Tips for Writing Family Stories

My regular readers know that one of my pet projects is encouraging people to write family stories. Writers and non-writers alike. You don't need to be a professional writer to record your family history through stories of incidents and events. Anyone can do it. 

There are websites to help. Use any search engine and enter 'how to write family stories', and you'll be amazed at the number of helpful articles that pop up. 

There is a difference between family stories and family history. The latter is made up of facts and figures...names and dates of marriages, births, deaths, places lived. Family stories are more personal letting future generations know more about the personalities of family members as well as significant things that happened within the family. Both good events and sad or bad. It's all part of your family history. You don't want to sugarcoat your family members in every story. Tell it like it is. Or was! You can do this without being nasty or cruel. 

My mother often mentioned an uncle of hers who she said was 'the meanest man on the earth'. When he died, he left money to all his nieces and nephews, so the man had a good side, as well. Many of our relatives have more than one side. Try to find the good side when you can.

A few tips when writing family stories: 

A. Use sensory details to make the individuals seem real--sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.

B. Try to show the place where the story happens. City, farm, ranch, island, ocean? 

C. Do more than tell the story. Show us what happened. That's where the sense of place and sensory details come in.

D. Use active verbs instead of relying on passive ones like is, was, were, are. Active verbs help show while passive ones end up merely telling the story.

E. Use some adjectives to help with description, but keep it to one, two at the most. Otherwise, it sounds too saccharin.

F. Dialogue helps bring the story alive. You probably can't remember dialogue word for word, but you will remember the gist of what was said. It's alright to create dialogue as long as the meaning is the same as what was said.

G. Humor is always welcome in any story. There are many humorous things that happen in our families. They beg to be repeated.

H. Don't shy away from sad stories. They should be told. They are part of what makes people who they are. The same with tragic events in a family. Tell them with kindness.

I. It's not necessary to write the stories chronologically. Write them as they come to you. 

J. Describe the characters in your stories. What relation were they to you? Physical attributes. The kind of person he/she was. Weave all this into your individual story. 

Keep a file of the stories you write. Both on your computer and hard copies saved in a large 3-ring binder. Computers fail us at times, so those hard copies are important. 

Many people say they want to write their family stories. They think about it, they talk about it, but that's as far as it goes. Start with one story, save it, then go on to the next. You don't have to keep at it day by day. Write when the mood moves you but try to do it with some regularity. The longer you are away from the project, the easier it is to stay away. Maybe aim for one a week. 

If you write your family stories, you'll have a certain sense of satisfaction. Our family memories are treasures, so why not share them with other family members and leave them for future family members.  

Tips for Writing Your Family Stories

 

My regular readers know that one of my pet projects is encouraging people to write their family stories. Writers and non-writers alike. You don't need to be a professional writer to record your family history through stories of incidents and events. Anyone can do it. 

There are websites to help. Use any search engine and enter 'how to write family stories', and you'll be amazed at the number of helpful articles that pop up. 

There is a difference between family stories and family history. The latter is made up of facts and figures...names and dates of marriages, births, deaths, places lived. Family stories are more personal letting future generations know more about the personalities of family members as well as significant things that happened within the family. Both good events and sad or bad. It's all part of your family history. You don't want to sugarcoat your family members in every story. Tell it like it is. Or was! You can do this without being nasty or cruel. 

My mother often mentioned an uncle of hers who she said was 'the meanest man on the earth'. When he died, he left money to all his nieces and nephews, so the man had a good side, as well. Many of our relatives have more than one side. Try to find the good side when you can.

A few tips when writing family stories: 

A. Use sensory details to make the individuals seem rea--sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.

B. Try to show the place where the story happens. City, farm, ranch, island, ocean? 

C. Do more than tell the story. Show us what happened. That's where the sense of place and sensory details come in.

D. Use active verbs instead of relying on passive ones like is, was, were, are.

E. Use some adjectives to help with description, but keep it to one, two at the most. Otherwise, it sounds too saccharin.

F. Dialogue helps bring the story alive. You probably can't remember dialogue word for word, but you will remember the gist of what was said. It's alright to create dialogue as long as the meaning is the same as what was said.

G. Humor is always welcome in any story. There are many humorous things that happen in our families. They beg to be repeated.

H. Don't shy away from sad stories. They should be told. They are part of what makes people who they are. The same with tragic events in a family. Tell them with kindness.

I. It's not necessary to write the stories chronologically. Write them as they come to you. 

J. Describe the characters in your stories. What relation were they to you? Physical attributes. The kind of person he/she was. Weave all this into your individual story. 

Keep a file of the stories you write. Both on your computer and hard copies saved in a large 3-ring binder. Computers fail us at times, so those hard copies are important. 

Many people say they want to write their family stories. They think about it, they talk about it, but that's as far as it goes. Start with one story, save it, then go on to the next. You don't have to keep at it day by day. Write when the mood moves you, but do try to do it with some regularity. The longer you are away from the project, the easier it is to stay away. Maybe aim for one a week. 

