Writing Family Stories
Presented by
Dr. Susanne George Bloomfield
I.
Gathering the Fragments: Using Personal Sources
q Decide what
type of a "book" you want to write, your audience, the purpose for
writing your family history, and your deadline. That will determine the content
and style. Meanwhile, read as many biographies/memoirs/family histories as you
can find.
q Conduct
interviews that will form the basis of your family narrative.
q Obtain
permissions right away and file in a safe place. (For interviews, photographs,
letters, journals, etc.--the writer, photographer, or heir has the rights.)
q Try to be
organized. Keep names, addresses, dates, letters written and received, notes
from telephone calls.
q Collect all
types of personal resources. Family photographs are a major source.
II. Deeping
the Plot: Character and Setting
Character
q Establish
your family members as real people who are as complicated as heroes in
novels; as soon as you write about them that is what they will turn into!
q Use
Photographs to help with physical descriptions.
q Try to
establish a dominant impression of the person that you are trying to describe.
Although people often lack a clear outline, it is the writer's responsibility
to interpret character.
q Include not
only what happened in your family's lives, but also their thoughts and emotions
when it was happening. Incorporate your impressions and inner responses, too.
q Describe
the characters in action, not only typical everyday scenes but in their
relationships, work, and play.
q Use
dialogue to make your family members become "real."
q Include
minor "characters" in your family history, too--the hired man, a
Sunday school teacher, a next-door neighbor--with whom your family member/s can
act, react, and comment upon or with.
q Include the
impact of relationships between people in your family--both allies and
antagonists.
q Make the
person believeable by including the negative as well as the postive, the
unhappy as well as the happy times, the doubts and failures as well as the
successes. Nobody is perfect. Try to be objective and not judge the person. Be
responsible, responsive, and fair to the people about whom you write.
"Tell the whole truth with love" (Rainer).
Setting
q Establish a
Sense of Place. Places affect our lives as much as people do. We are all shaped
by our surroundings.
q Establish a
point of view. Do not remain static. Walk, view the
scene from a car, an airplane, a hill looking down, a valley looking up. Or if
you are stationary, have what you are viewing be in motion, such as a busy
street or a kitchen on Thanksgiving morning. You could also let your
imagination move in chronological time.
q Establish
an occasion for the description of setting. Why are you describing the place?
Are you trying to show how the place has an impact on your family's life or
your own?
q Establish a
dominant impression. Often it will contrast or complement the character or
family being described.
q Select concrete
details that typify the place and reinforce your dominant impression. Use
photographs or, possibly, visit the places.
q Use your
imagination and/or research to fill in the gaps. "What is reminiscence,
after all, but memory mixed with imagination?"
III.
Broadening the Perspective: Incorporating and Using Primary and Secondary
Research
q Details
make the difference.
q The library
is still the most useful information source. In addition to historical
background and government documents like the U.S. Census, they also contain
books and periodicals relating to:
Sociology Education Medicine
Geography Religion Literature
Psychology Law Music
& Art
q State,
County, and City Historical Societies will be where much of your research can
be done.
q Most
Museums have archives that are not open to the general public. However, most of
them also welcome serious researchers. In addition, they are great places to
give you a sense of the time period.
q
q Church
records can supply information on baptisms, weddings, funerals, church history,
minutes of meetings, and books--library, hymnals, Bibles, prayer books,
catechisms.
q Be
thorough, patient, and friendly in your research. Add a personal touch when
working with librarians, county clerks, historical societies, etc. Involve them
in your "story." (But don't waste their time!)
q Read
newspapers and magazines from the period/area to have a feel for the times.
q The
internet can be both a blessing and a curse.
q Take along
your camera and photograph everything--you can even take pictures of pictures.
q Copy
illustrations. (You only need permission if you publish publicly.)
q Family
resources (interviews, family keepsakes, recipes, etc) should also be worked in
with the primary and secondary sources.
q Organization
is especially important here, too. Keep names, addresses, dates, letters
written and received, notes from telephone calls. Since the project may last
several years, you may end up duplicating efforts. Be sure to record where you
found "nothing," too, so as not to find it again!
q Have a
textual reason for the research. Incorporate research smoothly into the
narrative. Don't quote too much or at too great length or it will be an
interruption for the reader. If there is more you want to add that might
clutter the narrative, put it in the notes.
q Truth
versus Facts, or Can you make it up? All we can give is our version of reality.
Rainer (Your Life as Story)
states, "In writing for yourself and your family, you may wish to take
less poetic license. If writing for publication, you may need to take
more."
IV.
Creating Order Out of Chaos: Theme and Structure
q Remember
that "books are not written but accumulate" (Atkinson). Each subject
will be unique and require different types of research and structure. Some are
organized deductively, others inductively. You may know how you want to
organize your work at the outset or the structure may develop organically.
q Be
selective. Eliminate clutter. You can't possibly use everything you find, and
if you did, you might be the only one interested in it. Avoid the temptation to
tell the complete story of the family from the Old Country to today. One family
tree is worth a thousand words. Perhaps you may want to focus on one living
family member, and work your genealogical research into his/her life, with
him/her at the center. Or, perhaps focus on yourself and your search for your
"roots" (and why) as the center, making it an autobiography/family
history.
q Make a
point. Establish dominant impressions of people and places.
q Make connections between a person's/family's
life and its significance in a more universal sense.
q Your family
history must have some sort of continuity: chronological, universal (taste for
adventure), geographic, career or talent, or historical.
q Borrow
narrative devices from fiction, like dialogue, conflict and crises, and
dramatic scenes
q Sometimes
you will need to cover a lot of time in a few paragraphs while at other times
you may want to zoom in and focus on a shorter span of time or a particular
incident. Summary can move time along between scenes. Musing involves
reflection, making a judgment, sharing an insight, or expressing an opinion.
Try to find an appropriate balance between the three elements.
q Add humor.
Exaggeration, understatement, and irony are staples.
q Polish your
style with active verbs, concrete nouns, sensory
appeals, metaphors from your own world and experiences, personification. Avoid
clichés and too many adjectives and adverbs.
q Polish your
transitions. Build bridges between the summaries, scenes, and musing with
creative connections. The other choice is the creative use of "white
space."
q Revise. Let
it sit awhile. Revise again. Read E.B. White's The Elements of Style. It
is a classic.
q Quit. There will always be more that you could do or a better word that you could use, but you must eventually stop or the work will never be published. You can always come out with a sequel.