Category: Story Planning

Tips and Tools for a Rocking First DraftTips and Tools for a Rocking First Draft

January 13, 2016 0 Comments

Rocking out a good first draft doesn’t just happen it isn’t a matter of chance but rather a result of careful planning prior to writing. We constantly hear about writers who take one month to produce a draft for a book or story, who sit down and crank out a first draft in a month all the time. Of course, it is messy and will result in many rewrites and revisions. Writing a first draft in a month is certainly doable, but maybe we want a good first draft, not a mess. The only way to accomplish this is with a plan that addresses every aspect of writing a first draft, from mapping out your story to creating a scene guide, to gathering the details of your ancestor’s life, to surrounding yourself with an environment conducive to writing. Without a strategy most likely your attempt at writing your family history story will end badly.

Take some time before you begin to write your first draft and enlist the five tips and tools below. Together they will help you to pre-plan your first family history story draft.

Set a daily goal

Tip: Writing a first draft in one month is about the numbers. The best way to do that is to do the math in advance and decide how many words you plan to write daily. By writing daily and with a word count goal, you’ll keep yourself on track to complete your mission, whether it’s a 20,000-word short story for your legacy family history book or an 80,000-word epic family history novel. Identify in advance your project and the word count. Do the math.
Tool: Download our free word count tools.

Take some time to outline your plot and scenes

Tip: The best way to write every day is to have a plan. It will be difficult to hit your word count and write a good first draft if you don’t have a plan of what you intend to write each day. Take some time upfront to plan your story map and outline your scenes. This way, each day when you sit down to write, you’ll know exactly what you plan to write.
Tool: Consider our 1-hour webinar One Month to a Draft. We walk you through the pre-plan process of mapping our your story and outlining your scenes prior to writing.

Choose one ancestor, one story

Tip: Don’t try to write four hundred years of history in one month. Break your family history into small manageable chunks; consider one ancestor, one story at a time. Choose your ancestor and complete a character profile. Character profiles help you understand your ancestor intimately and provide you with important details and that will be necessary in bringing your ancestor to life on the page.
Tool: Complete the Authentic Ancestor Profile in Authentic Ancestors, Workbook Number 2.

Develop a daily writing habit

Tip: A daily writing routine is essential to completing a first draft and making writing a part of your life. By finding the environment, tools, and time of day that work best for you, you can turn writing into a part of your everyday life. Habits will help you to centre yourself in the writing process quickly and maintain your focus pushing away distractions.
Tool: Getting Ready to Write Workbook 1, offers many tips and advice for clearing your schedule, creating writing habits and declaring yourself a writer.

Don’t work towards perfection

Tip: While we may not want a messy first draft it is important not to work towards perfection. We have to move through the writing process and the first couple times may not be pretty but it is still an important part of the writing process. There is no stepping over or around the process. One cannot learn and develop their writing skills and flesh out their story without working through all the stages of planning and writing a first draft usually a less than gleaming first draft. We learn from creating that first story and moving through the process. The perfection happens in the rewrites and editing process. Every stage in writing a family history story is important in the process. Don’t try to shorten your path there is so much to learn from the process.
Tool: Enjoy every part of the writing process from finding the story to mapping and outlining your scenes with our scene guide in Finding the Story, Workbook No. 3

4 Steps to Structuring Story Scenes4 Steps to Structuring Story Scenes

December 6, 2015 0 Comments

If you’ve made the decision to use creative nonfiction to write your family history story then at some point, you’ll need to consider how you want to structure that story. In fiction writing, we call this the plot, in nonfiction, structure, but it is for all intense purposes the same thing. We want to consider the order in which we are going to tell the events in our story so that they bring the biggest impact to the reader. How will they best deliver suspense and tension for the reader and bring them on an emotional journey with their ancestor. The structure is critical to keeping your reader tuned into the story and turning the pages to the end.

Here are four steps to consider when organizing that structure for your family history story.

