If you're writing a family story, your memoir, a novel based on a family member or members, one sure place to begin is with photographs. The box of family photos is a goldmine for every writer in any of these genres. The more you study those pictures, the more the story will come to light. And don't limit yourself to your own stash, ask other family members if you can look at theirs, have copies made. Don't stop there, ask neighbors, family friends, and distant cousins. Search old newspapers on newspaperarchives.com. They have searchable articles back as far as 1753. Not so long ago, both city and small-town newspapers considered local happenings at schools, churches, and the town square to be news. They carried stories about community events and included lots of pictures. Many states also have their own searchable small-town newspaper databases. If you live in New York State, or are from New York State, Fulton History is an archival site containing small town newspapers from all over the state, and other states, as far back as the 1700s. They also have a section on old postcards, images that reflect the culture and society of various eras in American history. 

How do you find story in pictures? Well, you can connect people you know with people you don't know, providing a seed for your detective work. Pictures show us how people lived, who they loved, where they lived, how they dressed, what cars they drove, if they had cars. Pictures of my grandmother and her sisters in their youth reveal that there were no cars. People got from one place to another on foot or in wagons. That got me thinking about how long it would take to get from Uncle Jim's farm to town, and what that would mean to their lives. What if a house caught fire? How would they put it out if there were no automobiles, no way to speed up the highway with sirens blaring?

Several years ago, my father gave me a photograph album my grandmother had put together long before he was born. My father had an older brother named John who died at the age of six. I had known about this event, but not the story. As I turned the pages of this handmade album, covered with care in a fine dust jacket cloth by my grandmother, I was pulled into a story of love and heartbreak. Each page displayed images of a young boy's childhood and his devoted and loving parents: afternoons at the lake, John with his dog, picnics in the woods, a pony, a birthday party, a ride in grandfather's new Franklin automobile on the boy's 5th birthday. Great Grandfather Willis is beaming in this picture. His topless car is filled with children who may be riding in a car for the first time. The album ends with a handwritten note next to the boy John's picture, "John Parsons Cole, b. 9-12-1914, d. 12-22-1920." I still can't look through the album without crying, but now I know the story of John, and my grandparents....the young boy who was adored by his parents, the sad grandparents I remember. There was something beneath the surface I sensed as a child that felt like sadness, but I never knew what it was about. I didn't know the story until I looked at those pictures as an adult, even though my great aunts had told me that there had been an older boy, an uncle who had died.

If I chose to write about that story, the next step would be to examine newspapers and other archives and history books to find out everything from the weather conditions in that city on the day of his death, or the day of his birthday party, and so on, to what was happening in the world at the time. John was born at the beginning of the Great War. And so the story began.

"A Happy Fourth"

Guest post by Author, Teacher, and Blogger: Hope Clark!

Author, Hope Clark

Make It Read Like a Novel

By C. Hope Clark

I ran to the gym this week, was pushing up 45 pounds, wondering if I could venture up to 60, when a lady came by.  “I heard you were an author,” she said. “Can I ask you a quick question?”

“Sure,” I said, dropping the weights and settling in. Any question that started with those words was not going to be quick.

“This older gentleman in his eighties has asked me to write his story, and I don’t know where to start.”

I told her like I tell so many folks writing biographies, memoirs, and historic nonfiction. Write it like a novel.

They always raise a brow when I tell them this, because they aren’t writing fiction, they say.  Their stories are factual, based on reality, talking about something that really happened. To that I shrug and say, “How is that different than writing a novel?”

1)    Novelists do research.

A novel has a setting, whether fictitious or real, and the author does legwork to determine the personality of that locale, often visiting to note the details. My mysteries are set in real places in rural South Carolina. I travel there, taking intricate notes of the simplest items so my story reads genuine. And when I use fictitious buildings, addresses, and businesses, I have a real place mind, so my mind’s eye has an anchor when I write. But I never, ever use all my research. Research is to ground you, make it easy for you to write in that world. Do not use all those intricate details, just the ones that pop, snare or give great flavor.

2)    Novelists open with a lapel-grabber.

