence at a time.

Examples

Telling

Tom walked every Sunday to church.

Showing

Tom strolled along the dusty road to church, adorned in his freshly pressed Sunday shirt, the starch collar scratching at his neck.

Telling

Grandma baked a pie.

Showing

The cinnamon apple pie cooled on the kitchen window sill, the golden crust glistened, and the sweet smell surrounded Grandma’s house as we ran through the front door.

See the difference. In the showing examples, above we get a vivid picture that we can imagine in our mind’s eye the setting and action. It gives us the feeling of being there and experiencing it for ourselves.

3 Steps to Start Showing in Your Ancestor’s Stories

Use strong active verbs. I could have used “Tom walked” but the verb ‘stroll’ conjures up a more specific image. I could have used hustled, or ambled or skipped, all would have provided a clear picture of Tom and his actions.

Use specific nouns and precise adjectives in descriptions that paint a picture for the reader. For example, Grandma’s pie on the windowsill paints a very clear picture. It’s not just a pie but a cinnamon apple pie. Be specific in your details and descriptions.

Use Sensory Details. – Don’t just tell us how something looked, show us how it looked, smelled, sounded, tasted and felt. Use all your senses, of course not all in the same sentence. We not only see Tom in his freshly pressed shirt, but we feel it scratching. And of course, we smell Grandma’s pie as we approached the house.

Start practising showing in your family history stories by using these three steps to start transforming your sentences into showing sentence instead of telling sentences.

Want to learn how to build a scene and connect them into a story, consider workbook #4 in the Write Your Family History series. Crafting a Scene, Showing Your Ancestors in Action walks you through building scenes and connecting those scenes into a complete story. Or consider our upcoming course Writing a Family History Scene and get hands on practise building and writing scenes. This course will transform your writing.

Why Your Relatives Hate Reading Their Family HistoryWhy Your Relatives Hate Reading Their Family History

August 2, 2016 0 Comments

Does your family object to reading their family history? Do you get the big eye roll when you offer them a story you wrote or an opportunity to preview a book your writing? Our families are completely uninterested in reading their family history. Many of us struggle with this. I know I did. Then I learned about writing scenes and about how the right balance of scene and summary can bring an ancestor to life on the page. When you learn the skill of writing scenes your stories become entertaining and compelling all the things necessary to engage your family and hold their interest.

What is a Scene?

Scenes are action, they usually include dialogue, description, conflict, thoughts, and feelings. When we read them, they are meant to play out like a movie in our brain. When we write nonfiction stories, we intermingle scenes with summary.

What is Summary?

Summary is just as it states it is an account of an event or time. The reader is given information in a brief format to move the story along. Sometimes summary will cover a span of years to speed up a story or fill in background information to add depth to a story. As family historians, we fall into the trap of writing everything, our entire story, in a summary format. This why our stories are boring.

We need to learn the skill of writing scenes and then to find the right balance of scene and summary to lay out a story.

How do we take a document like a passenger list or a marriage certificate or the birth of a child and bring it to like on the page? How do we but our reader there and allow them to experience the event as if it is playing out before their eyes – using scene.

When we combine scene with narrative summaries, we are writing creative nonfiction. That term creative nonfiction tends to scare many. They feel they are moving away from the facts and making things up. But that is entirely wrong. Creative nonfiction is taking the facts and laying them out on the page using scene and summary – using the tools of fiction writers while writing true stories.

Regardless of whether you are writing a family history narrative in third person or a memoir in first person scenes should be a part of your writing formula. Irrespective of whether you are writing a family history in a short story format or an epic novel you need to be using scene and summary to capture and hold the attention of your readers.

What is a family history scene?

How does a scene that you read in a novel differ from a family history scene you would read in a family history story? A family history scene takes an event in your ancestor’s life, getting on a ship to America, voting for the first time, giving birth, getting married, proposing to their spouse or signing the documents to own their first acre of land and then using action, dialogue, description, conflict, and emotion bring it to life on the page.

As family historians, we collect information about this event, information that we garnered from our research, our documents, information from interviewing those who were present at the event or have heard stories of the event. With those facts in hand, we take it one step further, we put the event within a social context of the place and time –we do some social history research. We set the stage by painting a setting of where the event was held. We describe it in detail giving it life.

Next, we put the characters into that setting, our ancestors. How did they look and act? Human nature, diaries, interviews and the actions of our ancestors will give us plenty of insight into the behaviours and motivations.

As I have suggested, a family history scene is born out of the records we have acquired in our research. Research we have identified and analysed and then interpreted into a scene in our story. We make it clear to the reader the facts versus our speculation.