Before I start any piece of writing, I brainstorm my ideas about a story. I jot down the scenes I see in my head, mull over ideas, themes, and the ancestors I’ll include in the story. I consider from whose perspective I will tell the story, which ancestor will be my primary ancestor. I think about my ancestor’s goal and his motivation. I consider what obstacles he had to overcome and what was at risk if he didn’t reach his goal. I often do a lot of this brainstorming in a mind mapping software called Scapple. Scapple is from Literature and Latte, the same great company that makes Scrivener. Once I have all my rough ideas down in a mind map, I begin to see if I can shape them into a story that I feel can withhold my reader’s attention.
Now with my mind map in hand, I follow these four steps to organize those ideas into a story plan.

1. Establish Major Events.

First, I identify the major turning points or events that happen in my ancestor’s story. I determine these major events by asking myself did this event force a change in my ancestor’s life, were they obstacles my ancestor needed to achieve to reach his goal. I like to use a story map, a visual tool, to plan out these events. I make a list of the biggest and most critical events I want to include and how they relate to my story question. I plot them on a story map using a traditional narrative arc that shows the rise of action and tension in the story. Sometimes, it takes some playing around until I feel I have the right events, in the correct order.

While doing this, I keep in mind the general order in which they’ll appear in the story, particularly in respect to the basic three parts of a story. I look for the beginning with an inciting incident that pushes my ancestor out of ordinary life, a middle crisis that works toward that most critical moment and then the final climax, when my ancestor overcomes his last obstacle that eventually leads to a resolution.

2. Look for the Layers of the Story.

Next, I look at the layers of my story. There are three layers to a story. First, we have the dramatic action, which is the physical action. We identified the physical action already through our events in step one.

Secondly, I look for the internal conflicts, the flaws or weaknesses in my ancestor’s makeup that holds him back from his accomplishments, which he eventually overcomes to reach success.

Thirdly, I look for the meaning, what will my readers take away from this story. What universal importance can my readers identify with in their ancestor’s life?

My goal is to have all three layers in my story. Sometimes they won’t always be evident immediately; it might take a draft or two for them to reveal themselves. But eventually they will show themselves. When writing these layers into the story, we want them intertwined. The more intertwined they are, the better. It’s my job as the writer to make sure as the story unfolds, to braid the strands together as smoothly as possible, until, by the end, the reader can’t easily distinguish where one starts, and one stops.

3. Create the Framework of the Outline.

I then create a storyboard grid that will serve as my tool to outline my story. I place my key plot points those critical turning points we plotted on our story map, and we write them on a storyboard grid in three distinct sections, the beginning, middle and end. I then begin to fill in the scenes that lead me from one major turning point to the next. On index cards, I write a couple of sentences identifying what each of these scenes looks like. I’ll also decide where I need summaries to help me move from one scene to the next.

4. Outline the Scenes.

Once we have a good outline of scenes, we can begin to expand the few sentences that are on each index card. Develop the scene that you imagine by continually expanding the few sentences you recorded on each index card. Eventually, these few lines that you outlined can now begin to develop into a full scene. Before long, scenes slowly become chapters, and chapters become a book.

That’s it, 4 steps to outlining your story scenes and organizing them. Taking a few minutes in organizing your ideas into a plan before you begin to write goes a long way to keeping a story organized, it will hold off that infamous writer’s block because you will know what to write each day. It also generally results in a lot less rewriting later if you start with a plan at the beginning.

You’ll find much more about plotting and outlining with scenes, how to use mind maps, story maps, a story grid and index cards to structure your family history story in my new workbook, Finding the Story, now available in our store.

Who Do You Think You Are? – What it Teaches Us About StoryWho Do You Think You Are? – What it Teaches Us About Story

April 14, 2015 0 Comments

I’ve been watching Who Do You Think You Are? How about you? I enjoy following the celebrities in their journey to discover their ancestors. Now what occurs to me about this show is why do I care about other people’s genealogy. Well, I’m a genealogist, so yes, I am interested. Of course, there is the aspect that they are celebrities. However, to make this show successful the show needs to appeal to a wider audience, and that means there needs to be a great story that captures the viewer’s attention, even non-genealogists.

The same applies to our family history. We want our family to read about their ancestors; we want them to sit up and take an interest. However, our family are not genealogists so we need to appeal to them in a different way than as if we were writing for other genealogists interested in our research.

