New project… so you want to write your family story…

I’ve been so thrilled with the reception and success of my little guide to writing, So You Want To Write… and I’m now working on the second in the series, So You Want To Write Your Family Story. This will be a short book with simple ideas and I hope some more unusual ways of telling the story of people’s forebears, ways which will be engaging and interesting, rather than a list of dates and records and facts… I want to suggest ways people from the past can be brought to life, and also how people might set about writing their own life story.

I have broken it down into different parts and aspects of the challenge, and here is my very first draft of my thoughts so far:

1. Introduction
2. So you want to write your family history
3. Decisions decisions
4. How are you going to tell your tale?
5. Think of a theme
6. Whose story is it?
7. Who’s telling the story?
8. Location
9. The story of a house
10. Suggestions for starting your story
11. Telling your own story
12. Research
13. Creative non-fiction
14. And finally…

… and here is the first draft of my introduction:

Telling tales… Everyone has stories, of their own lives, of their families, different myths and legends of forebears… You may have investigated your own family history – but how do you write about it, how do you pass it on to future generations, how do you bring the bare facts to life? How do you take the dusty details of a census return, or those dry bones of a last will and testament, or the complicated past relationships your research has revealed – how do you take this dull research to life?
How do you take the tales you were told as a child by older generations and make their tales into a story? It’s a complete myth that people in the past stayed close to where they were born – they travelled far and wide, for work, for love, to serve their country, fleeing from something or running to something… And the old diaries, letters, odd bits of paper, shopping lists, scribblings in the margin of a book – what can you do with them?
And your own life, maybe you want to write your own story to pass to your children, your grandchildren, or to other unknown generations, when you are the past and they are the present…
So how to write, how to write your family history?

© Lois Elsden 2018

I hope this will be available at the end of the year (maybe an idea for a Christmas present?) Here is a link to the first book – I would love to have your comments and thoughts, and really appreciate a mention on Amazon!

http://amzn.eu/hXdjpT9