Sounds easy right? Well for some it does come easy and for others, it takes some practice, actually, for most, it takes some time to learn the skills and then to practice those skills. But once you have the knowledge of scene writing you’ll never turn back to strictly writing a dry narrative summary.

Do you want to learn the skill of scene writing?

It’s not enough for me just to tell you what constitutes a scene and how it will transform your boring stories into entertaining stories. The real learning comes in building scenes. I wanted to help writers acquire those practical skills of scene writing so I created an online workshop, Writing a Family History Scene. In this 6-week course, we work through each element building a robust scene one you will be excited to say you wrote.

Here’s what some past students have said about this course.

Kim Said:

I thoroughly enjoyed completing this course in “Writing a Family History Scene” and would recommend it to all aspiring family history writers. It is inspiring when you can see yourself and your fellow students improve so much by the end of the course. Lynn’s teachings have given us the tools to carefully craft our stories for the enjoyment by our families. I have learned so much.

Denise Said:

This course opened my eyes to scene structure. My writing improved immensely once I had the right tools and guidance to build a scene properly. This is my second Family History Writing Studio course, and it will not be my last. Between Lynn’s excellent guidance and the input from the other students, it was an interactive learning experience I highly recommend to anyone who is thinking of writing a family history narrative. In order to do any job properly, you need the right tools and, in my opinion, this is the place to build your toolbox.

If you’re ready to write a non-boring family history story, then join us for Writing a Family History Scene.

Cooking Up a Satisfying SceneCooking Up a Satisfying Scene

March 12, 2016 0 Comments

Like a good pot of soup on a cold’s winter’s day, every family history scene requires some essential ingredients to make them successful. Without a tasty broth, some colourful veggies, and a fat noodle the soup will just not satisfy. The same can be said for a scene, if it’s missing an essential ingredient it will likely fall flat and you may lose the interest of your reader. Today, we look at the ingredients that make a satisfying scene. Let’s identify the key ingredients in a family history scene each one closer so that you can create powerful and fulfilling scenes for your reader.

Protagonist Ancestor

The majority of your scenes should be built around your protagonist ancestor. Your protagonist ancestor is the main character of your story and through whose point of view, the story will be told. In each scene, your protag ancestor will be involved in action or dialogue. Make sure that you’ve chosen a single ancestor from which point of view that story will be told.

Action

Every scene shows some dramatic movement, large or small. It creates a sense of movement through time and space. It could be actual action or even dialogue which gives the essence of movement within a scene. Without action, you have no scene.

We want to demonstrate our ancestor’s movements, feelings, actions, and reactions. Don’t tell us about them, show them offer up the proof in the form of a scene.

Scene Goal

Every scene has a goal. We know that our story also has a goal, however, this is different from the scene goal. The scene goal begins and ends in the scene, but contributes to the overall advancement of the story.

Antagonist and Allies

Your protagonist ancestor needs someone to interact with, these will come in the form of an antagonist who opposes your ancestor’s goals or allies who will help your ancestor to achieve her goal.

New Information

Each scene builds on the previous scene providing new information that keeps moving the story forward. If it doesn’t move the story forward then perhaps it doesn’t belong in the story.

Setting and Time Period

Setting and time period is essential to grounding your scene through sensory details and description.

Theme

The overall meaning of your story is conveyed within scenes using images and sensory details.

Tension

Not only organizing your scenes within the story but by creating a feeling of conflict and uncertainty within a scene will keep the reader guessing as what is next and will keep them turning the pages.

Great Endings

Scenes can end in any number of ways. Some may end on a high-note, with a small victory for your ancestor, or in defeat. It can end with a cliff-hanger or some uncertainty. It’s important that each scene ends in such a way that it eludes to future obstacles for your ancestor and a yearning in your reader to know what happens next.

Make sure your story scenes have all the right ingredients.

Want to learn to write family history scenes. You’ll learn to incorporate all of the above elements into your scenes. Click here to learn more about our upcoming scene writing course, Writing the Family History Scene.

7 Tips to Formatting Dialogue7 Tips to Formatting Dialogue

March 11, 2015 0 Comments

Aside from struggling with re-creating dialogue, many family historians find formatting dialogue a little intimidating. It’s important to understand the techniques of writing your ancestor’s conversations and how to format them on the page so they serve your reader best and follow some basic elements of style.

Here are seven quick tips to formatting your dialogue that will help you overcome your hesitation.

1. Each time a new conversation or speech begins, you start a new paragraph. Additionally, every time there is a new speaker in a conversation, there is a new line. You do not include multiple speakers in one paragraph, so if one person asks a questions and another person responds, the question and the answer must be on two different lines. The use of this technique allows your reader to keep straight who is speaking.

