Improve your family history by writing it with your family (instead of alone)

Writing alone in scholarly style is the hardest way to write genealogy. Write along with your family to keep it easy and fun.

Writing family history is hard.

Writing family history is so hard that out of the millions of genealogists building their family trees, less than 500 family history books are published each year.¹ Most family history remains on genealogy websites, personal computers, or paper files, usually disorganized and incomplete.

What makes family history writing hard is genealogists try to do it alone.

Family history writing is easier when it is done alongside family, the target readers, rather than alone at a computer.

DALLE prompt “A female genealogist writing her family history, accompanied by four other family members of varying ages. The scene is set in a Victorian steampunk style.”

You shouldn’t write alone

We’ve all grown up with the idea that writing involves locking ourselves alone in a room, furiously typing away for weeks or months, and emerging with perfectly written pages. The idea of the lonesome writer is persistent in our culture.

Writing alone means that you are writing for an audience of one - yourself. This means that the focus is on you, the writer, and your interests. There is nothing wrong with following and expressing personal interest. But if your goal is to produce something your family treasures and shares, then the focus should be on writing with your family, not at them.

Said another way: Family history is written for family, not just about family.

Scholarly writing is a slog

Most genealogists write family history in formal, scholarly prose. They believe that their job is to compile every fact, and cite those facts in footnotes. They produce dozens of pages of neatly formatted text, and no images of the cited records are included. Readers are expected to look up the records on their own.

This scholarly writing approach is perfect for academic-like journals, but for your aunt or grandfather? Absolutely not. This approach makes reading family history a real slog. Your family will get through a page or two, then put it down.

Reading scholarly writing is dull, and the process of writing it is equally as painful for the genealogist. This style is unnatural, stiff, and boring.

A better way in today’s digital-first age is to write family history with your family and in a style they enjoy.

DALLE prompt “A female genealogist completely alone, writing her family history in isolation. She is surrounded by a chaotic mess of papers and files strewn about.”

Write how family likes to read

Here’s a harsh, but true fact: few people outside your family are going to read your family history.

It doesn’t matter how outrageous the events, the demographics of the people, or where it all happened. The audience for your personal family history is your family. The people that you know and love.

Your parents, children, siblings, cousins, etc are your target readers for your genealogy writing. So write in a way that works for them, not in the style for scholarly publication.

Write with family in mind, not at them as an after-thought.

Ways to write with family members

Today’s digital connections allow us to share immediately and easily. Each of the suggestions below leans on using technology to assemble and share, and get reactions as you work.

Share what is found as you research

Genealogists recognize the importance of writing what is found during the research process in research logs. Share these findings, along with an image, as you go. It doesn’t matter how boring you feel the information is, it is all new for them. A brief sentence or two of writing may be all you need to spark interest.

Write a chronicle

When you come across an event in an ancestor’s life and want to provide a story with historical context, stop researching and write 150 -300 words about it. Start your story by dropping your family into the middle of the action and make them feel as if they were there. More about chronicles.

Publish in private first and ask for comments

Avoid publishing your first writings on your family history on a publicly accessible blog.

When genealogists publish full posts on blogs anyone can read, it gives the appearance that the writing process is finished. Blog posts are neatly formatted, usually over 700 words (and often closer to 1,500 for family history), and include several images. Family who read these posts assume there is no contribution they can make to what is posted.

Additionally, if they did want to provide additional information or perhaps a correction, commenting on a blog post is done in public. Many people are shy about sharing their thoughts and feelings publicly for anyone to see.

It’s better to publish your first writings in private either through a Facebook private group or a shared GoogleDoc (or any other type of place you can control who sees your writing), and ask family to comment there.

By keeping the first round of publishing private, it’s clear who can view the writing and everyone usually knows who everyone else is. In this way, people feel free to speak and to share their thoughts and feelings on their family history.

Have lots of phone calls

For some of your family members, writing is a real chore. But they are willing to talk with you and share their reactions to what you wrote.

Set up regular phone calls weekly or every other week while you are writing family history. Discuss what they read and be ready to learn how to adjust to make things even better for them.

DALLE prompt “A split image with two contrasting scenes in an exaggerated Victorian steampunk aesthetic.”

You’ll never want to write alone again

Once you’ve begun sharing what you wrote in small published pieces and getting reactions to them, you’ll wonder why anyone locks themself away to write.

Your writing done with family will be far superior in multiple ways:

You’ll be able to find out what people liked the most

Family will react to what they read and will suggest things they want to see and learn more about. You’ll be able to provide that and further increase their interest in their ancestors.

You’ll get more details about your ancestors

Your cousins, siblings, and parents all have different backgrounds and memories of people and places. They’ll be able to make contributions to your work by sharing what they know. Perhaps they’ll even have the information to break down your research brick walls.

You’ll find out what confused people

You’ve been seeped in your family history research for years, but your readers will be finding out much of this for the first time. Take note of where they get lost in the history and what additional information you need to provide. It could be about the records themselves, local history, or cultural and religious practices. Whatever it is, putting in the right amount of details so family feels informed, and not bored, is crucial.

Stop making it hard

Writing family history doesn’t have to be overwhelmingly hard. The millions of genealogy enthusiasts researching today can all write and publish their family history, when they do it using the chronicle method with family all along the way.

1. Estimate based on family history books published on Lulu.com, the top independent publisher of family history, for first quarter of 2024, then extrapolated out for a year.