This is part four of a class that I taught about How to Get Started Publishing Your Family History. It talks about organizing your resources. Hopefully, you will find some very helpful ideas to assist you in writing your history.
Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com
This is part three of a class that I taught about How to Get Started Publishing Your Family History. It talks about what you will include in your book. Three common ways to write it are an ancestral family history, a descendant family history or a history about one person. Hope this is helpful.
Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com
This is part one of a class that I taught about How to Get Started Publishing Your Family History. It talks about a few different purposes for writing your history that can help you stay focused in your research and writing.
Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com
Here are some tips to make your personal or family history interesting to read. Good stories that the reader can picture are the key. Here is a little video clip with some tips.
Plus, I would like to remind you to capture family stories during the holidays. Here is a previous post about it.
Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com
Continuing with the audio interviews with the Taylors, I ask for the reasons to write a history. Hope you find your reason to write and publish your history.
Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com
This is a podcast where I interview Tom & Alison Taylor about how to overcome the fear of being a good writer. I think that they have some wonderful tips and attitudes about writing. It is only about five minutes long.
Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com
When writing your personal history, I would suggest that you write it in first person. It will have the feel that you are telling your life stories to your children or grandchildren while they are sitting on your lap. It will help connect the reader to you in a very personal way. If fact, you can just grab a recorder and record some of your stories as you tell them to your children or grandchildren. Then listen to the recording to get a feel of how to write it like a captivating story (instead of dry facts). Give it a try!
Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com
It is easy for us to write the good things about our relatives when writing a family history. It is much more difficult to write about the bad things and the mistakes that they made. It is appropriate to be very careful when writing about someone’s flaws so we don’t go too far and become distasteful to our readers.
I think that Dawn Thurston explains it best, “When writing family history, it’s difficult to create a realistic picture of people long gone. Genealogy data reveals little about how people looked, moved, or talked, or what strengths and weaknesses shaped their lives. Then there’s family pride. Absent any evidence to the contrary, we tend to idealize our forebears. We want them to be exemplary rather than human. I suspect the image that exists in our mind’s eye bears little resemblance to how they actually were.”
I think that we do our readers a disservice by only telling the good. A brief mention of the mistakes and bad qualities of our ancestors makes them more real. So, be brave and write the whole picture of your ancestors, then before you have it published have someone else read it over and make sure that you have handled it tastefully. You will be glad that you did.
Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com
As you prepare you family history, you may find that you would like to include some valuable source material but find that it bogs down the flow of your book. This is a good use for footnotes or endnotes. Most word processors can automatically number and track your footnotes or endnotes for you. I have found that footnotes in personal and family histories are distractive and detract from your book. Use endnotes instead. These can appear at the end of each chapter if you have a lot of them, or at the end of your book (just before your index) if you have just a few. Not only do endnotes look better, but they are easier than footnotes to format and control.
Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com
Making the story interesting isn’t just for novels, it is important for family histories, too. One of the main reasons that we write and publish personal and family histories is so that others will read them. If they are dry and boring then few people will enjoy reading them. But if we go the extra step and create curiosity and interest, then others won’t be able to put the book down. One of the best ways to create interest at the beginning of each story or chapter is to write a sentence or two that will hook the reader. These are easiest to write after the story is all typed and you are reading through it again. Look for something unusual in the story that you can refer to at the very beginning. You can even put it in question form like, “Did you know that grandpa was in Paris at the same time as grandma, but they were both with someone else?” So, look to add a “hook” at the beginning of each story so they won’t “sink” to the bottom of the reading pile.
Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com