So perhaps we can learn a little something from the producers of Who Do You Think You Are? What makes this show so popular? What storytelling lessons can we learn? How can we apply them to our family history writing.

There is a plot – whether you realize it our not, very episode has a plot. The celebrity is on a mission to answer a question about their family history. Each celebrity in their journey faces, obstacles, further questions that they need to overcome in their quest. However, there is also the secondary plot, the journey of the ancestor, their story is also playing out for us. In Who Do You Think You Are? both the celebrity and the ancestor faces obstacles, conflicts on their road to their goal.

You should also be structuring your stories in the same manner. If you’re writing just about your ancestor, then your story needs to be structured around a struggle to a goal that your ancestor faced. If you’re writing about your pursuit to uncover you ancestor’s life then you must structure your journey in terms of your obstacles in the quest for your answers. I think the easiest way to find the plot is to look for the accomplishments and then work backwards, looking for the obstacles, either those your ancestor faced or you faced in your research.

For Example:

Josh Groban – sets out to learn about his mother’s lineage and traces the trail of his 8x great-grandfather. He discovers a brilliant man who was a deacon, music teacher, and a well-known astronomer. However, Josh finds that his ancestor’s predictions of cataclysmic doom put him in opposition to the church.

Angie Harmon- On her journey, Angie uncovers the dramatic story of her 5X great-grandfather, who endured hardship and danger as an immigrant coming to America. She discovers that he fought in the American Revolution and risked death for standing his ground.

There is a theme. Every story has a theme and Who Do You Think You Are? does an excellent job of finding a theme and giving us a teaching moment for the celebrity. It’s important to centre your story around a theme. Find a focus for the story, an idea that emulates from either your journey or from your ancestor’s life.

For example:

Julie Chen – in Julie’s episode education is a huge theme. Julie uncovers how education greatly influenced her ancestor’s life including her grandfather Lou Gaw Tong, and her great-grandfather, head of the department of education. Giving Julie a new found appreciation for the great depth in her family history.

Sean Hayes – Sean’s story centers around the father figure. Sean is estranged from his father with a troubled past and goes on a quest to discover the root of the problem. Sean’s journey takes him to Chicago where he uncovers the sad details of his grandfather’s early death on skid row. Sean then follows his ancestral trail to Ireland, where court documents show the chaos in the Hayes family runs generations deep. Through Sean’s search, he deepens his understanding of his father and appreciate that he’s broken a turbulent family pattern on his own, perhaps offering Sean, a little more empathy for his father.

We make an emotional connection. I would be hard pressed to say I didn’t cry through my fair share of episodes. Why is that? There are two things at play. The producers have done a beautiful job of bringing the ancestors to life for us. They have given us characters in the celebrity’s ancestor, with hopes and dreams, failures and successes. It pulls us in emotionally either through our connection with the ancestor or by seeing how the celebrity is connecting to the story. Either way, the producers have used their research to make the ancestors real to the celebrity to the viewers.

It’s important for us to do the same in our own stories. We want to bring our ancestors to life in our stories, giving the readers an opportunity to make an emotional connection with them. In our stories, this is best achieved through characterization. Characterization is a writing tool that helps us to find our ancestor’s personality in our research and bring that personality to the page, the focus of our Workbook Number 2, Authentic Ancestors.

For example:

Julie Chen – From this year’s episode, the producers were able to show us the character of Julie’s grandfather, through his actions in the war and his commitment to bringing education to his village. We get a very clear understanding of his strengths and his beliefs. Therefore, when Julie visits the school her grandfather built it becomes a very emotional moment for her and the viewer.

Christina Applegate – One of the most emotional episodes in my memory belonged to Christina Applegate. Christina seeks to find the story of her grandmother. The information she uncovers, shows a women who lead a very difficult life and faced great personal struggles. But when they discover an incredible gesture her grandmother makes in providing a final resting place for her son, we truly see a mother’s love. Christina finds her grandmother’s final resting place and brings her father to visit, he is able to find and reconnect with his mother.

Scenes and Settings bring the story to life for us. In this year’s episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? we jet off to great locations, like Ireland and China. We watched Angie Harmon walk on the land of her ancestor, Julie Chen tour the school of her grandfather and Sean Hayes visit the court-house where his ancestor was charged. The producers place us in the places where the ancestor’s life played out, where significant events happened.

