Suggestions, please!

[Tinker]

I've finally made a start on amalgamating all the years of research I have on my father's family tree into a written history, so I'm currently tracing the rise and fall of our ancestors' cork cutting business through several generations. By and large, those involved are in my direct line of descent (although not all), but does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can eventually include other side branches of the family in my story without confusion? A number of my direct ancestors have siblings and spouses with interesting lives/occupations that don't really have a place in the main story, but it seems a shame to leave them out altogether. Should I do it as a series of separate booklets, or as a collection of short stories under one title, for instance? Advice welcome!

[Jan1954]

Hi Tinker,

Think about who your target audience would be. Who would read the histories? If it is just you, then do it in the format that you would like. However, if it is for others to read, ask them what they would prefer. :smile5:

[Mutley]

If you write up the history in Chapters, as in a booklet, there is no reason why the most interesting cannot have their own chapters at the end.

If your direct line takes up, for example chapters 1 - 12 then you can always write chapter 13 about:
Mary Smith the daughter of xxxx.
You can make a reference to them when they appear in your tree (e.g see Chapter 13).
Whoever is reading the booklet can choose if they wish to find out more about Mary or not. :smile5:

[Tinker]

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions/comments. I'm writing primarily for my immediate family as the family tree should be much more accessible and interesting to them in this format. I'm hoping (if my son can help me with importing images into the text, which I'm pants at) to include various photos and pics I've amassed over the years. I originally tried writing the family up about five or six years ago, but got bogged down trying to cross all the 't' s and dot all the 'i' s, metaphorically speaking, which is impossible in narrative form, so I'm hoping this time round I'll do better!

[Ladkyis]

I think you should include a basic tree for each group. This takes away the necessity of drawing the tree with words. Then you can explain the relationships and the stories you have discovered but you really don't need to dot ALL the i's or cross the t's. Readers want the juicy bits. If you were telling the story at the dinner table you wouldn't put every last detail into it you would go for the colour and the laughter or the sorrow.
Imagine you are sitting at the table and telling the story. On the wall behind you is the family tree that everyone can see with dates and everything. Now just write it exactly as you would talk.
I try to do it this way because I am aiming for my family to say "I could hear her voice telling the story as I read it"

Just my four pennorth

[Bertie]

This is a very pertinent question and one I am struggling with too as I have yet to add meat to a skeletal document!

However, where I started was to represent my family tree in a picture (in powerpoint) – as a tree! Thus the trunk is my paternal line and each branch is the joining female line, with her ancestral names as individual leaves. So, the lowest (and obviously longest) branch is my mother’s line, and the one above that my paternal grandmother’s line, etc.

That way I can set out the document by tracing the history of the trunk and each branch in turn, referring back to the picture as I go along so the (at this stage potential) reader can see where (s)he is.

But this is not without its difficulties as there is always (as you state) the tension between a focus on direct relatives only on the one hand and, on the other, their siblings and descendants who are blood relatives and their spouses who are not. (I would add to that the parents of a blood relative’s spouse if that informs the story). And that’s before considering second marriages etc!

What I am also trying to do is, in each generation of a line I am tracing, to list all the children of my direct ancestor and then to say something brief and/or interesting about each of them and their spouse and life.

However, I think the idea of referring to a different chapter or section for more information about them is a good one, and one I will now use, and I will extend that idea to any general discussion about a name or person that is really interesting or (in some way) important just so I do not lose any richness from any of my ancestors but try to keep the narrative lines straightforward.

[Tinker]

Thank you Ladkyis, for some very relevant and useful advice! I hadn't thought about considering it as a story I was telling at a dinner table, but that's pretty much the effect I'm hoping to achieve. This time round, I realised that it made more sense just to include a family group chart for each of the generations I'm dealing with, at the relevant stage of the story, rather than, for example, trying to include all the minutiae of when and where the children were born, in the text.

As you mentioned Bertie, the temptation is always to stray off on to side paths in the story, so we have to decide where to draw the line - not always as easy as it sounds! Besides my cork cutters, I have a multi-talented young man tragically killed in the Great War, a goldsmith/diamond setter husband whose family was interesting to research, another spouse with posh antecedents, who was in addition a very talented and highly-thought-of maker of lenses for telescopes and cameras (though not, strictly speaking, part of my bloodline, as there were no offspring), and a branch of the family in the painting and decorating trades, so lots of scope for future stories.

It can be quite tricky including relevant info about the places where the family lived or worked, although so far I'm managing. I'll probably need to do a bit of editing though, at a later stage, as it's all too easy to try and cram in as much as possible, which tends to slow down the storytelling. I know I get annoyed with fiction writers who appear to have stopped the story to chuck in a bit of historical background research they've dug up, instead of integrating it into the storyline properly: I always get the impression I'm being lectured then, and it spoils the flow! Also, it's quite difficult to avoid overusing the phrase 'By the 1880s...' (or 1890s or whatever), especially when you have no specific dates to cover that time period and are making generalisations.

P.S. Ladkyis, do I detect a Terry Pratchett fan?

[Mutley]

I've found that people are not really interested in dates, they cannot retain them other than 1700s or 1800s. They are not even really worried about relationships once you go back further. It is the snippets of an interesting story that is what they want, as Ladkyis says, "the bit told over the dinner table".

A friend who knew nothing about his family recently asked me to "look em up". He had been told that his great grandfather was a knife grinder who trawled the streets of Manchester with a barrow. I looked them up and found he was 'more or less' right. He did not want to know dates, children, wives or anything other than great grandfather's name. His 'dinner table story' will be about William, the knife grinder, he will probably elaborate it a bit in the telling but it will be a story and his children will remember it and pass it on and so his family history will be told down the generations.

Treasure the stories, they are what will be remembered.

[Ladkyis]

Thank you Ladkyis, for some very relevant and useful advice! I hadn't thought about considering it as a story I was telling at a dinner table, but that's pretty much the effect I'm hoping to achieve.
P.S. Ladkyis, do I detect a Terry Pratchett fan?

ME? a Pratchett fan? well, just a bit. When his first book came out I had a shop selling fantasy figures and role-playing games so the customers told me about the book and I bought and read it. He made me laugh out loud on the first page and I have been a fan ever since - 1987 I think it was.

[Tinker]

Yes, he's one of the few authors that makes me laugh out loud, too. That's a benchmark for a good writer, in my book (excuse the pun)! A man who can come up with the idea of a Goddess of Stuck Drawers has to be funny. I envy his imagination! My first TP book was a childrens' book called 'The Carpet People' read back in the late 70s, but I didn't come across his adult fiction until a good few years later.

[Tinker]

Bertie (and anyone else who might find this useful)
I found the best way to pad my story out was to use information from the notes section on my family tree program. I originally started off just making a note of addresses the family had lived in, from sources such as the census, certificates, wills, etc, but then over time graduated to adding things like witnesses at a marriage, causes of death, army/navy/airforce service, nicknames, and even in some instances a bit of speculation, which I could then use as a prompt to follow new leads. I keep my family tree open in a separate window on my computer while I'm writing, and refer to the notes on the person I'm dealing with as I go. I got a lot of my background info from websites such as British History Online (used in conjunction with reproductions of old O.S maps), as well as info generated by emails to Local Studies Centres, and so on.