What’s the point in writing nonfiction if it’s not a gripping tale? So someone lived and died. Why does anyone want to read about them if they didn’t have an eye-opener of a story? That means starting with action, an anxious moment, an intriguing dilemma, or even a dead body. Draw the reader in. What compels him to turn a page? Open in the courtroom, on the edge of the cliff, when someone’s life went to hell. Textbooks are dry. Novels are supposed to be juicy, beautiful, or suck-you-in overwhelming. Which do you want to emulate?

3)    Novelists avoid backstory.

Your nonfiction story has to flow, the story always moving forward with purpose.  Author Elmore Leonard is renowned for his ten famous rules of writing, one of them being, “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” Novelists fight to make every word leave its mark, which means avoiding backstory. A memoir, biography, or historic tale is all backstory. However, your job is to make it read as if it is taking place . . . like you’re writing mystery, fantasy, romance or women’s fiction. You don’t have to explain an entire life. We endure a lot of boring moments between birth and death. Leave those parts out.

4)    Novelists develop characters.

Novelists cut characters open and spill them all over a page: the nasty and the gob smacking, the loveable and the despicable, the pretty and the horribly disfigured. Your nonfiction has characters, too, though you may not think of them as such. Novelists draw out character charts, noting all sorts of traits, answering questions about these people, so the author know their flaws, their loves, and where they are most fragile and vulnerable. It’s in those tender places that stories are born and characters become worth reading. Real people need to be split open, too.

Writing about real people and real history may sound simple, but it can be harder than fiction. You have the genuine deal to cope with, and that can often detract you from being creative. Envision your plot, theme, characters, voice and flow just like you would a novel, and your nonfiction can take on a remarkable 3-D life. Not to mention your book becomes more marketable.

Oh, and yes, you are allowed to embellish.

BIO

C. Hope Clark is author of The Carolina Slade Mystery Series, published by Bell Bridge Books. Her new Edisto Beach Series released in September 2014. Hope is also editor of FundsforWriters.com, reaching 40K readers each week with her newsletters for serious writers. www.chopeclark.com

The latest in Hope's mystery series

 

Who Should Participate in Researching & Writing Your Family History?

Armchair Genealogists: 

Turn your family history into an interesting life story.

Memoirists: 

You have many stories to tell. They all begin where and from whom you came. The history of your family begins before you were born and that's the beginning of your story.

Narrative Non-fiction writers: 

It's often said, "You can't make this stuff up!" True stories are the best stories. Mythology is based on the lives of real people, life stories that repeat over the ages and change only with the times and the technology of the day. Someone related to you who you never met made a decision long before you were born that determined where and to whom you were born.

Novelists: 

Why should you make up characters when your own family is rich with personalities and reputations who have become the mythology on which you came to life? There are eccentrics and every-day people in your family. You may know nothing about many of them. But you can mine these people and their stories with a little effort and the knowledge of where to look. There may have been a great great uncle who fought in the civil war and never came back, but turned up later to the shock of his remarried widow; a great grandmother who disgraced the family, but turned out to be a heroine in the history books; a distant cousin might have been the consort of a king; an ordinary grandfather most likely lived an extraordinary, yet conventional life.

Take this day-long workshop and go home with the tools and inspiration to get started, ready to put together the pieces of your past, to write the story.

Don't Miss the June 21st Class!

Photo by Rachel Hadiashar

 

 Indigo Editing to Sponsor Class

 

The first story every writer must tell is the story about themselves. Once you begin to write your story, you realize that you are part of a greater picture and a larger narrative: your family. If you live in the Pacific Northwest and understand what I'm talking about, you won't want to miss this opportunity to spend a day with like-minded writers in downtown Portland discovering all the places where you can look to find the beginning of your own narrative. We will accept 7 participants who will leave with a signed copy of Camille's historical narrative, The Brass Bell, a list of resource references, and feedback on your own project, be it the kernel of an idea or a finished manuscript.  This class is for writers of historical fiction and non-fiction as well as memoirists. We're hoping to have a mix in the group!