Once you have chosen a format for your family history, the next steps are to define its scope, set deadlines, choose a theme, do your research, write the book, and proofread it. This second part of the guide walks you through each of them.
The first part, how to write your family history, covers the first decision: the format. It could be a traditional memoir or narrative, a cookbook with the family history and stories that go with the recipes, or even a scrapbook. Once you have made that important decision, you can move on to the rest of the process.
Define your scope
The next step is to decide how much of the family you will cover. Your actual family tree is huge, and as much as you might want to, you cannot cover all of it. That is possible in a genealogy document, but not in a book.
Here are two options to consider:
- A single line of descent: start with the oldest relative you know about and follow their line down to you. Each generation usually becomes a chapter of the book.
- All the descendants of one person: start with a specific person in your family history and trace all of their descendants. This works well when you want the story to begin with an ancestor's move to a new country.
There are many other options, but make this decision before you start writing. It tells you which ancestors to focus your research on.
Set deadlines
Deadlines keep you on track and moving forward with the project. Start with an outline of the entire project, then break it into smaller steps, each with its own deadline, so you can celebrate your progress along the way.
Decide on a theme
An overall theme keeps your book focused. Think of it as telling the story of your whole family, not just of individual people along the way.
Research
This is where the real work, and the fun, begins. Before you can start writing, you have to research the people you are going to write about. If you want your book to be interesting, you need to do much more than a genealogy search.
Start with a detailed interview of every living relative you can find. Nothing can replace the family stories you have heard a hundred times, and this is your chance to get them down on paper. Your relatives can also point you to the places where you need to dig deeper.
Then add depth with research about the towns your ancestors lived in, the jobs they did, the disasters and epidemics they lived through, the fashions of the day, and other details that make your family history fuller and more complete.
Write your book
Once you have made these decisions and done the research, it is time to write. The guide on how to write your own book takes you through the steps of actually sitting down and doing it. If you would rather tell the story as your own life, writing a memoir has tips for that.
Proofread and spell check
As with anything you write, proofreading your family history is essential. This document will live on long after you are gone, and it will become the history your family turns to for years to come. You want it to be something you are proud of, not something you cringe at when your relatives point out every spelling mistake. Read it through more than once, and run the text through the Spell Checker to catch the spelling and grammar mistakes your eyes skip over.