If you do write your family stories, you'll have a certain sense of satisfaction. Our family memories are treasures, so why not share them with other family members and leave them for future family members. 

Keeping and Sharing Your Family Stories

One way to keep your Family Stories

Today is the last day this week for our focus on writing your Family Stories. I've posted earlier on why, then where to begin, followed by format, and yesterday some of the tools needed to write your stories. Today, to wrap up this themed week, the topic is keeping and sharing your Family Stories.

Once your first story is complete, you need to decide where to keep it and the many others to follow. What are your choices? 

If you're writing on a computer, an easy choice is to save each story in a file. You could create a Folder and put each story in it. But, what if you're not computer savvy? You could slip that first story in a desk drawer. Then keep adding others as they are written. But that doesn't give you much organization. My preference is to use a three-ring binder with divisions to keep your stories organized. You can create the divisions in any manner you like. By age, by relatives, by years, whatever works for you. 

Even if you put the stories in a file on your computer, make a hard copy, too. If anything ever happens to your computer, and things do happen, you might lose all the stories. Having a hard copy is just a bit of insurance. You can also put those stories in file folders and arrange in a file drawer. 

After you've written several stories about your family, what will you do with them once you've figured out a way to save them? I had three younger brothers. Several years ago, I made copies of the stories I had written about our family, put them in three folders and mailed them to each brother in different parts of the country. I wondered if they would appreciate them or toss them aside. I shouldn't have worried, as all three were thrilled with my gift to them. As I wrote new stories, I sent them to each brother via email, so they could be printed and added to the book. 

You can also keep all of them and designate a younger family member to keep them after you are gone. You've worked hard on this project, so you'd like the stories to continue through the generations. That's one good reason to use dates or eras so that readers later will know approximately when the story took place.

If you would like to share the stories now, bring a few to a family gathering like a summer reunion or a holiday dinner. Pass them around or read them aloud. Each story will most likely trigger some lively conversation. 

I've read some of my Family Stories as examples when I've given a talk to a group about writing Family Stories. One question that often comes up is 'Do I have to write the stories in chronologicall order?' The answer is a simple NO. Write them as you remember them, no special order. When you have a lot of stories ready, you might want to put them in some kind of order, but even that is not necessary. 

I hope some of my readers have been inspired to start writing, or to continue writing, Family Stories after these past five posts about same. You'll have fun, and your family members and future generations will be most appreciative. Every family has good times and bad, happy ones and sad. Your stories should cover all of these. Why not start today?

 

Many Moms Were the Family Doctor--Include Her Treatments in Your Family Stories

We write many things in our family stories and memoir pieces, both happy and sad. Have you ever included what your mother did for you when you had a bad cold or the flu or some childhood disease like measles, mumps, or chickenpox? Or an injury?

Our family stories serve as a history of our family as well as being informative and entertaining. Think back to your growing-up years. We all had an illness of some kind now and then. Write about the methods your mom used to help you feel better. Those of us who are senior citizens didn't have the benefit of all the miracle anti-biotics out today. 

Did your mom have any special treatments? Was there always a bottle of mercurochrome in the medicine cabinet? Campophenique? Calamine lotion? Vicks Vaporub? Did she make some awful concoction that smelled bad and tasted worse? 

When my brothers and I had a cold, my mother made us take a warm bath, then rubbed Vicks on our chests, covered it with a piece of flannel under our pajama top. "Hurry up and get in bed and pull the covers up," she'd say. The idea being that heat would make the Vicks work better and help to loosen the congestion in our chest. 

And yes, we had a bottle of mercurochrome on hand at all times. Any scrape or cut was washed with soap, then painted with the evil red liquid. Every kid in the neighborhood sported a blotch of red on a knee or elbow now and then. 

My dad's sure cure for a crying, teething baby was to rub a bit of whiskey on the gums. It worked, but today, he'd probably have been arrested for child abuse. 

Include pieces in your Family Stories book about the times you were very sick and what your mother did to make you feel better. Whenever I was sick enough to stay in bed, my mother came to the bedroom about mid-afternoon with a warm, wet washcloth. She'd wipe my face and hands and then brush my hair a bit. Not medicine but it always made me feel better for a little while. 

Many of us were given a bowl of good, hot chicken soup. "This will cure what ails you." That was the statement that often accompanied the soup. 

What did your mother do when you were sick? How were you treated? With home remedies or over the counter drugstore meds? Did she call a doctor, or was she the doctor of choice in your family? 

The one time a doctor made a house call for me as a child frightened me more than the medical problem I had--a severe mastoiditis in my ears. Why? Because my mom never, ever called a doctor to come to our house. I was sure I must be dying. Only that event would have moved her to spend the money on a housecall. 

Spend some time remembering those times when you had measles or mumps or a bad cut or a terrible cold. Then, write about it.