It’s not uncommon to start writing your family history stories using summary, telling our family history stories by summarizing our facts into paragraphs. But after a while we soon realize this does not make for an engaging story and we need to learn how to show rather then always tell. Today, we gathered together some tips to help you learn how to transition your writing from telling to showing.
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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.
The more that I experience your workshops and writing tips, the more that I become attuned to my ancestors’ stories. Already my writing style and thought about my ancestors have changed. While I am attending to a long, novella right now, sometimes my mind slips back to the beginning of February when introduced to your writing concepts, I knew something was wrong with the “stories” of my ancestors that I had written. As soon as the novella is completed, my plan is to use those boring summaries of my ancestors and begin to enhance them with real scenes that already I am playing with in my mind. Thank you for really making me think about writing styles that I have gravitated toward in my reading over the years and what makes me come back to that same author time after time.
This is all very well and great advice if one was actually there to experience grandma’s apple pie but how do you apply this to the telling of long past relatives who lived and died a hundred years or more before you lived? This is the problem I face when all you have is a name, DOB or death date, marriage records, parents, siblings or children’s names and perhaps a census record with their occupation (although not always). I have looked up the social history of the place and time but can only suppose or surmise what sort of life he may have lived! Surely many family history writers must face this same problem but how?
I tuned into your expert video and in the past three years had written 150 thousand words of my life growing up in the early 1950’s – 1967 , when I eventually moved away to get married and start another way of life. I had also tried a different way of writing, that is the funny, sad, odd things that happened in the 17 house moves that we experienced. In that account or several accounts, I had separate stories with dialogue, scenes set up but not so descriptive as you describe in detail. I have written a draft (first) of those stories to show my adult children and the Grandkids how hard it was growing up without the modern conveniences. Sometimes we just had bare essentials like electricity for lights, but no heat etc. We lived through harsh winters and floods and a house fire at 3am one January with a minus 35 F degrees, running out into the snow barefoot to reach to reach the awaiting car.
Again, I recalled the scenes as they happened and was able to write down the actual scenes with dialogue, but not too descriptive. I intend to do a second draft to include detailed descriptive scenes, but I worry that it may detract from the story,becomming too long and drawn out for each event as it happened? This stops me in my tracks from writing and I have taken a hiatus in the meantime to take a break from what became was a grueling 10 hours a day of writing. (Once I start, I am driven to finishing it as I recall vividly in my mind and afraid that I may forget something important. I do this every November for NANAWRIMO competition. My Future Novel is expanding to include mush more as Chapters of different themes, this is all for my family to leave a legacy of from where they descended from and all the actual events that shaped us and them in the present…It is important to get this written and completed before I pass on (prob not for years but, just in case , I want to have a completed draft for them.