Scenes and setting offer you the ability to transpose your readers to another place and time. Setting offers your readers details and description so that they time travel, while writing scenes provides your reader the ability to see the events playing out before them on the page.

A main character to focus on. Notice in every Who Do You Think You Are? episode there is one central character, one ancestor that the producers set their sole focus on. Sure there might be some backstory, a bit about the family tree in general. But before too long we are pulled into a story about one ancestor and that is where the majority of the story is told. The producers don’t try to tell us too much about a lot of ancestor’s in the celebrity’s tree. They find one ancestor who plays an interesting or pivotal part in the celebrities history and they shape the family history around them.

In our stories, we too need to find that one ancestor. Don’t try to tell every ancestor’s story in one large story. Focus your family history around a main ancestor. Find your protagonist ancestor and tell your family history from their prospective. Authentic Ancestors provides some exercises to help you find your story ancestors.

Social History. The producers make great use of social history to help paint a picture of what was taking place at the time of the celebrities ancestors. The producers often direct celebrities to social historians who can explain what is happening at the time to get a deeper understanding of their ancestor’s actions.

By exploring the history and social history of the time, you can but your ancestor’s actions into context. You can get inside their heads and perhaps see the whys behind their decisions and actions. As a family history writer, world, regional and local history along with social history play an important role in shaping your stories and understanding the motivations and stakes behind your ancestor’s actions.

Next week, watch Who Do You Think You Are? through the lens of a writer. Alternatively, catch up on past episodes here. Look for the main character, the theme, the plot, the setting and scenes. Then apply these same principles to your storytelling.

What Kind of Family History Should I Write?What Kind of Family History Should I Write?

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

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.

How to Begin Your StoryHow to Begin Your Story

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

Without a great beginning, a beginning that draws the reader in and hooks them your story is dead. The beginning becomes especially important in a family history narrative. We all know how difficult it can be to get our relatives to read about their family history. They may not have a particular interest in their history; maybe you forced them into reading this story, perhaps some guilt is involved. Regardless, how they got to that first page you want to be sure they stay, and they stay because they are intrigued.

The beginning is the start of your story up until your first plot point. The first plot point being the event that causes your ancestor to take action and set them on a path to their goal. This first plot point is often referred to as the inciting incident or the first turning point.

There is no tried and true answer to where to begin. Throw out the idea that your family history must start at the beginning of a life, in chronological order. Look at your research, your ancestor’s story and find a moment, event, question or surprise that you feel will grab your reader’s attention. Your story’s beginning should set the tone and mood, establish a point of view and make the author’s voice heard (that’s you).

A Checklist for the Beginning of Your Story

A Hook – the opening lines, the first moments of your story that grabs the reader’s attention, that captures your reader’s curiosity and propels them to keep reading.

The hook can come in a variety of ways:

Start with a question – put a question in your reader’s minds. Make them wonder what does this have to do with my ancestor, my family history. How is my ancestor going to get out of this situation?
Begin at a crucial moment – Choose a critical juncture in your family history, an event that captures your reader’s attention and will encourage them to learn what happens next.
Create an interesting picture – Start your family history with description that helps your reader’s paint a picture of their ancestor’s setting. Put them in a scene, give them some action and your reader will be drawn in.
Introduce an intriguing character– A character that grabs your reader’s attention will encourage them to stay to find out more. Let your ancestor’s personality take the lead.
Start with an unusual situation – Show us your ancestor in a unique situation that makes your family take notice, and they’ll be sticking around to see what it’s all about.

With each passing sentence, you want to continue to build, coaxing the reader to stay with you. Each paragraph should build on the last, pulling them deeper until they can’t turn back. The last sentence of each paragraph should be a catalyst to the next. We all remember a book that we couldn’t put down. The authors of these books excelled at creating great beginnings that drive you forward into the story.

Besides the hook, the start of your family history story should offer the reader other elements that will help capture their attention and curiosity.

