Creating a Legacy Family History BookCreating a Legacy Family History Book

August 5, 2016August 5, 2016 0 Comments

It’s time to stop procrastinating and start pulling your research into a family history book. Is the thought a little overwhelming? Not sure where to start?

Here at The Family History Writing Studio, we believe in helping you preserve your family history in a sharable and entertaining format. We want your family history book to be a book your family wants to read and pass down for generations to come.

It’s time to stop procrastinating and start pulling your research into a family history book. Is the thought a little overwhelming? Not sure where to start? We are here to help.

We have a brand new course starting in just a few weeks. We are excited to be delivering Creating a Legacy Family History Book. Take a look at our video, it’s just 6 minutes long and we’ll take you inside a Legacy Family History Book created with the MyCanvas software.

Your book could look like this!  Watch the video!

 

Here’s What You’ll Learn

Week 1 – Introductions

  • MyCanvas Tour
  • Your First Decisions

Week 2 – Getting Ready to Build and Write

  • Importing Files from Ancestry and Beyond
  • Creating a Workflow

Week 3 – Handling Pictures and Documents

  • Prepping Your Pictures and Documents
  • Copyright and Permissions

Week 4 – Structuring Your Book and Stories

  • Structuring Your Book
  • Structuring Your Stories

Week 5 – Assembling a Page

  • Basics of Assembling a Page
  • Creating a Story Framework

Week 6 – More Pages, More Writing

  • Creating a Variety of Pages
  • Bringing Your Ancestors to Life on the Page

Week 7 – Polishing Your Book

  • Revision and Editing

Week 8 – Final Product, Now What?

  • Ordering Your Book
  • Recap and Final Questions

 

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How the Class Works

Each week you will have access to one or two videos, each helping you to understand how to build a book using the MyCanvas software but also you’ll learn about structuring your book and your stories. We won’t just talk about the book we will talk about the skills you’ll need to write entertaining stories.

You can download the videos each week and watch them when they are convenient to you. If you have any questions over the course of the 8 weeks you’ll have to two teachers in the forum to help you with your project.

The homework is completely optional but we hope you’ll complete the homework so that we can help you with any questions you may have along the way.

Here are a few comments from some students who have already taken some of our classes, so you can be sure we will deliver quality and value for your money.

What Students Have Said about The Family History Writing Studio

Kim Said:

I thoroughly enjoyed completing this course in “Writing a Family History Scene” and would recommend it to all aspiring family history writers. It is inspiring when you can see yourself and your fellow students improve so much by the end of the course. Lynn’s teachings have given us the tools to carefully craft our stories for the enjoyment by our families. I have learned so much.

Denise Said:

This course opened my eyes to scene structure. My writing improved immensely once I had the right tools and guidance to build a scene properly. This is my second Family History Writing Studio course, and it will not be my last. Between Lynn’s excellent guidance and the input from the other students, it was an interactive learning experience I highly recommend to anyone who is thinking of writing a family history narrative. In order to do any job properly, you need the right tools and, in my opinion, this is the place to build your toolbox.

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Now that we’ve answered all your questions click the link, add the course to the shopping cart and checkout. After checkout, you’ll receive an email welcoming you to the class. Closer to the date of the first class you’ll receive and email and some instruction for finding your way around the website and getting acquainted with the forum.

We look forward to seeing you in the classroom.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Why Your Relatives Hate Reading Their Family HistoryWhy Your Relatives Hate Reading Their Family History

August 2, 2016August 2, 2016 0 Comments

Does your family object to reading their family history? Do you get the big eye roll when you offer them a story you wrote or an opportunity to preview a book your writing? Our families are completely uninterested in reading their family history. Many of us struggle with this. I know I did. Then I learned about writing scenes and about how the right balance of scene and summary can bring an ancestor to life on the page. When you learn the skill of writing scenes your stories become entertaining and compelling all the things necessary to engage your family and hold their interest.

What is a Scene?                                          

Scenes are action, they usually include dialogue, description, conflict, thoughts, and feelings. When we read them, they are meant to play out like a movie in our brain. When we write nonfiction stories, we intermingle scenes with summary.

What is Summary?

