Don’t tell the story, show it
I had started writing by telling the stories. After completing February’s Writing Challenge, I have learnt to show my stories.
What’s the difference? Lynn Palermo explains it as follows.
Showing
“Showing is when we let the reader experience things for themselves. So rather than telling the reader about a particular event in your ancestor’s life, you are going to show it. Think of showing like time travel. For a few minutes in your story, the reader time travels to a particular event and experiences it alongside the ancestor. They are there, feeling it and living it. It feels real.
When showing, you can hear your ancestor’s thoughts, as well as see, smell, hear, tasteand feel what she does. You can see what’s around the ancestor. When you are writing about an event, ask yourself, if I timed travelled, what would I experience. That’s how you should write it.”
Telling
“If showing presents evidence to the reader of an event and allows them to draw their own conclusions, telling dictates a conclusion to the reader, telling them what they believe. It states a fact.”
Example: See my revised story “Jack loses his love”. The original version was a ‘telling’ and now it is ‘showing’.
Writing a family story is something I have always wanted to do.
I hope that I will be able to do the same sometime soon.
I will keep coming back to your notes for help.
Hello Steven here, just woke up! Getting very tired. As I suggested in my email to ‘show’ some of your stories would be interesting to most of the readers as I don’t think many would have seen a census return nor maybe a death certificate. Ancestry now has published wills as well, not in a very entertaining form but still some of the facts Ancestry now ads include the books from which taken. I find some of these photos works of art in themselves, especially the very old ones.
Other sources, of course, is Google Map and just googling an address can sometimes throw up old photos of buildings.
Also, fit in a bit of history of places with photos, in my case, one branch of my family came from Pembroke Dock. This place should have been built in Milford Haven as that estuary is one of the naturally deepest in the UK, but by cheat/error, it was built on the other side of the estuary known then as Paterland. They started to build it in 1804 from memory for the purpose of building ships and during the wars was a destination for soldiers, so loads of barracks and an internment camp to boot. The first Royal Yaughts were built there, as it was a Royal Dockyard. All of these facts I can find photos or references to, including old maps. They call Pembrokeshire ‘Little England’ and it is, King Henry VII was born in Pembroke, the first Tudor King.
Sorry rambling on now. All the best Steven
Thanks for your suggestion to show some source documents. I hadn’t thought of that.
I could include snippets of specific interest, photos of ancestors handwriting and perhaps some objects. There is also some video footage to show.