Introduce the Protagonist – Introduce us to the Protagonist Ancestor if you haven’t done so in the hook. Assist the reader in establishing a relationship with your primary character.
Establish the Setting – The reader should be able to visualize where the story takes place, area, time and even season.
Introduce the Antagonist – Introduce us to the Antagonist Ancestor ( if there is one). Keep it brief, don’t give us everything up front.
Introduce a Story Question – Present the reader with a challenge that your ancestor faces. Have your readers asking the question, How will they overcome this challenge?
Theme – Introduce, your reader to the theme of your family history story. Give them something to think about, what does your family history mean?

What Your Beginning Shouldn’t Include

Avoid backstory or flashbacks. Stay in the present story. There is plenty of time to add historical information later.
Too much description, particularly of the central character, give us just enough to paint a picture, not a long drawn out description. Stick to unique and very specific details. It’s important to remember, in this case, more is not necessarily better.
Don’t introduce too many characters.
Don’t change point of views between characters, too confusing this early on. If you are writing your family history from the point of view of two ancestors, let the reader get comfortable with one point of view before changing.
Too many locations, keep your beginning limited to one or two locations. Ancestors travelled but let’s not have them in a dozen different places in the first chapter.
Don’t spoon-feed the reader, giving everything they need to know about their family history upfront. You’re writing this story to share a family history in a compelling read. Make them hang with you until the end, don’t share everything in the first chapter.
Prologues – much debated, but personally I dislike books that start with a prologue because they are often a place to dump backstory and it often feels lazy. It’s a personal choice; prologues are best used to raise a question in the reader’s mind about the main character.

Goals, Motivations and StakesGoals, Motivations and Stakes

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

You’ve chosen your Protagonist Ancestor, and now it’s time to structure his or her story in a format that will keep your readers entertained and engaged from beginning to end.

Every main character in a story has a goal that is ultimately the heart of the story. A reader stays with a story to see if the main character reach their goal. Your ancestor’s goal is motivated by something in their life, usually in their history, an experience, or event that may of had a substantial impact on them and their actions. In addition, if they didn’t achieve their goal, they fear a loss. It could be an external loss such as in a material item, money or land, or even the loss of life, or it could be internal losses, such as respect or honour.

Before you begin to write your story, it’s important to recognize the goals, motivations and stakes of your ancestor. They are critical to not only understanding them but also in shaping their story.

I love these next three questions because by answering them you not only identify your ancestor’s goals, motivations and stakes but you understand how they relate to each other.

GOAL – WHAT DOES YOUR ANCESTOR WANT?

MOTIVATION – WHY DOES YOUR ANCESTOR WANT IT?

STAKES – WHAT HAPPENS IF YOUR ANCESTOR FAILS TO GET WHAT HE WANTS? WHAT WILL HAPPEN? WHAT COULD HAPPEN IF YOUR ANCESTOR HAD FAILS TO MEET HIS GOAL?

Let’s look at each of these elements individually.

Goal – There are any number of material and or emotional desires we seek; these are our goals. Your family history story needs a goal, which means your Protagonist Ancestor needs a goal. Where do I find the goal of my ancestor? Look at the actions in their lives. Look at the events on their timeline, did they emigrate, why? Did they own a great deal of land, did they fight in a war, did they become famous, or influential in politics, did they have a large family? Our ancestor’s actions are clues to what they valued in life, their goals, the wants or desires that they put most of their effort towards.

Does your ancestor want something so badly that they are prepared to destroy or be destroyed to attain this goal? To make sacrifices? To take risks? Did they join the army because they believe in the cause? Did leave the country because they didn’t support the cause?

Of course, not all goals are created equally, the bigger the goal, the bigger the story, the bigger the story, the more compelling the read. Try to find a goal that you feel will provide a big story that will engage your family. Stop thinking of your family history as a chronological timeline of events, but rather a desire, a want, with obstacles to overcome on the path to it.

Motivations – Once you’ve determined the purpose of your story, the next step is to understand their motivation. Why did your ancestor have this particular goal? Each and every human being who walked this earth had wants, desires that were driven by a motivation. Through your research, you wish to understand what that motivation may be. For example, if your ancestor’s goal was to own land, what in their history, their past motivated that desire? Look at motivation as the back story to the want.