Summary is just as it states it is an account of an event or time.  The reader is given information in a brief format to move the story along. Sometimes summary will cover a span of years to speed up a story or fill in background information to add depth to a story. As family historians, we fall into the trap of writing everything, our entire story, in a summary format. This why our stories are boring.

We need to learn the skill of writing scenes and then to find the right balance of scene and summary to lay out a story.

How do we take a document like a passenger list or a marriage certificate or the birth of a child and bring it to like on the page? How do we but our reader there and allow them to experience the event as if it is playing out before their eyes – using scene.

When we combine scene with narrative summaries, we are writing creative nonfiction. That term creative nonfiction tends to scare many. They feel they are moving away from the facts and making things up. But that is entirely wrong. Creative nonfiction is taking the facts and laying them out on the page using scene and summary – using the tools of fiction writers while writing true stories.

Regardless of whether you are writing a family history narrative in third person or a memoir in first person scenes should be a part of your writing formula. Irrespective of whether you are writing a family history in a short story format or an epic novel you need to be using scene and summary to capture and hold the attention of your readers.

What is a family history scene?

How does a scene that you read in a novel differ from a family history scene you would read in a family history story? A family history scene takes an event in your ancestor’s life, getting on a ship to America, voting for the first time, giving birth, getting married, proposing to their spouse or signing the documents to own their first acre of land and then using action, dialogue, description, conflict, and emotion bring it to life on the page.

As family historians, we collect information about this event, information that we garnered from our research, our documents, information from interviewing those who were present at the event or have heard stories of the event.  With those facts in hand, we take it one step further, we put the event within a social context of the place and time –we do some social history research.  We set the stage by painting a setting of where the event was held. We describe it in detail giving it life.

Next, we put the characters into that setting, our ancestors. How did they look and act? Human nature, diaries, interviews and the actions of our ancestors will give us plenty of insight into the behaviours and motivations.

As I have suggested, a family history scene is born out of the records we have acquired in our research. Research we have identified and analysed and then interpreted into a scene in our story. We make it clear to the reader the facts versus our speculation.

Sounds easy right? Well for some it does come easy and for others, it takes some practice, actually, for most, it takes some time to learn the skills and then to practice those skills. But once you have the knowledge of scene writing you’ll never turn back to strictly writing a dry narrative summary.

Do you want to learn the skill of scene writing?

It’s not enough for me just to tell you what constitutes a scene and how it will transform your boring stories into Writing a Family History Scene (1)entertaining stories. The real learning comes in building scenes. I wanted to help writers acquire those practical skills of scene writing so I created an online workshop, Writing a Family History Scene.  In this 6-week course, we work through each element building a robust scene one you will be excited to say you wrote.

Here’s what some past students have said about this course.

Kim Said:

I thoroughly enjoyed completing this course in “Writing a Family History Scene” and would recommend it to all aspiring family history writers. It is inspiring when you can see yourself and your fellow students improve so much by the end of the course. Lynn’s teachings have given us the tools to carefully craft our stories for the enjoyment by our families. I have learned so much.

Denise Said:

This course opened my eyes to scene structure. My writing improved immensely once I had the right tools and guidance to build a scene properly. This is my second Family History Writing Studio course, and it will not be my last. Between Lynn’s excellent guidance and the input from the other students, it was an interactive learning experience I highly recommend to anyone who is thinking of writing a family history narrative. In order to do any job properly, you need the right tools and, in my opinion, this is the place to build your toolbox.

If you’re ready to write a non-boring family history story, then join us for Writing a Family History Scene.

When Another Necktie Just Won’t Do! (Gift Idea)When Another Necktie Just Won’t Do! (Gift Idea)

June 13, 2016June 13, 2016 0 Comments

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.

The Three Spaces to Organizing Your Family History WritingThe Three Spaces to Organizing Your Family History Writing

May 17, 2016May 17, 2016 0 Comments

Whether you’ve started writing your family history book or you’re still in the ‘thinking about it” stage, the process can be a tad overwhelming. As family history writers we have a lot to manage when it comes to writing a book. Let’s just consider the writing, for example, making sure we have all the necessary information going into our stories, like setting and characterization and a good plot and then handling the editing and revisions. Of course, we also have mountains of research that we will have to draw on throughout the writing process. We will need to make sure we are creating accurate citations and a bibliography of our references. Finally, we will want to add pictures to enhance our words, do we have a plan for managing them?

