It’s not uncommon to start writing your family history stories using summary, telling our family history stories by summarizing our facts into paragraphs. But after a while we soon realize this does not make for an engaging story and we need to learn how to show rather then always tell. Today, we gathered together some tips to help you learn how to transition your writing from telling to showing.
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We think in scenes all the time.
Take a moment, remember a childhood memory or last week’s business meeting or playing with your children last night, or the family dinner on Sunday evening. These scenes play out like little movies in your head. There are characters, and in a place, a time, and something is happening, conversations are had. As the writer, you are the director re-creating the moments of your ancestor’s life in words, like a movie, vivid, colourful, playing out for the reader on the page.
All scenes contain various elements that contribute to making the scene alive and vibrant for the reader. Let’s break a scene down to see what makes it so special.
The Elements of a Good Scene
Time – The reader should be thrust into a specific time and day, so the reader is immediately oriented with the time frame of the scene. If you don’t your reader is quickly confused and lost.
Setting – Again, much like time you also want to familiarize your reader quickly into the place of your scene. In order for the reader to see the scene play out they need to understand the surroundings and be able to place your ancestor within their surroundings.
Action – Something happens in the scene that propels the plotline forward. Your scenes must have action; they must bring about conflict.
Dialogue – Someone speaks. Dialogue can reveal plot, the conflicts but also helps us understand our ancestor’s character.
Vivid Description- In order for your reader, to see the scene play out like a movie it must have very specific and detailed description.
Imagery – To bring the scene to life, the writer must use all their senses, touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing. However, don’t overload your scene. As the writer, you must decide what you want to bring through in your writing. Don’t pile up your writing with description and imagery and let the reader try to figure it out.
POV- The reader needs to have a clear understanding of who is speaking.
Figurative Language- Similes and metaphors are often used to help create visual images for the reader. It helps to create images for the reader, to make your writing more memorable.
Beginning, Middle and End – Just like our story each scene needs a beginning, middle and end. The end needs to propel us on in the story to the next scene. The beginning draws us in, the middle gives us the guts of the scene, the conflict, the end offers a resolution or not but offers up tension that propels the reader on to the next scene.
Purpose – A scene must serve the story. It must somehow be relevant to the goal of your ancestor. If it does not serve the goal of your ancestor, it has no reason to be in the story.
You want your scenes to be entertaining. This is another one of those moments when you will have to tap into the creative side of your brain. You have to breathe some spirit into a scene. How do we do that? Again this comes from practice and time and by reading the works of other great authors and learning from them, recognize how they craft scenes and practice writing scenes of your own.
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Show, Don’t Tell you’ve heard it from me, perhaps other writing teachers, in books and on blogs across the internet. But what does it really mean? In today’s Storylines, we look at the difference between showing and telling, along with where to use it in your stories. We’ll also tell you all about the upcoming Show & Tell Summit and how it is going to answer all your questions.
The more that I experience your workshops and writing tips, the more that I become attuned to my ancestors’ stories. Already my writing style and thought about my ancestors have changed. While I am attending to a long, novella right now, sometimes my mind slips back to the beginning of February when introduced to your writing concepts, I knew something was wrong with the “stories” of my ancestors that I had written. As soon as the novella is completed, my plan is to use those boring summaries of my ancestors and begin to enhance them with real scenes that already I am playing with in my mind. Thank you for really making me think about writing styles that I have gravitated toward in my reading over the years and what makes me come back to that same author time after time.
This is all very well and great advice if one was actually there to experience grandma’s apple pie but how do you apply this to the telling of long past relatives who lived and died a hundred years or more before you lived? This is the problem I face when all you have is a name, DOB or death date, marriage records, parents, siblings or children’s names and perhaps a census record with their occupation (although not always). I have looked up the social history of the place and time but can only suppose or surmise what sort of life he may have lived! Surely many family history writers must face this same problem but how?
I tuned into your expert video and in the past three years had written 150 thousand words of my life growing up in the early 1950’s – 1967 , when I eventually moved away to get married and start another way of life. I had also tried a different way of writing, that is the funny, sad, odd things that happened in the 17 house moves that we experienced. In that account or several accounts, I had separate stories with dialogue, scenes set up but not so descriptive as you describe in detail. I have written a draft (first) of those stories to show my adult children and the Grandkids how hard it was growing up without the modern conveniences. Sometimes we just had bare essentials like electricity for lights, but no heat etc. We lived through harsh winters and floods and a house fire at 3am one January with a minus 35 F degrees, running out into the snow barefoot to reach to reach the awaiting car.
Again, I recalled the scenes as they happened and was able to write down the actual scenes with dialogue, but not too descriptive. I intend to do a second draft to include detailed descriptive scenes, but I worry that it may detract from the story,becomming too long and drawn out for each event as it happened? This stops me in my tracks from writing and I have taken a hiatus in the meantime to take a break from what became was a grueling 10 hours a day of writing. (Once I start, I am driven to finishing it as I recall vividly in my mind and afraid that I may forget something important. I do this every November for NANAWRIMO competition. My Future Novel is expanding to include mush more as Chapters of different themes, this is all for my family to leave a legacy of from where they descended from and all the actual events that shaped us and them in the present…It is important to get this written and completed before I pass on (prob not for years but, just in case , I want to have a completed draft for them.