A Family History Should Have a PLOT

As author Doug Tattershall reminds us in the Introduction to his new book, Storytelling for Genealogists: Turning Family Lineage into Family History, “We work hard to discover our family tree. But what we [and the people we are writing for] really want to know is our family story.”  To put it bluntly, if you want others to learn about where you and they came from, you must command their attention.  This requires a skill set different from the detective work you used to compile your genealogy.

Fortunately, Mr. Tattershall has assembled the family historian’s skill set into just a few pages, and any conscientious family history-teller can learn to apply those skills when writing her family history. One of the most important skills you’ll want to master is giving your family history a plot, or story line.  Doug Tattershall covers this topic in just two pages. Have a look—