Without a well thought out and practical workflow, a family historian can waste a lot of time shuffling papers, and this can become frustrating and confusing and often result in an abandoned project.

I highly recommend you create yourself a writing workflow that consists of three organizational spaces; your writing space, a reference management area, and a research organizational space. Let’s look at how to set these up so that you can get to the finish a line a little bit quicker.

 

Gathering Your Research

It’s important to gather your research, primary documents, pictures and social history research in one place, where you can keep them organized and readily available. You need to choose that place and set up a filing system that works for you. A big part of the planning process is having a detailed knowledge of your research and having it organized and readily available to you.

Much like historical fiction writers, family history writers must give much thought to the history and timelines of the world around their characters. We must re-create that world for our readers, impossible to do without in-depth research. Having your family history spewed across various files, programs and computers can be a time waster in writing. You need to create a nice neat workflow, and your first stop is a home for your research. A few tools available include programs such as OneNote or Evernote. I prefer to create a project binder in Evernote.  I admire Evernote and its ability to sync across all my computers, so regardless of where I am working I have access to my research and love the organization of the program. It’s a personal thing. Give both a try, find your preference.

In Evernote, I create a binder for each surname I’m covering in my book. I create a notebook stack. In that stack, I create notebooks that can be dedicated to each ancestor. In each ancestor’s file, I store all the necessary documents, pictures, family group sheets and pedigree charts for each ancestor in this particular story. I also create files for setting and social history. Setting up these files is simple. The work comes in rounding up all your research. It can be a big chore but will make your task of writing your stories so much more enjoyable. The work of gathering your research is beneficial in of itself.  It allows you to become reacquainted with your research, helps you identify holes and ask questions.

As I begin to write in Scrivener , my chosen writing software, I can then quickly pull the research I need into Scrivener’s research area. It’s right in front of me while I write, ensuring accuracy and there is no time wasted shuffling papers and clicking through my digital files looking for my research.

 

Managing Your Citations and Bibliography

Creating a management system for citations and a bibliography is the second step in my writing workflow. Without a plan for citations and a bibliography before you begin to write you can end up with a massive task when you are done writing. It’s important to keep track of your references as you work through your story. It doesn’t mean you have to create citations as you write, you can handle these as two separate tasks so as not to disrupt your creative writing process. However, it doesn’t mean you ignore them and leave it all to the end.

As I place citations into my writing in Scrivener, I pull them from a number of sources, my reference manager, my family tree software, RootsMagic, or I create them manually if necessary, for instance with Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills as your reference guide. You can learn how Scrivener handles citations and works with a reference manager in my new guide, Scrivener for the Family Historian.

You’ll also find yourself heading to the Internet or an Archive for additional information, usually social history, as well as world, regional and local history. A reference manager can easily capture this information with browser apps.

Citation managers are wonderful tools that allow you to organize your sources for creating citations. They make the task quick and easy, keeping you from spending too much time away from writing, looking up sources and formulating citations. They also make creating bibliographies a fast and painless task. Three citation managers I suggest you consider are Zotero, Papers, and Refme. Take them for a test drive; find one that works for you. Again take the time to load up your citation manager with your sources in advance of writing. As you begin to write your stories, you’ll have your sources readily available and can add to your list as required. When you reach the end of your project, your bibliography will be a breeze as most reference managers will automatically generate one for you.

 

Managing Your Writing

The final and third essential element to my writing workflow is my writing software. While most of you are probably using Word, I chose to move my writing to Scrivener about 5 years ago.

What makes Scrivener such an exceptional program is its’ ability to handle a large project. Rearranging your text, chapters, and sections and just having the capacity to get a big picture view of your book or story is worth the prices of the program. Only $40.  It also has the capability of being extremely flexible. Every writer is unique and wants something a little different in their writing space, Scrivener offers that flexibility. Finally, Scrivener can take your project from the earliest stages of planning with its digital corkboard right through to publishing, whether that be a paperback, hardcover or ebook.

Before you begin to write, establish a writing workflow, a process that you are going to put in place to manage your research, your references, and your writing.  Make writing your family history productive and organized but most of all let’s get to the finish line and get those family history stories published. A great workflow can help get you there.

