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Was Aunt Sally right about Uncle Bobby?

It is always useful to know what you want to write about before you put pen to paper.

This is particularly important when you set out to write a family history. For families are a deadly web of relationships. Some are benign, others not.

Add in sibling rivalry, inattention, or indifference and the results can be confusing, chaotic or deadly, depending on whoever has taken umbrage, or suddenly awoken from a long slumber of self-denial or fantasy.

Consider how when a group of people witness a car accident their accounts of a definite incident that happened before their eyes can be at variance with one another.

Then consider how opinion long encased in memory can be a touch point for argument.

An ability to walk on egg shells is a useful one for the family historian.

To narrow the parameters a little for yourself as the writer of the family history you must choose what you will write about and adhere to that.

With that in mind, are you to write mostly about a particular person, an iconic figure, a branch of the family or the extended clan?

As the author, you choose a focus for your family history book, assuming you have not given a fortune to hostage by declaring you will write about everyone, dead or alive.

Before you take to writing a draft it will help if you sketch out a rough line of progress. A definite plan can help you to concentrate on a single person, family limb, or place.

A place could be a home, a farm, a village wherein the principal characters dwelt at some stage --- or any common denominator of merit.

You also need to decide on a timeline for the family history. It is fine to go back to the dawn of mankind if you so choose; but you need to choose the point at which you will fill in details of your family’s history.

You do so for two reasons, at least.

The first is to put a beginning and an end to your account. You may dance with the story within these parameters. You can even refer to a time before or after the period you have chosen, however briefly.

But, you will be able to put manners on your research. All else you will have to put to one side.

Say a named person buys their first motor car from a used-car dealer. If you have the historical details settled in your mind you will be able to reflect on the significance of the purchase. Was it wild and extravagant, or prudent and far seeing? Or, was it a huge adventure of the time?

The second reason is so that you may remain sane as family skeletons and quiet triumphs tumble from the cupboard in surprising quantities.

Human beings have a tendency to shoot the messenger at times. Just be careful that you duck before the shooting begins.

And keep notes for future researchers.

© Brendan Nolan 2009
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