For example:

Victoria asked, “When is Adam leaving for America?”

“On Thursday,” Grandpa replied.

2. Learn to use single and double quotation marks. Double quotation marks are used to indicate dialogue unless it is a quote within a quote, in which case single quotation marks are employed.

3. Understand the placement of quotation marks. Tradition dictates that punctuation falls inside the quotation marks. You may find some editors and professionals who are changing this practice but I would encourage you to stick with tradition.

4. Use commas before dialogue tags, for instance:

“I don’t want to go to Grandma’s house,” Helen said.

5. Dialogue Tags are the he said/she said of quotations. Don’t use these as forms of descriptions.

For example:

“I don’t want to leave,” Adam whimpered.

Instead of telling the reader he whimpered, spend your time describing the scene so we can see the image of Adam whimpering. It is perfectly acceptable to use he said/she said multiple times or not at all. The idea is your tags should be invisible and the focus should be on the dialogue.

6. With that being said use dialogue tags sparingly. You don’t want a string of he said, she said, he said, she said cluttering your story. If you know your characters and have given them a distinct voice, your reader will know from the dialogue who is saying what.

7. Capitalize only the first word of a dialogue sentence. If your dialogue is interrupted by a dialogue tag or description, you do not need to capitalize the second part of the sentence.

For example:

“I don’t want to go to Grandma’s house,” Victoria said while fidgeting in her chair, “because it brings back bad memories.”

Employ the above tips and your well on your way to writing great dialogue for your family history story.

How to Write a SceneHow to Write a Scene

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

We think in scenes all the time.

Take a moment, remember a childhood memory or last week’s business meeting or playing with your children last night, or the family dinner on Sunday evening. These scenes play out like little movies in your head. There are characters, and in a place, a time, and something is happening, conversations are had. As the writer, you are the director re-creating the moments of your ancestor’s life in words, like a movie, vivid, colourful, playing out for the reader on the page.

All scenes contain various elements that contribute to making the scene alive and vibrant for the reader. Let’s break a scene down to see what makes it so special.

The Elements of a Good Scene

Time – The reader should be thrust into a specific time and day, so the reader is immediately oriented with the time frame of the scene. If you don’t your reader is quickly confused and lost.

Setting – Again, much like time you also want to familiarize your reader quickly into the place of your scene. In order for the reader to see the scene play out they need to understand the surroundings and be able to place your ancestor within their surroundings.

Action – Something happens in the scene that propels the plotline forward. Your scenes must have action; they must bring about conflict.

Dialogue – Someone speaks. Dialogue can reveal plot, the conflicts but also helps us understand our ancestor’s character.

Vivid Description- In order for your reader, to see the scene play out like a movie it must have very specific and detailed description.

Imagery – To bring the scene to life, the writer must use all their senses, touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing. However, don’t overload your scene. As the writer, you must decide what you want to bring through in your writing. Don’t pile up your writing with description and imagery and let the reader try to figure it out.

POV- The reader needs to have a clear understanding of who is speaking.

Figurative Language- Similes and metaphors are often used to help create visual images for the reader. It helps to create images for the reader, to make your writing more memorable.

Beginning, Middle and End – Just like our story each scene needs a beginning, middle and end. The end needs to propel us on in the story to the next scene. The beginning draws us in, the middle gives us the guts of the scene, the conflict, the end offers a resolution or not but offers up tension that propels the reader on to the next scene.

Purpose – A scene must serve the story. It must somehow be relevant to the goal of your ancestor. If it does not serve the goal of your ancestor, it has no reason to be in the story.

You want your scenes to be entertaining. This is another one of those moments when you will have to tap into the creative side of your brain. You have to breathe some spirit into a scene. How do we do that? Again this comes from practice and time and by reading the works of other great authors and learning from them, recognize how they craft scenes and practice writing scenes of your own.

Coming in September!

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Make Your Scenes Pop!Make Your Scenes Pop!

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

Do your stories pop?

Do they engage your reader and give them a vision in their mind through the words you’ve strung together on the page. As writers, our goal is to create clear and detailed images through the use of descriptive language. If you’re not using descriptive writing in your family history stories then you are missing an opportunity to show rather than tell. Descriptive writing adds texture, colour and dimension to our stories. It is how we make reading a sensory experience for our readers.

My favourite quote that helps to illustrate showing in scenes remains:

“DON’T TELL ME THE MOON IS SHINING; SHOW ME THE GLINT OF LIGHT ON BROKEN GLASS.”