 

 

 

When to Write about a Family SecretWhen to Write about a Family Secret

April 19, 2016April 19, 2016 0 Comments

We all have them – secrets. Every family history has their share of secrets and as family historians, we generally will stumble across a few in our research. Uncovering a family secret certainly isn’t unusual. The arduous task can be in deciding whether to write about that secret.

Let’s first consider why people keep secrets.

  1. Fear of Consequences

Generally,  our ancestors kept secrets because of the fear of the consequences of family and non-family members finding out. Would your ancestor be kicked out of the house, would a spouse leave, lose a job. Secrets are often kept to protect a loved one or a relationship from such consequences.

 

  1. Judgement

Our family members were afraid of being judged. They chose the discomfort of hiding the secret over the possible pain of judgement. Fear of humiliation and judgement is one of the greatest fears we have as humans, and it drives many of us to keep secrets. Right and wrong is a man-made invention. Our beliefs, sense of right and wrong come from adults and authority figures in our life. To please everyone, we keep secrets about the rules we break, so that people don’t judge us.

 

  1. Shame

There is shame attached to the secret.  Societal norms dictated whether what our ancestor did was wrong. The shame of not meeting with those societal norms was enough to encourage our ancestor to engage in a secret.

 

  1. Poor choice

Our ancestor made a poor choice that couldn’t be corrected.  Our ancestor  then turned to hiding that poor choice.

 

Your ancestor may have engaged in a secret because of anyone of these reasons or a combination.

 

How do you decide whether to reveal a secret?

When it comes to writing about the family secrets we need to aware of the above reasons.  If these reasons still exist for your family involved, then you most likely are not going to get them to be open to you writing about the secret. If it will hurt someone and produce no benefit, then it shouldn’t be told.

However, you must also examine your motivations for wanting to know the secret. Is it selfish? Is it merely to fill in a blank on the family history chart or is it to write a juicy story?  Is it to get it off your chest, or do you feel a moral obligation to tell? Unfortunately, these are not good enough reasons to reveal a secret. If it is not your secret to tell, you must have the permission of those who were involved in the secret.  Then you must also consider their motivation in telling the secret.  Are they seeking revenge or is it time to let the secret go?

 If the ancestor has passed

If the ancestor has passed, and those that are involved in the secret do not have to worry about being judged or feel shame, then I think as writers we are free to write about the secret. However, I still believe it is paramount to come at the secret with sensitivity and to put the secret into the context of the time and place. We have to be open to using the secret in our writing as a teaching moment. A time to learn about the tough choices our ancestor faced. Writing from a place of judgement or revenge will not win you any points with your readers even if your ancestor has passed.

 

 If the person is still alive

I’ve always said if the individual or individuals who are at the centre of the secret are still alive and still fear a sense of shame or fear of being judged then it’s not our place to write about the secret.  If it hurts someone who is still living and produces no benefit to the family, then it shouldn’t be told. Unless, of course, they are willing to open up to you and you can infer in them, a sense of trust.

Sometimes secrets in our ancestor’s days wouldn’t be considered a secret today. Some secrets don’t carry with them the level of shame or judgement that they did in days past. However, if that ancestor is still alive, you can’t deny their feelings even if the rest of the world has changed.

 

Their Secret Went to the Grave

Often, ancestors take their secrets to their graves. There is just no way for us to know what happened. It is in times like these that we need to let it go and accept the fact that the secret will never be known and perhaps that is for the best.

It’s not enough to wrap ourselves in the cloak that family secrets are a part of the family history and a fact and we have to write about it. We instead need to consider family secrets as an opportunity to heal the family, to use family history secrets to a teach a lesson if not for this generation but the next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing a Family History MysteryWriting a Family History Mystery

March 15, 2016March 15, 2016 0 Comments

family history detectiveAs genealogists, many of us consider ourselves family history detectives, sleuthing through clue after clue uncovering the lives of our ancestors. You’ll often find me encouraging you to take the stories you uncover, and shaping them in engaging and entertaining family history stories using the tools of creative nonfiction.

However, let’s consider another option aside from the traditional family history narrative. Let’s consider telling the tale of your family history research like a mystery novel.

