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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Like a good pot of soup on a cold’s winter’s day, every family history scene requires some essential ingredients to make them successful. Without a tasty broth, some colourful veggies, and a fat noodle the soup will just not satisfy. The same can be said for a scene, if it’s missing an essential ingredient it will likely fall flat and you may lose the interest of your reader. Today, we look at the ingredients that make a satisfying scene. Let’s identify the key ingredients in a family history scene each one closer so that you can create powerful and fulfilling scenes for your reader.
The majority of your scenes should be built around your protagonist ancestor. Your protagonist ancestor is the main character of your story and through whose point of view, the story will be told. In each scene, your protag ancestor will be involved in action or dialogue. Make sure that you’ve chosen a single ancestor from which point of view that story will be told.
Every scene shows some dramatic movement, large or small. It creates a sense of movement through time and space. It could be actual action or even dialogue which gives the essence of movement within a scene. Without action, you have no scene.
We want to demonstrate our ancestor’s movements, feelings, actions, and reactions. Don’t tell us about them, show them offer up the proof in the form of a scene.
Every scene has a goal. We know that our story also has a goal, however, this is different from the scene goal. The scene goal begins and ends in the scene, but contributes to the overall advancement of the story.
Your protagonist ancestor needs someone to interact with, these will come in the form of an antagonist who opposes your ancestor’s goals or allies who will help your ancestor to achieve her goal.
Each scene builds on the previous scene providing new information that keeps moving the story forward. If it doesn’t move the story forward then perhaps it doesn’t belong in the story.
Setting and time period is essential to grounding your scene through sensory details and description.
The overall meaning of your story is conveyed within scenes using images and sensory details.
Not only organizing your scenes within the story but by creating a feeling of conflict and uncertainty within a scene will keep the reader guessing as what is next and will keep them turning the pages.
Scenes can end in any number of ways. Some may end on a high-note, with a small victory for your ancestor, or in defeat. It can end with a cliff-hanger or some uncertainty. It’s important that each scene ends in such a way that it eludes to future obstacles for your ancestor and a yearning in your reader to know what happens next.
Make sure your story scenes have all the right ingredients.
We now know that dialogue is an important element to good scene writing.
However, it doesn’t remove our apprehension about using it in our family history stories. It becomes a scary proposition for family historians and often stops many from writing scenes because they don’t want to put words in their ancestor’s mouths. Instead, they settle for dry narrative summary rather than writing an engaging story built on scene and summary.
Dialogue for family historians falls into two camps, which I will refer to as recalled conversations and re-created conversations. First let me start by saying, how you handle dialogue in your family history is a personal decision. Some nonfiction writers believe in no fabrication, while others believe you can put words in your character’s mouth within guidelines. There seems to be a broad range of interpretations on the subject.
Recalled Conversations
My definition of a recalled conversation is when the person or persons were present for the discussion but do not recall the exact words that were exchanged. This could be you writing a memoir or interviewing a relative recalling a conversation. Here’s a few guidelines for recalled conversations.
Re-Created Conversations
My definition of a re-created dialogue applies to those discussions that took place well in the past, and no one who was present is alive to interview. You may wish to re-create this conversation but here are a few guidelines I follow.
1. Turn to your research to re-create dialogue. I believe you can re-create dialogue that is based on your research and can be summarized and hypothesized base on your ancestor’s actions. I’ve covered the possible resources for re-creating dialogue in a previous post, Re-Creating Dialogue and in Authentic Ancestors.
2. Remain faithful to the essence of what the character would have said and the nature of the conversation.
3. Be honest with the readers, acknowledge when you are re-creating dialogue and when you are recalling.
I’ll also include a link here for those of you who are just learning to write dialogue, 7 Tips to Formatting Dialogue.
I’ve grabbed a couple of books from by bookshelf to offer examples of how other authors have handled the situation.
For example in the memoir , The StovePipe by Bonnie Virag, in her author’s notes she addresses the topic:
I set forth each incident as I remember it, occasionally relying on my sisters to fill in some of the gaps – bearing in mind that each of us saw through a different set of eyes and may have perceived things differently. Some of the dialogue I remember clearly and recount verbatim. Where memory fails me, I created dialogue based on the way my sisters expressed themselves. The rest is as accurate as I can make it. It is the story of my life, and I have tried to be true to my thoughts and memories.
Another example,
Jeannette Walls, Author of Half-Broke Horses
In telling my grandmother’s story, I never aspired to that sort of historical accuracy. I saw the book more in the vein of oral history, a retelling of stories handed down by my family through the years, and undertaken with the storyteller’s traditional liberties. ….she goes on to say
I don’t have the words from Lily herself, and since I have also drawn on my imagination to fill in details that are hazy or missing- and I ‘ve changed a few names to protect people’s privacy – the only honest thing to do is call the book a novel.
Regardless of whether you are recalling dialogue or recreating dialogue the important thing to remember is to be honest with the reader.
Lee Gutkind, creative nonfiction teacher and author of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, expresses his thoughts and I’ll end with his words
“The idea is to replicate the conversation vividly and to mirror memory and speculation with trust and good judgement.”
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.