ANTON CHEKHOV

As we discussed in How to Write a Scene, detailed description, imagery and figurative language are components of a scene that we heavily rely on to make a scene vivid and in full colour for the reader. Today’s post pulls together a few tips to help you improve your use of description in writing your scenes.

Use all of your senses.

As we mentioned in How to Write a Scene using your senses is an essential ingredient of descriptive writing. Using the senses of touch, taste, hearing, seeing and smelling are all equally important in bringing your ancestor’s experience to life on the page. We often tend only to use sight, but employing a combination of senses gives your reader a much deeper experience.

Avoid Clichés

Clichés are words or expressions that have been overused. They may have been original at one time but through overuse they have become clichés. Be aware of them and find fresh and original ways to describe your story. Some examples of clichés include dead as a doornail, smart as a whip, sweet as sugar. You get the idea.

Use a Thesaurus

Try to avoid using the same words in a sentence, paragraph or, if it is an uncommon word, in the story, unless the word is used for effect. This applies to standard words and less common words. Use a thesaurus to find alternative words that convey the same meaning. (I used the word “word” eight times – did you notice?)

Use Personification, Similes, and Metaphors

Personifications, similes, and metaphors can add sensuous references vividly, explain things, express emotion and entertain your reader. They add richness to your writing and show an image in a vibrant way through example rather than tell directly. They should replace, enhance or define adjectives like, beautiful, sweet, picturesque and others. We’ve all learned about similes and metaphors in school. Perhaps, it’s time for a refresher course, and a little practice to help you see just how important it can be in writing your family history stories.

Let’s take a look at each with examples from the memoir Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

Personification

Personification adds human personality traits to inanimate objects.

“Finally, we entered hill country, climbing higher and deeper into the Appalachian Mountains, stopping from time to time to let the Oldsmobile catch its breath.”

Simile

A simile ties two things together using the words ‘as’ or ‘like.’

“ It was like sewing meat. It was sewing meat.” Mr. Walls gets beat up and asks for Jeannette to sew up a gash on his arm.

Metaphor

Metaphors are figurative comparisons that describe one thing by directly assigning it the traits of another, so one idea is understood in terms of the other.

Rex says Maureen “is a sick puppy, the runt of the litter, who should have been drowned at birth”

This statement expresses how Rex feels Maureen is weak and dependent, and the rest of the family has to provide for her.

Don’t Over Do it!

Beginning writers tend to lack confidence in writing description in those early days, but once they gain an understanding of description, they can then go too far and overdo it. As I mentioned in writing a scene, too much detail can completely overtake a story and it bears repeating again. Once we get the handle on description and detail we tend to find a reason to think more is better. It is not. As the artist of this work you must make decisions about which descriptions and details serve the story best, the feeling you want to portray on the page. Description should enhance your characters and their world, not overwhelm it.

Putting Words in their MouthsPutting Words in their Mouths

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

We now know that dialogue is an important element to good scene writing.

However, it doesn’t remove our apprehension about using it in our family history stories. It becomes a scary proposition for family historians and often stops many from writing scenes because they don’t want to put words in their ancestor’s mouths. Instead, they settle for dry narrative summary rather than writing an engaging story built on scene and summary.

Dialogue for family historians falls into two camps, which I will refer to as recalled conversations and re-created conversations. First let me start by saying, how you handle dialogue in your family history is a personal decision. Some nonfiction writers believe in no fabrication, while others believe you can put words in your character’s mouth within guidelines. There seems to be a broad range of interpretations on the subject.

Recalled Conversations

My definition of a recalled conversation is when the person or persons were present for the discussion but do not recall the exact words that were exchanged. This could be you writing a memoir or interviewing a relative recalling a conversation. Here’s a few guidelines for recalled conversations.

You are not expected to remember verbatim what was said, but instead convey the essence of the discussion. If your grandmother is recalling a conversation to you, it is not expected that she would remember the exact words that transpired. However, through your interview she would remember the conversation to the best of her knowledge, capturing the tone and essence of the exchange.
If you are privy to a conversation, don’t transcribe the conversations word for word. Separate out the important parts. What part is memorable and reveals character and is relevant to the story?
Conversations do not need to be complete sentences, nor does it need to contain every verbal tic a person might say. You know all those ands, umms and buts, we insert into our vocabulary. The reader does not need to read these.
Also don’t forget to include setting and body language, which help add to the characterizations behind the words.

Re-Created Conversations

My definition of a re-created dialogue applies to those discussions that took place well in the past, and no one who was present is alive to interview. You may wish to re-create this conversation but here are a few guidelines I follow.