Mystery novels are a very popular genre, the reason for this popularity is because it makes for exciting reading. Mystery novels bring the reader on a journey, leading them along, almost allowing them to play detective beside you. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to incorporate the tools of the great mystery novelists in writing your family history.

As family history writers and bloggers we can enlist this genre to write and relay our family history research in a manner that will capture the attention of your readers.

How a Mystery Novel Works

  1. The Opening – Create the mystery for the reader

The opening of your story should begin with presenting a mystery to the reader. We want to grab the reader immediately, and therefore, it’s important to give the mystery on the very first page to capture the reader’s attention. In mystery novels, your reader does not know the answer to the mystery until the end of the story.  The story is centered on the exercise of trying to figure out the answer to your mystery.

In the beginning, you want to introduce the reader to your mystery and the setting of your story.  As well you will introduce your main character, that’s you. You’ll be the detective in your mystery novel, bringing your reader along with you on your discovery. Place yourself in the setting of your story. The setting may come in the form of many places, your office, an archive, your ancestor’s hometown.  Where are you when you first begin your story and take on your call to adventure.  The call to adventure is your inciting incident, the moment you took on the task of uncovering the answer to the mystery.

Think about the number of puzzles that you have pieced together in your research journey – which one will you write about? Don’t tell us about every ordinary discovery you have discovered in your research. Nothing will put a reader to sleep faster. You know the ones, the finding of a birth certificate or your ancestor’s hometown. Don’t get me wrong these are great discoveries for genealogists, but the average family member won’t be interested.

You need to think big. A mystery novel approach is best reserved for those discoveries in your family history that have high stakes attached to them. Of course, there are no stakes in uncovering your ancestor’s story; the high-stakes lie in the ancestor’s story itself. The higher the stakes, the more engaging the tale you have to tell. The bigger the mystery, the more compelling a story you have to share with your reader.  Of course, to tell a mystery you need to have an answer to the mystery. Don’t bring us along on a research journey that you have yet to discover the answer. Nothing will frustrate a reader more than not having an ending to the mystery.

Possible Mysteries in Your Family History

Murders or any significant crime you uncover in your family history are great storytelling topics for mystery novels. Was an ancestor murdered? Was there a trial? Trial transcripts may provide excellent information for the retelling of a murder mystery. You may know the answer, but your reader doesn’t. Turn your ancestor’s murder into a whodunit crime novel.

An ancestor is murdered or found dead under suspicious circumstances – Was there an inquisition into the death? Again these inquisitions can provide excellent information for the retelling of a mysterious death.

Some of the best mysteries start out with a dead body. But we might not all have the option of starting with a dead body. Here are some other ideas for your mystery story.

Was a valuable item stolen from your ancestor?  Again you may find information in a trial or the newspapers.

Did an ancestor go missing ancestor or did you uncover the disappearance of an ancestor that you later solved?

Did your ancestor witness a crime, was the victim of a crime or solved a crime?

Was there a secret child, a hidden family or a second family that you uncovered?  Did you come across a child in a census and you don’t know who they are, or a child that disappears from the family. Did you discover a child in a census that your family never talked about?

Did your ancestor have a secretive career that you uncovered?

These make great mystery stories to recount as you uncover the clues to the answer.

 

  1. The Middle – Building the Tension

You will spend the better part of the middle of the story revealing the mystery piece by piece, overcoming obstacles until finally the mystery is solved for your reader. A mystery often brings great tension. Mystery novels are usually page-turners that keep the reader engaged to the end. How does a writer accomplish this?

Obstacles

The middle should demonstrate the obstacles you faced in uncovering the mystery. These barriers may come in the form of people, suspects, false leads, and misleading clues.

Create a list of obstacles you encountered throughout your research. Were there missing records? Unattainable records?  Folklore stories that lead you in the wrong direction?  Records with missing or misleading information?

Did you experience any red herrings? Red herrings are clues that are false or deceptive. Did an ancestor lie on a document sending you in the wrong direction?

Cliffhangers

A cliffhanger is a storytelling technique that writers use to end a scene or chapter. They leave the reader in flux desperate to read more.  In your family history mystery, cliffhangers may be formed from any number of problems you came up against during your research.  A missing document, a dead end, a family member unwilling to talk, a small piece of information that leads to more questions.

