What Are You Trying to Communicate?
Many publishing projects don’t really work because they have no central idea. Until that central idea has been thought through clearly, there is no point even starting to write the book. Many publishing projects should be shot down before they start, because the writer has no particular reason (other than ego gratification) for writing the book.
That applies to family histories too. Family histories range all the way from very dry family trees with little or no text to raunchy “all the family dirt you were scared to ask about” exposés. (One of the authors of this book has an aunt who, in her eighties, wrote a family history in which she was very explicit about exactly what she thought of various members of the family, and “set the record straight” about various events in the family’s history. It makes wonderful reading—for some family members, anyway.)
A book with a weak central idea can often be improved by recasting that idea. For example, imagine that you have spent a lot of time researching your family tree and gathering documents related to your family’s history.You decide to gather all of your research together to preserve it for the rest of the family.Your plan is to print out the family tree, then copies of all the documents sorted by type of document, and put it all into three-ring binders and give the binders to the members of your family.
Your family members’ eyes have always glazed over when you’ve shown them parts of the family tree, and have shown little interest in helping with your research. How likely are they to ever make any use of the binders?
The only way you have ever been able to get the family interested in your research is by telling them anecdotes about obscure relatives, like the time cousin Eustace woke up convinced he’d inherited the Taj Mahal, and immediately left for India to claim his inheritance. That pretty much tells you what you have to do to prepare a family history that will preserve your research and that the family will treasure: combine the research with whatever you’ve been able to find out about the life stories of the people in your family.
Who Are You Trying to Reach?
There are various potential audiences for your book.The most obvious audience is your family. That doesn’t mean just your immediate family: in theory, virtually every (living) person mentioned in your book will have some interest in it. Some other audiences:
• genealogical societies in the areas where branches of your family live
• local history societies in those same areas
• public libraries in places where there are lots of members of your family
• genealogists working on families that somewhat overlap with yours
What Interests Those Audiences?
Many family histories are really just reprinted research notes or family trees.The best ones go far beyond that.The writers have tried to bring the family’s history to life in a way that will really reach the readers.
The best way to do this is to try as much as possible to tell the various stories you have uncovered about the people in the family.Where did people live? Why did they move there? What was the place like? What did they do for a living? What were their lives like? How did they live, relax, work, worship, die? How did they fit into their community?
Think how novelists bring their characters and their stories to life. Look at the detail a good novelist will provide on the people, the settings they lived in, the things they did.You have an advantage over a novelist: you are describing real people, and you have documentary evidence of what they were like.
Feel free to include the most interesting bits of that evidence: maps, photos of people and places, newspaper clippings, letters—anything that helps bring the people to life.Try to vary the things you reproduce. Photos of people are great, but it gets a bit boring if all you show are formal wedding photos.
Think of how to organize the book so that it flows for a reader. Some family histories organize their material by town. Some, by who the people are descended from. Some, by looking at key people in the family’s story.
Put yourself in the position of each person in the book who is likely to read it. How is your cousin Lucretia going to feel when you spend three pages telling her brother Nigel’s story, then say,“Nigel also had a sister called Lucretia”? Many writers, sad to say, focus closely on the husbands they describe and then dismiss the wives with a quick mention.
Remember also that people in the future will be using your book as a resource as they research other family histories.You should try to tell your family’s stories—but you are also reporting your research findings, and they should be as accurate and complete as you can make them.
Is a Book the Right Vehicle?
Books have enormous strengths and terrible weaknesses. You should ask yourself whether some other medium might be more appropriate. Do you have enough material for a book? Is a book the right format to get that material into your readers’ hands?
| Books’ Strengths | Books’ Weaknesses |
| • durable—can last for centuries | • difficult to update and revise |
| • inexpensive if printed in sufficient quantities | • can be expensive in small quantities |
| • portable | • heavy and bulky in quantity |
| • impressive if designed and edited well | • mortifying if poorly done |
| • long—enough space to thoroughly explore an idea or topic | • long—can seem endless if the idea or topic was more suited to a magazine article |
For a family history, the first item in these lists usually trumps everything else: books are durable.They can be handed from generation to generation as treasured heirlooms in a way that no other available medium can.
Is the Internet an Alternative?
So, what about the Internet as a technological solution? Well, the point about publishing in cyberspace is that it doesn’t give you a book of your own.A virtual book lacks the physical presence that real paper, ink and binding delivers.
However, the Internet can provide a perfect solution for some.You can make your family history available to your family, wherever they may be, at no cost to them. And you can make the history into a living document so that your relatives can update the information.
There are several ways to publish your material on the Internet. For any of them, you’ll need to get some web space, and a web address, from your Internet provider. Almost all Internet accounts come with some space and addresses included. Your options include:
A PDF file: PDF is a file format that allows people to view and print your document the way you intended it to look. When preparing a PDF, you design the pages as you would design book pages. (See Chapter 5 for ideas on page design.) Once the book has been laid out, you use PDF software to convert the file to a PDF.With the PDF file, you in effect upload the book, in book format, to the Internet and just let people download it and print out their own sets of pages. Be sure when creating the PDF that you embed the required fonts, so that it will look the way you intended when people view and print it. An Internet search on “PDF software” will guide you to the latest software for creating PDFs.
An RTF document: Like a PDF, an RTF (Rich Text Format) document will allow any user to download and read your family history. It doesn’t allow for fancy formatting or graphics, but it creates small files, and almost any program on almost any computer system will be able to read it.
A traditional website:There are many software programs that you can use to design and upload your site.Writing for the web is very different than writing a book. In many ways, it is ideal for a family history.You can organize the site like a family tree, and have the user click on each person in the tree for more details—perhaps a bio and some images.You can incorporate search features into the site to help the user find a specific family member or find relatives from a certain