Whether you are planning on publishing your research in a book or online, it is important to first identify your audience. If you are writing a family history to interest your children and grandchildren, then pictures and stories are items which should be included. If your audience is limited to family members, then it is best to keep the story as engaging and simple as possible. Samples of old documents can help bring the narrative alive.

A Family History for Family Members Only

If your audience is limited to family members, then footnotes may not be the best way to go. Now saying this, a list of sources is always good. However, if your work is too academic, then you risk that nobody in the family will ever read it. If your goal is to interest the family in genealogy, then you must write with that specific goal in mind.

A Family History for a Wide Audience

Therefore, it may be wise to create a second, more academic version of your family history, complete with footnotes and bibliography. This can be done in a book or online. By compiling a second version, you can reach people whom you don’t even know exist. This is especially true with an Internet version. In this setting, you will need to back up your research with footnotes, as other people may not see things the way you do. People searching online are already interested and engaged in the research process. You are not trying to create the interest. This audience will need access to your research, thus the need for footnotes, so they can continue their own efforts.

Privacy Issue in Writing Your Family History

The Internet is also a wonderful way to share family pictures and stories. However, be aware that due to privacy issues, you need to be very careful what you put on the Internet about living people. If you are using a database such as FamilySearch or Ancestry, they already have privacy policies in place. If you are developing a personal website, then you will need to be extra careful.

Privacy issues are less important in printed books as those are limited in their distribution and someone will have to go to a particular library to get the information. Even if your book is digitized, as FamilySearch is now doing, then someone would still have to find that particular book and that particular page to obtain personal information on living people.

I suggest that you develop two versions of your written family history side by side. The first for family eyes only; making it simple and engaging. Then a second more academic footnoted version too share with everybody else.

If you would like help developing a family history for publication Contact Us.

We all have stories and they can be amazing teaching tools. However, at another level, these stories need to be documented. Irish culture is well-known for its storytelling as an art form. However, there comes a point where documenting stories develops the narrative itself into a workable framework where in each piece the story can be placed in a historical context. At that point, moral lessons can be preserved, based upon historical facts. This takes the story beyond storytelling, and serves a different purpose. So why do this?

Lies, Truth and Agendas in Stories

When storytelling is not understood as myth, the “facts” presented can often lead to erroneous and harmful conclusions. This is where lies are passed off as truths. While almost everyone accepts that institutions and governments do this on a regular basis; we sometimes forget families also have agendas. Erroneous stories are passed off to justify prejudice, hatred, social status, repression, religious and political agendas, or simply to keep a family member in check. To say erroneous facts can be dangerous is an understatement. Just think of the harm nineteenth century stereotypes about the Irish caused our ancestors.

Family agendas often cover up a wide range of sins. By doing so the status quo is kept intact, reputations preserved and healing never occurs. The paper trail releases the secrecy and allows the flow of what really happened to be unveiled.

Documentation Brings Context to a Story

It is important to take your stories and piece by piece document them. That will not only provide the truth of your family history, but it will also open up new lessons at deeper levels to pass down. For the difference between storytelling and documenting your story, please see my blog “Storytelling as an Art.”

If you would like to document your stories Contact Us.

When storytelling, we gather thoughts and feelings from the decades of experience in order to channel our audience in a particular direction. This is why storytelling is an art. Storytelling can be used to teach, convey values and entertain. Irish culture has historically been famous for storytelling. In an age of “click that button” on the Internet, we are often fuzzy on the difference between storytelling and documenting the story. They are not the same thing, nor do they necessarily serve the same purpose.

Understanding Your Audience

Where many people misunderstand storytelling is they think too literal. They forget about perception. My perception of this event, in this time, at that place, is this way. Now that perception can change over the years. The wisdom in storytelling is identifying your audience and what message you wish to teach. Your details always vary, based upon your targeted audience. So who is your audience? Storytelling to a five year old is not the same as storytelling to an adult.

The understanding of your audience is also crucial to how you approach storytelling. Abuse, neglect, poverty, violence and death can be turned into powerful teaching tools, if approached correctly. By gauging where your audience is at with emotional issues, this allows you to construct the storytelling accordingly. Then through the storytelling, lessons about compassion, faith, endurance and overcoming can replace anger, resentment and bitterness.  At that point, the lesson can override the traumatic events themselves. The events only act as the introduction to the moral lesson.

Storytelling as Myth

The moral lessons are always more powerful than the facts you are presenting in the narrative.

Remember, “unalterable facts” can always be deconstructed by somebody holding a better piece of evidence. Storytelling by its very nature is supposed to be myth. Myth does not always mean untrue or lie. It can be beyond true and false. A good myth holds solid moral lessons which teach, and instruct using storytelling as the matrix to convey deeper meaning. A good myth also stands the test of time. It is not the myth but the message of the myth that fuels the storytelling. This is not hard science and should not be thought of that way.

If you would like to document your stories Contact Us.