When a Story Needs to Be Told
By Jana Lloyd
Maybe your third great-grandfather insulted Abraham Lincoln or your great-grandma was the first woman to vote in her town. You’ve heard tales that your grandma’s sister was J. Edgar Hoover’s secretary or her bassist brother used to jam with Miles Davis. What do you do when you uncover a great family story that you know just needs to be told?
John Bennion, author and professor of creative nonfiction at Brigham Young University, suggests thinking of any story as if it were a pearl on a necklace. “When writing your own history one of the confusions is, ‘Do I move chronologically or by story or issue,’” says Bennion. “I tell students to carry a notebook around and whenever they think of a story to write it down. Think of the stories as a pearl on a strand of pearls. Write these beads down and they can be strung together later along lines of chronology or issues.”
Techniques to get those beads into place include brainstorming. Bennion recommends dividing a sheet of paper into four quadrants labeled “places,” “people,” “events,” and “values.” Use each quadrant to answer a question like, “Describe a house you’ve lived in most of your life” (places); “Write about a person you knew who was odd” (people); “Tell about a personal rite of passage” (events); and “What is something people do that you’re bothered by?” (values).
The next technique could be to put down a 10-page autobiography, or biography if this story is about an ancestor, as fast as you can—without going back to edit. (Hint: If you’re typing, try turning off your monitor screen—it will keep you from cheating.) Why? The idea is to get as much down as possible without worrying too much about form. You’ll go back through later and read for good ideas, stories, and story lines that you may want to pursue.
Bennion also notes that even if you’re not ready to write the whole story, you should always be prepared to jot down the tales that get told when you’re with your family—often these gems are the ones that get overlooked. “We don’t write them down because we know them already. But if we don’t, they get lost.”
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I have uncovered some interesting stories of incidents that occured in our family through the years. How do you submit your stories?
Not very important to some but let me explain….
I (lynn jagger nee Muldowney) was born and bred in Oldham Lancashire, my husband Robert Jagger was born and bred in Middleton Lancashire. However in starting to do Ancestry.co.uk to cut a long story short I found that Roberts great/great/great/great/grandfather was born in Mobberley Cheshire.
The irony is that we moved to Mobberley from Oldham 8 years ago with no reason other than it was a lovely villiage compared to Oldham….
How spooky is that….
Lynn Jagger.
I enjoyed the information in this article very much. Most families have many stories just waiting to be told. Some very personalised as why my mother was disowned by her father at age 19…(true)and other stories that show their relatives involvement to the history or event of a community. So often these stories tell something of the ethics and morals of the peoples who lived in those times. The question is, how do we pull all the information together when all the people of that generation are gone as most people of my mothers generation were not “talkers”. How much information is needed to make a “good” article? I have many letters written in the past 100 years and back and have thought to piece them together to create a sort of family history. There is nothing in these letters however to explain my mothers disinheritance…we can guess of course.