A story is about someone who…
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5 Ways to Describe Your Ancestor in a Story5 Ways to Describe Your Ancestor in a Story
When we write our family history stories one of our primary goals is to bring our reader and our ancestors closer together. Our goal is to help our reader to emotionally connect with our ancestor. There are five ways we can help make this happen in our family history stories.
The 5 ways we are going to cover involve both interior and exterior characterization. If you try to merge all five into your story when describing an ancestor, you’ll have a three-dimensional ancestor.
What is a three-dimensional ancestor? This is an ancestor that comes to life on the page for your reader. It is an ancestor that appears alive and real and standing in front of us and not lifeless and flat. It is an ancestor that your reader can connect with, through physically being able to see them in their mind’s eye, but all being able to connect with them emotionally. It involves using both interior and exterior characterization to bring our ancestor to the page.
Exterior characterization is achieved by showing your ancestor’s behaviour towards other people, their attitude to their surroundings and their physical characteristics.
Interior characterization involves using their thoughts about themselves and other people to help us to understand who they are.
We can tell or show the reader about aspects of our ancestors’ personalities and lives. We want both. We do this by showing them interacting with their surroundings, their body language and with dialogue.
1. Telling: Tell the reader who your ancestor is and what he or she does.
Example: Henry loved to wear a cowboy hat.
2. Showing: Allow your ancestor’s actions to show the reader their character.
Example: Henry headed out the door of his 5th Avenue Manhattan apartment. He grabbed his white cowboy hat from the table by the door. Pushing his sandy brown hair from his forehead, he eased the hat on his head and checked his reflection in the mirror.
3.Thinking: You can show an ancestor by allowing the reader to see the thoughts behind their actions and words. What an ancestor thinks about can help explain a great deal about them.
Example: Pushing his sandy brown hair from his forehead, Henry eased the hat on his head and checked his reflection in the mirror. Although he had been in the city for more than a year, he just couldn’t part with his cowboy hat. Besides, the ladies loved it.
4.Others: You can show us who your ancestor is by how he or she treats other people and the way others treat him.
Example: Your ancestor may be treated with reverence, fear or even hate. She may be treated with gentleness or insignificance. His or her prejudices and beliefs will also affect the way he or she handles others. Perhaps they show hatred for others different from themselves, religion, appearance, their class in society.
5.The Outside World: We can use the way our ancestor looks at the world around them to allow us a glimpse into their state of mind.
Example: A content ancestor sees the first winter’s snowfall as beautiful. An unhappy ancestor may be depressed by the freezing cold temperatures and being confined to indoors. The images and words you choose to create the world around your ancestor can help shape your ancestor’s mood according to his or her viewpoint.
When you incorporate showing, telling, thinking, how your ancestor treats others and how they act and react to the outside world you have a better chance of bringing your ancestor to the page. As a result, your reader is more likely able to get to know your ancestor, seeing them in their mind’s eye but also emotionally connecting with them.
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Names to Narratives: Creating Character Arcs for AncestorsNames to Narratives: Creating Character Arcs for Ancestors
Welcome to our video on Creating Compelling Character Arcs! Whether you’re an aspiring writer or a seasoned storyteller, developing dynamic character arcs is key to engaging your audience. In this video, we’ll explore what character arcs are, why they’re essential for storytelling, and how you can craft arcs that showcase growth, transformation, and emotional depth. Let’s dive into the journey of creating characters that truly resonate!
My ancestors story is about a woman who grew up under the care of parents who lived during the aftermath of Culloden. Her parents were displaced from their traditional lands. Perhaps she passed their attitudes on to her own children in the form of a strong desire for secure place in society. She succeeded, but in doing so lost all her children to immigration.
Primroses for Toppy is a story about John who survived WW2 in Burma as a very young man, returned to England exhausted, ill and battling with PTSD. He was inspired and given a reason to live through giving a young WRAF woman, who was hitching, a lift to her home. He then struggled to keep the barely surviving family farm productive through the post-war period under the interfering eye of his Uncle who disapproved of all John’s ‘new farming ideas’. The next obstacle was shortages of materials, that he desperately needed, to renovate an old mill cottage on the farm as a home for the love of his life. This goal he achieved, with the help of P.O.W’s, and they did marry.
Captivated by a cine about Kenya was the climax, the turning point in his life, where he decided the only way for his life to move forward was to leave for this exotic country and to purchase his own farm so as to be independent of family ties. This came at a cost. He needed his parents’ approval and financial help. The farm was sold, his parents moved to live between their other 3 children’s homes. John and his beloved wife Toppy, with their 18-month-old daughter Paula set sail to immigrate to East Africa, wondering whether they’d ever see their families again.