Related Post

How Scrivener Can Help You Complete ‘The Challenge’How Scrivener Can Help You Complete ‘The Challenge’

If you haven’t heard of Scrivener before or maybe you have, but you’re not sure how it works or what all the fuss is about, then I would like to take this opportunity to give you a brief explanation. Scrivener is a writing management software program that has amazing capabilities. It’s a fantastic app for writing long text such as family history stories but offers you many features that make it much more effective and efficient then let’s say Word.

Scrivener is built on four core ideas.

  1. Write your story in sections as small or as large as you like and easily rearrange them.
  2. Add synopses to sections, so that it is easy to work with an overview of your manuscript.
  3. View research and other parts of your writing side-by-side with your writing.
  4. Export your work using different formatting for different requirements.

 

 

Of course, this is stating the program very simply. While I’m confident, you can see how this program can benefit you in writing your family history stories. Let’s take it one step further and get a little more specific with a few tips on how it can help you in our upcoming Challenge.

Set Your Targets.

You can set a goal of how many words you want to write each day. Scrivener will keep track of your targets for you. Knowing you’ve met your target for today will make it that much easier to write tomorrow. You’ll find Targets under ‘Project’ the menu.

Incorporating Your Storyboard into Scrivener.

In our Challenge Prep Course, you learned how to create a storyboard, a story plan so that you know exactly what you are going to write each day during these four weeks. Create your storyboard in the Research section of your Draft. This will allow you to reference the storyboard as you go but will also enable you to have the freedom of keeping the storyboard as a separate entity from your draft.

Jump Between Sections.

It’s so easy in Scrivener to jump around and write different chapters or scenes as you see fit. You don’t have to write in chronological order. If you followed our Challenge Prep Course and created a storyboard then you can pull anyone of your scene cards and write.

Create Some Target Points.

If you don’t have a storyboard ready you can still create an outline to help guide you.
In the Draft folder in Outliner mode, create some blank documents with titles and short synopses for each of the critical scenes you identified for your storyline. This will help to tell you where you are going. Not as detailed as a storyboard but it can still be very helpful in keeping you focused. However, you can work towards filling in the spaces in between. They’ll sit in the binder and make sure you know where you’re going. If your story changes direction, you can change them or delete them as needed. Having a destination can help you to keep moving forward even if you decide to change course later.

Import Your Inspiration.

In Scrivener, you can split the editor, so that half of your screen is your story and the other half allows you to view your research. This can also be a great help when you are in need of inspiration. For example, when it comes to describing the setting of your story, take some time to search the Internet for some setting pictures of the location of your story. Upload them to your research files and then when it’s time to write that setting you’ll have inspiration at your fingertips.

Make a Research List in Document Notes.

This is probably one of my favourite tips. When you are writing the last thing you want to do is stop writing and get pulled on the Internet doing research. Keep your writing and research times separately. I like to use Project Notes to keep me on track. In the Inspector, under Project Notes, I create a new note that I’ll title Research List. As I’m writing and I come across something that I need a little more information on, rather than leaving my writing, I will make a small note in my manuscript where I want the information and then add the item to my Research List. When I’m not writing and I have some time, I can pull up my research list do some research.

Scrivener Special

This year during the Family History Writing Challenge, I am going to offer some small tips in our Daily Dose emails on using Scrivener and helping you to improve your use and knowledge of Scrivener. If you’ve been sitting on the fence about using Scrivener then this is the year you may want to give it a try.

 A Discount From Scrivener

Scrivener has been kind enough to create a coupon code that will give you a 20% discount on the purchase of a standard licence for either Scrivener for macOS or Scrivener for Windows. For your discount use coupon code: FAMILYHISTORY
If you don’t yet own Scrivener, you can download the 30-day free trial. Click Here.

 A Discount From Us

In addition to your Scrivener discount, we are offering a 30% discount off our eBook Scrivener for The Family Historian. It regularly sells for $9.99 we are offering it for $6.99. This price is in effect for the next 72 hours.

Extended to Monday Jan 22, 2018.

Use coupon code: challenge2018
If you’re still not sure about Scrivener, check out our Scrivener Video Page where you’ll find videos that will give you a look inside Scrivener.

4 Steps to Structuring Story Scenes4 Steps to Structuring Story Scenes

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.