Mining your family history for stories
Tutorial 1
So, you there you are with a shoe box full of old photos and
some stories you might remember your parents or grandparents telling you. How do you
preserve that history for your kids and future generations?
Over the next few weeks I’ll offer you three free tutorials to
get you started writing your family stories. These are the steps I took to successfully write Tales from the Fountain Pen which was picked up by a publisher.
Step 1: Take out the photos and put them in some kind of chronological
order. If you’re having trouble, go online to research clothing, cars (if any),
etc., from that era. It doesn’t have to be precise.
Step 3: Start creating a chart, using the pictures as your
guide. Fill in rough estimates of dates, places and events as they come up in
the pictures and your memory. Write down keywords you remember and impressions you get from the pictures. These will all be helpful once you start writing.
These first three steps should keep you busy for a while. As you go through them pretty you’ll start to see a pattern emerging that will let you get started on
writing that family memoir.
Of course these steps can apply to any kind of writing where all you have to work with are visual cues from pictures or objects.
Contact me at: elynnh2write (at) gmail.com.
Or visit my website: www.elynnhwriting.com
And as always, leave comments below.
Next up: Tutorial 2: How to set the scene
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