Major Setback

Did you experience a major setback in your research?  A time when you almost gave up in solving the mystery?  A major setback will escalate the tension in your story and keep the reader guessing.

Bit by Bit

You want to make sure you are dripping the information to your reader bit by bit, encouraging them to keep reading. Don’t lay it all out right away. They will have no reason for your reader to stay with you until the end.

 

  1. Resolution – How is the mystery solved?

After overcoming your obstacles and pulling your reader along on the journey, you need to provide them with a solution, an answer to the mystery. This solution, while it should unfold gradually from your research and not come entirely out of left field, you still want it to be somewhat surprising to your reader. That means holding a little back for the end.

However, your resolution shouldn’t just be about the answer to the mystery but also demonstrate how you the author and detective of that mystery has experienced a change or shift in perspective after learning the answers to your ancestor’s mystery.

Your solution may come in revealing if your ancestor was, in fact, a murderer, or was murdered. Your solution may come in the form of explaining some motivation behind your ancestor’s actions in committing a crime, or hiding a child or a family. Your answer may come in the form of revealing the reasons that motivated your ancestor’s actions and putting their actions within the context of the time.

Consider using a mystery novel approach in sharing some of your family history findings. It makes a great format for bloggers and story writers alike.

Tip: One final thought when it comes to writing a family history mystery. Read examples of mystery stories to become acquainted with how they are written.

 

What mysteries in your family history research would make a great mystery novel? Share your ideas below in comments.

 

 

Cooking Up a Satisfying SceneCooking Up a Satisfying Scene

March 12, 2016March 12, 2016 0 Comments

Like a good pot of soup on a cold’s winter’s day, every family history scene requires some essential ingredients to make them successful.  Without a tasty broth, some colourful veggies, and a fat noodle the soup will just not satisfy. The same can be said for a scene, if it’s missing an essential ingredient it will likely fall flat and you may lose the interest of your reader. Today, we look at the ingredients that make a satisfying scene.  Let’s identify the key ingredients in a family history scene each one closer so that you can create powerful and fulfilling scenes for your reader.

Protagonist Ancestor

The majority of your scenes should be built around your protagonist ancestor. Your protagonist ancestor is the main character of your story and through whose point of view, the story will be told.  In each scene, your protag ancestor will be involved in action or dialogue.   Make sure that you’ve chosen a single ancestor from which point of view that story will be told.

Action

Every scene shows some dramatic movement, large or small. It creates a sense of movement through time and space. It could be actual action or even dialogue which gives the essence of movement within a scene. Without action, you have no scene.

We want to demonstrate our ancestor’s movements, feelings, actions, and reactions. Don’t tell us about them, show them offer up the proof in the form of a scene.

 

Scene Goal

Every scene has a goal. We know that our story also has a goal, however, this is different from the scene goal. The scene goal begins and ends in the scene, but contributes to the overall advancement of the story.

Antagonist and Allies

Your protagonist ancestor needs someone to interact with, these will come in the form of an antagonist who opposes your ancestor’s goals or allies who will help your ancestor to achieve her goal.

New Information

Each scene builds on the previous scene providing new information that keeps moving the story forward. If it doesn’t move the story forward then perhaps it doesn’t belong in the story.

Setting and Time Period

Setting and time period is essential to grounding your scene through sensory details and description.

Theme

The overall meaning of your story is conveyed within scenes using images and sensory details.

Tension

Not only organizing your scenes within the story but by creating a feeling of conflict and uncertainty within a scene will keep the reader guessing as what is next and will keep them turning the pages.

Great Endings

Scenes can end in any number of ways. Some may end on a high-note, with a small victory for your ancestor, or in defeat. It can end with a cliff-hanger or some uncertainty. It’s important that each scene ends in such a way that it eludes to future obstacles for your ancestor and a yearning in your reader to know what happens next.

Make sure your story scenes have all the right ingredients.

 

Want to learn to write family history scenes. You’ll learn to incorporate all of the above elements into your scenes. Click here to learn more about our upcoming scene writing course,  Writing the Family History Scene.

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

January 13, 2016January 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, 2015December 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.