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All too often when we think about writing our family history stories, we contemplate writing about those big story ideas. We want to write an ancestor’s life story from birth to death. We think about writing our family history from as far back as we have researched to present day. These are pumpkins. Gigantic pumpkins.

Your family history might very well be an inspiring and insightful story. But when writing your family history, you don’t always have to go big. Sometimes there are little seeds of stories buried within your research. I love those stories because they zoom in and show our ancestors in their most personal moments. These intimate moments will resonate with your readers.

Often, we have these pumpkin size ideas. Pumpkin ideas are cumbersome and hard to carry. They tend to wear us down. They are overwhelming. When you write about huge topics, you can tire out and lose interest. Huge topics can also be challenging to write, with so many aspects to consider. It’s more fun to dig out the seeds than carrying around a big awkward pumpkin.

LET’S CARVE UP OUR PUMPKIN IDEA AND FIND THE SEEDS

For example, my mother’s life story is a pumpkin size idea. It’s a huge pumpkin with over 85 years of life to write about. Even if I break her life story down into subtopics, they can still be significant. Watch me do this with my mother. I jot down pumpkin-sized ideas in my notebook.

They might look something like this:

• Growing up in Northern Ontario
• Working on the Tobacco Farms in Southern Ontario
• Married life and raising children

In my notebook, I have carved up my pumpkin and listed all sorts of things that were interesting about my mother’s life, as you can see above.

Now that I’ve carved up my pumpkin, I begin to see the seeds and start to pull out those seeds.

• Her first job cooking and cleaning for a family
• The day she left home
• Blueberry picking trips
• Giving her baby sister her first bath
• Cooking meals at the Poorhouse

Ohhhh, see that!? Now, these moments are starting to sound more like stories, and less like topics. You saw how I did that, right? Finding my seed ideas inside that big pumpkin of a life story.

Now, you may already have ideas that are somewhat specific. Maybe you’ve carved your pumpkin already instead of leaving it whole. But I challenge you to zoom in and pull out those small seeds.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN TO FIND SEED IDEAS

Grab your writing notebook, and identify an ancestor you want to write about. This is your pumpkin idea.

Next, create subtopics, carve up that pumpkin, usually around time periods or significant events in your ancestor’s life. They may look like this:

• marriage
• immigration
• buying land
• going to school
• career

Next, take that carved pumpkin and pull out the seeds, those little ideas within those topics.

For example,

Immigration

• Buying the ticket
• Seeing North America from the ship for the first time.

Job

• First day on the job
• Receiving an award
• Last day on the job

Marriage

• A funny event at the ceremony.
• First date
• Marriage proposal

Seed ideas are usually memorable moments in a person’s life, but they also can trigger random specific moments in their life that can hold significant meaning.

If you’ve been struggling to get your family history stories out, I’d suggest it could be that you’re carrying too large of an idea. Every time you write, remember to zoom into your ideas, carve up the pumpkin and start to pull out those small seeds. A seed idea is quite fun and manageable to write about!

Go on, dig out those seeds and start writing.

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.

Tip 1. Focus the story on the struggles of one ancestor

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.

Tip 2. Show the risk involved if your ancestor failed to overcome his struggles.

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.

Tip 3. Structure your story to show rising tension

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.

Tip 4. Keep it short and add pictures

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.

Tip 5. Keep the content relevant and relatable

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.

I’m known as a plotter. This means I love to outline my stories in great detail before I begin to write. For me, it’s like creating a road map of a story from start to finish. It allows me to organize my story so that when I start to write I know exactly what I’m writing and where I’m going with the story. It eliminates sitting and staring at my computer screen in that deep dark hole known as writer’s block.

I use index cards to create this map. Each index card represents a scene or a summary. A creative nonfiction story is comprised of scenes and summaries and having those scenes carefully thought out in advance can help keep you organized and writing every day. Check out my scene building cards that I designed just for family history writers.

Once I have my story mapped out with my index cards, then I can begin to write my first draft.

While index cards may seem a rather old-fashioned method for outlining it is with good reason it’s still around, it works. Of course, just as technology has impressed itself on every aspect of our lives even the little old index card has not gone untouched by the digital world. You can still use paper index cards if you are tactile, and like the physical feel of a paper card in front of you. I love to lay out my index cards on a corkboard in my office it keeps my story in front of me and top of mind.

There are plenty of digital index cards available today that have replaced the paper card. For instance, Scrivener offers index cards on a corkboard so that you can storyboard your family history within the writing program. Check out this video to see how to use the Scrivener corkboard. Scrivener also offers the ability to print off those cards so you can still have those paper cards to shuffle around on a physical corkboard.