Stakes – What happens if your ancestor does not fulfill his goal? The stakes are why we keep reading, if there is nothing at stake, no risk then there is little reason to keep turning the page. Of course, not all stories are life-or-death. Again big stakes produce significant stories. While the risks may not necessarily be life or death, our ancestors faced some very real stakes. For example – war, poverty, deportation, inscription, jail, poorhouses are only a few of the outcomes that may have occurred if they had not taken actions towards their goals.

Identify the goals, motivations and stakes of your ancestor and you have identified the heart of their story, along with the elements on which to shape your family history story plot.

Finding the Conflict and the ObstaclesFinding the Conflict and the Obstacles

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

One of the fundamental components of any good family history story is recognizing a conflict your ancestor faced in their life and bringing that to the front of the story. Without conflict, there is no story. Story is built around a conflict, a challenge and the obstacles your character faces in pursuit of his goal. It’s crucial in keeping your reader engaged to the end. It creates a story question. How does my ancestor overcome this conflict, this challenge? The reader wants the answer and, for this reason, stays with the story to the end.

By the end of the beginning of your story, you want your readers to understand your ancestor’s challenge and how they intend to overcome this problem.

Let’s create an ancestor, Henry Jones, for the purposes of demonstrating conflict and obstacles, and follow him through a story plot. Of course, in your own family history, you’re going to pull this information from your research.

We start by understanding Henry’s goal.

Henry’s Goal: Henry Jones wants to own land.

Of course, in order for this story to be a story there must be some conflict, some challenge in Henry’s pursuit of that goal.

Henry’s Conflict– Henry cannot own land in his current country, land is owned by the wealthy, Henry is a peasant and will spend his life farming the land of the wealthy.

The First Turning Plot Point – this is the moment when your ancestor changes his path in pursuit of his goal. This is also often called the inciting incident.

Henry’s First turning point – Henry makes the decision to emigrate to the New World, where land is plentiful.

Obstacles

In our family history story, obstacles block our ancestor on their path to achieving their goals. In a story plot, they are often referred to as plot points.

There are three types of obstacles that your ancestor may confront:

ancestor vs. another person

ancestor vs. circumstance

ancestor vs. self

What is the difference between conflict and obstacle?

The conflict is the overall idea; Henry cannot own land. While obstacles are those roadblocks that stand between Henry resolving his desire to own land.

Keep in mind that both conflicts and obstacles may be both internal and external, they can come from within the protagonist or from external forces, friendly and not so friendly.

If we continue to follow the example above, our ancestor Henry who wished to own land may come up against many obstacles.

Henry’s Obstacles

Obstacle 1 – Henry arrives in United States, there is plenty of land but he must head west, Henry has no money to get there. He overcomes this obstacle by getting a job. ancestor vs. circumstance

Obstacle 2 – He’s saving his money and close to leaving when he meets the love of his life. But, Mary doesn’t want to leave her family behind and travel west for land; Henry must convince her this decision is in their best interest. ancestor vs. another person

Obstacle 3 – Along the way they fall on hardships, and Henry doubts his choices. Ancestor vs. self

Obstacle 4 – There journey is delayed by a violent storm. ancestor vs. circumstance

These obstacles are plot points in our story and keep our reader compelled to keep reading. The obstacles tell a story, but also show growth of your ancestor, from poor to rich, sad to happy, hate to love, weak to strong.

Look at your research, what obstacles did your ancestor’s face in pursuit of their goals?

Enriching Your Story with HistoryEnriching Your Story with History

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

In the Getting Ready to Write and Authentic Ancestors workbooks, I mentioned historical timelines and their importance in organizing your research and writing your ancestor’s stories. Not only is it important to map your ancestor’s life on a timeline, but also to map world, regional and local history. It’s necessary to consider what was happening in the world around your ancestors and it’s relationship to their life.

I want to spend a few minutes today discussing how we can use historical events to enrich your stories.

Historical events can provide both a background and a setting for your story. However, while these events can add a lot of colour and depth to your story, it’s important to not just insert a historical event in your ancestor’s narrative only because it happened during their life. It’s important to look at how those events may have impacted your ancestor’s life, actions, and reactions. While some events will be easy to include due to your ancestor’s direct relationship to an event, do not discount an event because it did not happen directly to them. It may be happening in the background and influencing their life.

