From conversations with your grandparents to letters from distant relatives, every family’s stories are distinctly beautiful and incredible. Much like Grisha’s Loop—My Slavic Saga, a story of courage and survival that centers on the life story of Gregoire Ivanovich Samoylenko, you can craft a story from lineage to literature based on your family’s rich history. This article will provide steps, processes, and insights to help make creating your family history easy to manage.
The Relevance of Family Stories
Talking about family history, lineage, and stories can ignite an array of questions and realizations. But why does it matter to you or to others? According to a study conducted by Emory University’s Department of Psychology, children who learn their family’s history, stories, and lineage are more resilient and emotionally prepared. In that sense, these children can cope better when faced with problems and are capable of overcoming tribulations. They are also socially competent and maintain long-term friendships. The study also highlights that articulate family narratives help kids become better grown-ups in the future.
Writing about family origins can be about personal motivation, too. It’s an outlet to share anecdotes, important life events, and highlight contributions to society. Or, in other cases, the stories you’ve uncovered can be a useful tool for your community. The purpose of your book depends on the information you want to share with the world. Your story is exceptional and yours alone; it’s time to bring it to life.
How to Gather Your Family History
Transforming heritage into books has been utilized by many authors, particularly writers whose families have migrated to a new country. Each story tackles a different and unique take on certain issues and experiences. Some include meetings with significant individuals that changed their lives, and other times, it’s focused on personal struggles and success stories. Nevertheless, the focal point is on the writer’s or a family member’s experience. So, how do you start gathering information about your family’s history?
Before starting your journey, it’s best to have a journal to write down your timeline, thoughts, objectives, and questions. This helps you stay on track with your goals and stay organized. It’s also crucial that you lay out the reasons why you are writing this family book to your potential interviewees. Hence, you should discuss the book’s purpose with your chosen relatives before you begin audio recording conversations and interviewing them. Importantly, ask for permission at all times.
List down questions and thoughts | Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash
Some family members you can interview are your parents, grandparents, close relatives (uncles and aunties), your parents’ distant cousins, and older family members. If your great-grandparents are still around, you can also ask them.
Apart from recording the discussions, you should also take photos of available documents. These materials can be letters, birth certificates, death certificates, contracts, leases, marriage licenses, divorce papers, and journals—any type of document that can verify claims or narratives.
Once you’ve finished the interviews, you have to visit local libraries and online databases to ensure the reliability and correctness of the information given by your relatives. Despite their personal insights and accounts, you have to get factual evidence as proof.
Building the Narrative with Personal Stories
Now that your data gathering stage is complete, it’s time to build the story. From lineage to literature, your ultimate goal is to weave a fulfilling narrative that incorporates your relatives’ stories. If your aim is to write ancestry-inspiring stories, you should create a timeline that describes these uplifting narratives. And when the stories you’ve gathered are more than enough to complete one book, you can create a series.
While the book is based on real events that occurred within your family, the actual conversations during those times are impossible to recreate. With that, you can write the possible conflicts, conversations, and dialogues that the characters had said or done at those moments. You can also choose to write in a chronological order of events or at certain points in time only. Either way works for your book.
The most important part of your book is the message you want to convey to the readers. If it’s a story of courage and survival, it should be highlighted throughout the novel. If it’s about the gentleness and strength of a mother, that should be emphasized. You must ensure that the significant points of your family’s stories are underlined so that readers can notice and appreciate them.
Challenges You Might Face When Writing
Writing from lineage to literature is not an easy task. You will face challenges along the way. Some setbacks you will need to overcome include receiving incorrect information, missing vital data, disagreements with family members, and differing opinions on complex family topics.
These things are unavoidable when it comes to crafting a book, but how do you navigate through these mishaps? For incorrect data, you have to choose factual information. If it contradicts your book’s goal, you can exclude it instead. For missing information, you can ask more people or relatives about that matter. If the information is not available, you can choose another route in the story that doesn’t involve that missing information.
Disputes between family members are always there. Redirecting the conversation to lessen tension is the best approach. For the best result, it’s best to choose a story or topic that doesn’t delve too deeply into family issues, unless it’s a focal point in your story. Writing your lineage to literature involves compromise in different aspects to reach the best results.
Additionally, one of the challenges you might meet is the fear of starting the book. It can be overwhelming at first—creating a story that consolidates varied aspects of your family’s lineage—but it’s a gift you can bestow on your family. Don’t rush the process, and write slowly and wholeheartedly. You can bring the stories you’ve uncovered to life at the right time.
Intriguing Family Themes to Use
By writing your lineage to literature, you are opening up doors to explore diverse themes. If you are a family of migrants, you can produce a book about your family journey, including the hardships, successes, and lessons. Do you have a family member who’s a war veteran? You can write a story about his time during the war, the people he met, and the struggles of being away from family.
You can also write about your family’s core traditions and cultures, the belief systems, and values. With that, you can highlight how it has positively affected the lives of other family members. If you discovered a beautiful love story during your interviews, you can also focus on that point of view. Additionally, you can also write about an enduring friendship between a family member and someone from another country.
There are hundreds of ways to write your family history book. You have to firmly decide which one resonates with you more. At the end of the day, your book’s message matters the most.
Are you ready to start writing your family’s story? Don’t forget to read Grisha’s Loop—My Slavic Saga to have a glimpse of what it’s like to write a family history book. Grab a copy today.