There are plenty of apps for index cards, the Corkboard Writing app, and the Index Card app are just a couple. Most are available for iPads and iPhones. Check the Apple App store for a selection.

Elements of an Index Card

An index card will record either a scene or a summary on the card. On each card, you will record bullet points to help you write that particular scene or summary. Here is an article that explains the difference between scene and summary.

Scene cards should contain a few basic elements that will help you to write the scene when it comes time to put pen to paper.

Who – the primary ancestor in the scene

Scene Goal – your ancestor hopes to accomplish an explicit goal with the scene. Read here about scene goals.

Action – what physically happens in the scene.

Setting – Where and when does it happen? Indoors? Outdoors? Time of year, day, place, etc.

Conflict – within the scene is conflict, tension or suspense.

Inner Journey– how is your ancestor emotionally affected by the outer journey or action happening in the scene.

Theme – Do the details in the scene support the theme you have created?

Index cards are another tool in our writer’s toolbox that helps us to break down our writing into manageable tasks, keeping us from becoming overwhelmed and hitting that all too familiar writer’s block.

Want to learn more about how to write to write a family history scene consider our upcoming class, Writing a Family History Scene.

To understand how to format a story using scene cards, consider joining us for our upcoming course Plotting a Family History Story or our e-workbook, Finding the Story. Also available on Amazon in paperback.

This Father’s Day the best gift you could offer your father is the commitment to write his story.

Ok, before I hear a big collective sigh out there because you thought you were going to get way with a golf shirt again this year, let me explain. It doesn’t have to be big and take you the next five years. You don’t have to have it completed for Father’s Day. In fact, I’ve done a lot of the work for you. I designed a beautiful gift certificate, Father’s Day Gift Certificate, you can download and give to him, and I’ve prepared 11 questions that will help you to get the information you need to start writing. These questions are built around the necessary elements you need to create a great story.

These 11 questions will help you to interview your father while at the same time focusing in on the key elements needed to tell an entertaining, compelling story.

Set up some interviews, maybe a couple of hours each week and ask the questions. You could do it in one sitting but don’t wear the poor man out. Each of these questions will help you to set up a story, with a setting, a goal, conflict, obstacles, motivation, and theme, all key to writing a compelling and engaging story. I’ve noted beside each question what story element they may contribute to.

Story Questions 

1. Start with the basics – if you don’t already know them, where he was born, lived, went to school, married. Your genealogists you know the stuff I’m talking about. You most likely have all this information, but it never hurts to confirm it again.  Setting

2. Get some accurate descriptions of the principal places in his life. What did his house look like? His bedroom, his place of work, etc.? Get very detailed. What was on the walls, the furniture? Use your five senses, how did sound, smell, touch, see and taste? Setting

3. What was life like growing up for him? Was it carefree? Stressful? What kinds of things influenced his growing up years? Money, War, Depression, Friends. Social History

4. Who were the key people in his life besides his parents? Individuals who supported him and influenced him along the way. Main Characters

5. His thoughts on his parents. How were they as parents, what did they teach him? What didn’t they teach him? What kind of parents were they, strict, lenient, fair? What did he learn from them? Does he emulate them? How did he hope not to be like them? What skills, morals, and values did they stress on him?  Backstory/conflict/motivation

6. What were your father’s dreams and aspirations? What did he want to achieve in his life? Did he or didn’t he achieve those goals and why? Goals

7. What obstacles did he have to overcome to meet his goals? At any point did he change his path on his way to his goal or change his target completely somewhere along the way. Obstacles

8. Did anyone in his life object or hold him back from his goals? Antagonist/Conflict

9. What motivated him in his life and goals? Did he fear not meeting these goals? Why? Motivation

10. What life lesson would your father like to pass on to his descendants? Theme

11. How have his choices changed him and his outlook on life and what he wants for his children and grandchildren?                Inner Journey

With these 11 questions in hand, you now have the key ingredients of a great story. Not a chronological tale of a life but a story with depth, meaning and purpose.  A story shaped around goals and aspirations that were met with conflicts and obstacles.

Use Workbook #3 Finding the Story, Plotting Your Ancestor’s Journey to structure your answers into a compelling story format. Add some pictures and you will have a nice little book in honour of your father. You’ll likely move up to favourite child status very quickly.

Take advantage of our June Special. Get Workbooks, 1, 2, and 3 in downloadable PDF format for $17.00.

Consider interviewing your father using the above questions and then joining us this fall for our online course, Plotting a Family History Story.  Now open for registration. Limited spaces.