1. Turn to your research to re-create dialogue. I believe you can re-create dialogue that is based on your research and can be summarized and hypothesized base on your ancestor’s actions. I’ve covered the possible resources for re-creating dialogue in a previous post, Re-Creating Dialogue and in Authentic Ancestors.

2. Remain faithful to the essence of what the character would have said and the nature of the conversation.

3. Be honest with the readers, acknowledge when you are re-creating dialogue and when you are recalling.

I’ll also include a link here for those of you who are just learning to write dialogue, 7 Tips to Formatting Dialogue.

I’ve grabbed a couple of books from by bookshelf to offer examples of how other authors have handled the situation.

For example in the memoir , The StovePipe by Bonnie Virag, in her author’s notes she addresses the topic:

I set forth each incident as I remember it, occasionally relying on my sisters to fill in some of the gaps – bearing in mind that each of us saw through a different set of eyes and may have perceived things differently. Some of the dialogue I remember clearly and recount verbatim. Where memory fails me, I created dialogue based on the way my sisters expressed themselves. The rest is as accurate as I can make it. It is the story of my life, and I have tried to be true to my thoughts and memories.

Another example,

Jeannette Walls, Author of Half-Broke Horses

In telling my grandmother’s story, I never aspired to that sort of historical accuracy. I saw the book more in the vein of oral history, a retelling of stories handed down by my family through the years, and undertaken with the storyteller’s traditional liberties. ….she goes on to say

I don’t have the words from Lily herself, and since I have also drawn on my imagination to fill in details that are hazy or missing- and I ‘ve changed a few names to protect people’s privacy – the only honest thing to do is call the book a novel.

Regardless of whether you are recalling dialogue or recreating dialogue the important thing to remember is to be honest with the reader.

Lee Gutkind, creative nonfiction teacher and author of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, expresses his thoughts and I’ll end with his words

“The idea is to replicate the conversation vividly and to mirror memory and speculation with trust and good judgement.”

Window to the Physical WorldWindow to the Physical World

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

Writing the physical world of our ancestors may seem impossible at times. We face two concerns, how do we know what it looked like and how do we bring that world to life on the page.

Replicating that world will once again rely heavily on your family history research along with social history research. I encourage you, where possible to visit the ancestral hometowns of your ancestors. Walk the streets, visit the local historical societies and learn everything you can about their surroundings, from the house they lived in, to the street they lived on. Absorb the town that was a part of their daily life. If you can’t go in person visit through the magic of Google Earth. Reproduce your ancestor’s setting down to the most minute detail.

Once you have your research, you now must turn to painting a picture of the landscape with words so the reader can visualize being there. We want them to feel as if they are standing beside their ancestor, seeing what they are seeing.

As we have previously discussed with regards to scenes; we will rely on our senses, all of them, specific details, and figurative language to make this happen. However, before writing physical description of your ancestor’s world let’s discuss the importance setting plays in your family history story.

You learned in previous posts, setting is a component of scene, without a setting to anchor your reader, they are lost.

However, I see writers not doing justice to setting. They may include a year, maybe a town name or a place like a the kitchen, but that’s where the description often stops. More detail, particular detail is needed. When I say more, I don’t mean describe the entire house, or the whole town. Give the reader intimate details of the immediate setting. For example, if we’re in the kitchen then give the reader the colour of the tablecloth, the smell of the stew cooking on the stove, the creak of the chair and the burnt out lightbulb dangling above.

A setting can also set tone, a feeling and it can be a character in of itself. For example, the supportive small town or the thick forest holding back progress or a chaotic city that overwhelms a new resident can play a pivotal role in a story. The setting can offer far more complications or support in your story than just a pretty backdrop in which to tell your story. Keep in mind that what you choose to share in terms of details are the very tools you will use to create tone and evoke feeling. Is the kitchen warm and cozy, or cold and desolate? The description you share should be hand-picked and carefully worded to evoke the feelings you want to bring forward to the reader.

Setting can also take on a character type role. Many of you writing memoir might find this to be true when writing about a childhood home, or a grandparent’s house, a setting that conjures up immense emotion.

Consider how the environment plays into your ancestor’s emotions. Take out something you’ve written so far this month. Read it. Is the location clear? The physical setting established? Are there details, or is it very general in nature? Does it reflect a feeling an emotion, could it?

On the other side, setting shouldn’t take over your writing. Long narratives describing a family home or locations pull the reader away from the action and the story. Describing setting within a scene requires a delicate balance, just enough to to feel like we are there, not to much that it pulls us out of the story.

You, the family history writer control the window to your ancestor’s physical world, think cautiously about how you wish to portray that world to your reader and what feeling and emotion it could bring to the story.