The Radwinter story gets serious

I started writing a story I had been planning for a few months as part of the National Novel Writing Month challenge, attempting to write 50,000 words in November… and I have done it! I passed the 50K mark early but I’m carrying on writing because my story isn’t finished and I’m enjoying it (the house is a shambles, there is a mountain of ironing, but so what?!)

The story is about a family tracing their roots, and for the purpose of the narrative, the main character starts his genealogical quest in the 1840’s. Two brothers had come from Poland in the 1830’s, one goes to Australia, the other remains in England, meets a woman who becomes his wife and has children. When I started this I didn’t really consider properly what it would mean to follow a life, and then the lives of the children in this way; at one point the family are in the workhouse, at another point the older children have to find work, two brothers at a brickworks, a daughter at an umbrella factory, another brother and sister become teachers… and so the family spreads as they marry and have children of their own. I don’t go into the detail of every single life because that would be boring for the reader, but I sketch out how the family grows and moves, and their circumstances alter.

The grandchildren have now grown up… and in the early part of the twentieth century something major impacts upon them… the 1st World War. My character doing the research is shocked to find that not one, but four of the family died in the war. When I started writing this, I didn’t really consider that what I would be doing would be giving a brief glimpse into the changing lives of people from the 1840’s onwards… obvious really, but when I started I thought it would just be dates and census returns. it’s becoming much more than that, as my character plans to visit a memorial to the men in his family who died for their country.