These historical events can happen before, after or during the story. It may be something from the past that sets in motion a current event in your story. Historical events can add richness to your story and can place your ancestor’s life and story within the context of the world. It can also help to establish the tone of your story for your reader. By linking your ancestor’s story to something happening or that has happened, this event may impact them or people around them. It’s important to consider how the event may change their feelings, attitudes, culture, or society.

These historical events may strengthen your story ideas and feed your ancestor’s stories. Perhaps your ancestor’s story will be a political or social statement about abortion, adoption, slavery, corruption in politics or the environment to name but a few. You can look to historical events to help you build your story ideas and theme.

An excellent resource for looking at events in a variety of categories is The Timetables of History by Bernard Grun. This book is organized into seven categories, history and politics, literature and theatre, religion, philosophy and learning, visual arts, music, science, technology and growth, and daily life. It spans from 5000BC up to 1991 and is organized on a year by year basis.

I’ve also provided you with a small chart below for you to download and use if looking at the historical events of your ancestor’s life and analyzing them for the impact on their lives. Completing this chart might help you to shape your story with regards to plot, theme, and your story question.

Don’t limit yourself to just the large world events. Regional and local historical events must also be considered. We often think wars and national tragedies when discussing historical events. However, a local storm that causes devastation to area crops or local politics may play a significant role in your ancestor’s life and decisions.

Historical events provide context and richness to your story, and it places our ancestor in the world making them more real and believable to your reader.

Here’s the timeline with a couple of examples filled in.

Timeline Table

Timeline Table – blank

Turning Back TimeTurning Back Time

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

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

Starting at the EndStarting at the End

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

All stories must end in a different place from where they began.

Family history stories are no different. They are not obligated to stop at the conclusion of a life, or with a happily ever after. They end when your ancestor has achieved something in their life that has brought about change and growth, hopefully, both internally and externally.

As we’ve discussed earlier on in this month, stories are about conflict, a complication. We’ve looked at identifying that conflict and how our ancestors have overcome obstacles on their path to their goal.

The third act of our story focuses on the climax and the resolution. The climax being that final conflict that will ultimately resolve your ancestor’s problem and bring about a resolution. The resolution is the point in your ancestor’s life when they achieve what they set out accomplish, whether that is to own land or emigrate or acquire a prominent position or be free, etc. The resolution is the prize, the reward at the end of the journey.

For some family history writers, this may be very clear and apparent at the start. However, some of you may be struggling to find that resolution, to identify your plot line from the conflict to a resolution, to identify the prize in your ancestor’s journey. This may be presenting a problem because not all conflicts in a person’s life have resolutions. Perhaps you’ve chosen a conflict with no clear resolution.Therefore, you may have better luck in developing a strong story line by identifying the resolution first and working backwards.

Identifying the Resolution

Look at your ancestor’s life as a whole, make a list of the achievements they accomplished in their life. Consider the following questions.

How big is the success? The bigger the success, the more significant the efforts, the more powerful the story.
Remember anything your ancestor does on purpose will most definitely have a motivation behind it, for example, your ancestor receives a diploma, acquires land, obtains a prominent position, sets sail for a new land, becomes a military officer. These are all goals that require purposeful action on their part, pressed upon by some motivation. What motivated the action to the accomplishment?
There is often complications on the road to the accomplishment. Did the accomplishment come through way of a struggle?
Did the resolution/accomplishment grow out of your ancestor’s own actions?

Keeping the above thoughts in mind choose an achievement/resolution that you feel meets the above criteria.

Linking the Resolution to the Conflict

Once you identify the resolution and the conflict in your ancestor’s life, linked them together. Look for the actionable steps your ancestor took working back from the resolution to the conflict. Each of these actionable events are the obstacles. These are events in which your ancestor either does something or something is done to him in pursuit of the achievement. Identify those and you’ve identified the obstacles he overcame on his path. Connect your resolution through these obstacles to the initial conflict. You’ve just identified the plot of your story from the end to the beginning.

If you’re struggling to find the end of your story perhaps it’s because your conflict doesn’t have a resolution. If your struggling to find your storyline then look to your ancestor’s achievements in their life and work backwards.