Story Tools | The Family History Writing Studio

Who is the Enemy?Who is the Enemy?

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

Once you’ve identified the conflict and obstacles that your ancestor faced it shouldn’t be too hard to identify the enemy, the source of the obstacles, the antagonist.

While your antagonist may be human, another person, even another ancestor, the enemy may come in many forms. The enemy may also be a thing, a concept or your protagonist ancestor himself. The antagonist may originate from a number of sources and could be both friendly and unfriendly.

The antagonist in your family history story is going to be the person or thing that opposes your protagonist ancestor in some way and attempts to stop him from achieving his goal. Consider who your ancestor is trying to defeat in telling their story, the source of the obstacles and conflict.

The antagonist can be a person with good intentions keeping the protag ancestor from harmful choices; it may be someone trying to stand in the protags way with their own agenda.

Here are a few questions to consider when discovering the antagonist in your family history story.

Who or what is the source of the obstacles?
What type of antagonist are you dealing with? Person, thing, idea, self?
What are the antagonist’s intentions?
What is motivating the antagonist?

Finding the Enemy in a Family History

Finding the obstacles that your ancestor faced in life can come from a number of directions. While your story may have a more traditional antagonist in the form of a person or another ancestor, there may be other entities that are the source of your ancestor’s obstacles, here are a few examples.

Institutions – banks, big business, government, etc.

Social Organizations – local community organizations, schools, neighbourhood, a church, a family, a boss or co-worker.

Nature – hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, the weather, illness, mountains, jungles.

Self- what we do to ourselves knowingly or unknowingly, vices, how we feel about ourselves, or how our lives can keep us from reaching our goals.

Medical – issues that your ancestor faces or someone close to them faces. i.e. debilitating diseases, handicaps, mental health.

Your family history story is built around your ancestor’s conflict and the obstacles they overcame. There are many psychological, cultural, sociological, physiological and religious ideas that may offer challenges in your ancestor’s life from which you can structure their story and find an antagonist.

Consider your research and find the challenges your ancestor faced and what obstacles stood in their way. Give your ancestor an antagonist by discovering who or what was behind those obstacles.

Consider using the same ancestor profile we used in our workbook, Authentic Ancestors, to complete a character profile on your antagonist . It’s important to know the antagonist as well as you know your protagonist ancestor.

What’s Your Message?What’s Your Message?

March 8, 2015 0 Comments

How you tell your story depends on what is important to you.

How you write it, the message you wish it to leave with your reader is your unique decision as the author of your family history story. How you frame this story compared to how I would frame the same story is what sets us apart. It’s what you as the writer; the artist brings to the story and the page.

There are three concepts you can consider when it comes to shaping the message of your family history story.

As you begin to develop your family history story plot, get to know your ancestors as characters. Consider plotting their conflict and obstacles on a story map so that you will start to see beyond just the structure of your story. You acquire some ideas, thoughts and messages that will help you to develop your story and offer a deeper meaning for your reader.

While it’s important to understand the story question, and the theme behind your story it’s also important to comprehend why you are writing this story. Why are you willing to take time away from another area of your life to develop this story? What is it you want to say and why? Where is this story coming from inside you? If you understand the answers to those questions not only will you have a stronger story, you’ll find the discipline to stay focused and complete your story.

Keep revisiting and refining the theme and the dramatic question until you know the point, the message you are trying to make. Bear in mind, you may not recognize this right away, but as you write your first draft and even through your revisions you’ll begin to see the message of your family history story.

Let’s look at each of these three important concepts.

Theme

The theme is the first concept you’ll look to in relaying a message in your family history story. We touched on it briefly when we discussed focus and the 6-word family history. The theme is what you are trying to say about your family history, a particular ancestor or family unit. It may reflect your perspective on life, humanity, the world, or whatever is important to you. It is the message you want to convey to your readers.

Story Question

The story question is the question the reader wants answered. How are you going to resolve this question for the reader? What is the dilemma, the challenge the ancestor wants to have resolved. How is the ancestor’s problem going to be resolved? The question you choose to spotlight and subsequently answer is again one of those unique choices you get to make as the author. One of those choices you make about what you want to focus on in your family history story and the larger message you are delivering to the reader. Consider the story question you have chosen and why you have chosen it.

Your Story Motivation

Your story motivation is not to be confused with your ancestor’s motivation. Rather we are considering what is motivating you, the author to write this story. Where is your story coming from? Consider why is this story important to you? What are you trying to say? Why did you choose this particular ancestor, this particular story? What was your motivation to tell this story? Why does it resonate with you? By taking a few minutes to address your motivation, you’ll help to understand both the story question and theme that you wish to convey to your reader.

By considering theme, the story question, and the motivations behind your decisions and subsequently their relationship to one another, you place yourself on the path to developing a stronger, in-depth and resonating story for your readers. You not only build a story but you deliver a message to your reader that will stay long after the last page.

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.

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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.”

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.

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