Book creation programs

[pharmaT]

PharmaT, I also think you should go ahead and get on with it. Many of the stylistic beliefs of my school days have been blown away in the light of modern trends. Even going back to World War One, look at the work of e e cummings, who almost single-handedly tried to abolish the use of capital letters.

I often think of what I was taught in my years in the Cadet Force about making a presentation. I was told you should stand, almost to attention, with your hands clasped behind your back, and never gesticulate. These days presenters seem to try and communicate more by their gesticulations, than by their speech.

If you were really worried about what your daughter would think, you could always get a friend to proofread your Final Draft.

Martin

I'm more worried her friends humiliate her if they see it.  She has been bullied at school by a girl who delights in telling her she'll never succeed because of her background.  She even told people that I was completely illiterate (the girl not my daughter) and I was offered literacy courses so I could help with homework.

[Mart 'n' Al]

Friends don't humiliate you. Your daughter should compile a list of people from working class, or uneducated backgrounds who have made a great success of themselves. I went to a good school and got qualifications, and hardly excelled myself during a 40 year working career. I know many people who started as Barrow boys and ended up as millionaires.

Martin

[cristeen]

I set about 'writing' the family history about four years ago. I had researched for over fifteen years and wanted to find a way of presenting the information in a reasonably accessible form and to set it in some historical/social context.
I explored various prepublished programs but ended up using Word, producing a document for each family in the pedigree. I included maps, images of buildings (homes/churches/workplaces etc), newspaper articles, images cropped from census returns, parish registers etc.
I found Word to be pretty flexible in it's ability to arrange images and text. My contents page consists of a list of the family pages, followed by a 5 generation pedigree for that line which acts as a 'map' to the contents. It has taken many hours and I refined my approach as I went along (meaning that I have revisited the first line I tackled and revised the documents to reflect the final line) but I now have four 'books' for each main line which can be readily adapted to include information discovered in the future.
I have attached an image of what a family word document looks like.

[CarolA3]

PharmaT, you're a university graduate which is more than I am

You writing style on here is an shining example of literacy and lucidity (especially when compared with the incoherent ramblings of some others, whose contributions I avoid).

The 'teacher' who said those cruel words to you should not have been in the profession.  Maybe she couldn't accept that you were brighter than her.  Whatever.  Her problem, not yours.

Please do the book.  Your daughter will love it and it's no-one else's business.

Carol

[mike175]

Martin,
Since you asked, I am inclined to agree that your example is a little over-fictionalised for my taste. I try to stick to the facts as far as possible and where I do make assumptions I say so in the text. But it is a personal thing so really anything goes unless you plan to publish it as a factual account 

PharmaT,
I agree that you should carry on with the book. Your postings on RC would suggest you are far from illiterate: your spelling, grammar and punctuation are certainly better than most    and your posts are always easy to read and understand.

Mike.

[Berlin-Bob]

There are several topics on RootsChat about how to write a family chronicle.

Some of the topics are collected here:
RootsChat Topics: Organising and Presenting your Family History
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=158638.0

In ths topic,
Topic: Writing a book?
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=777477.0
i mentioned a useful internet article about styles of writing

I once saw an interesting article about writing a family history, but unfortunately the web-link doesn't work any more.

Here is a short summary.

The author (Margaret Anne Storey) listed 5 ways of writing a book:

• 1. Standard Data:
  Example: "William Smith was born in 1652 in Little Dribbling" - Absolute Minimum => BORING !!!
  
  
• 2. Expanded:
  

  you will need to do a lot of research into your ancestor’s occupation, the village he lives in, his neighbours, the climate etc. It is probably the most acceptable as far as what most people expect a family history to be.

  "The old stone church sat high on the hill. The gravestones all around showed evidence of it's past, and of that of the villagers who had once lived in Little Dribbling"
  
  
• 3. Very expanded:  like 2. plus a bit of imagination !
  Example: The Smith family approached the old church, high on the hill. The baby, wrapped in an old christening dress, lay cradled in her mother's arms. It was 1652.
  
  
• 4. From the author's point of view: (as if you were there)
  "I slowly climbed the hill, to the old stone church. The gravestone nearby told me a tale of a byegone age, that of my ancestors".
  
  
• 5. Fiction + Fact = Faction: Facts + Imagination in the form of a novel. This is probably the most difficult: you are leaving the path of the proven facts and adding a lot of imagination and speculation.
  - will the relatives like this ?
  - more important: will it be fun for you ?
  
  

As a "technician" I can write reports fairly easily but I find it hard to write about non-technical subjects.  My website/family chronicle is written mainly in style 1 - standard data - with occaisional excursions into style 4 - "I .." where I also include information about the search itself for information. Now and again I'll add some of my speculations as well (style 5)

A useful help here (for style 3-5) are "biographies as novels". The authors will often take known utterances of 'public' people (from diaries, letters, and other publications) and weave them into (fictitious) dialogues. i.e. they did actually say this, but in another setting ! If you have diaries, letters and other documents of your ancesters, you could build them into your narritive here.

Martin is definitely doing style number 5, but as i also said there,

- will the relatives like this ?
- more important: will it be fun for you ?

Bob

[pharmaT]

My plan was to discuss how I came to conclusions and background to their lives.  For example: the McCorgrays first appear on Scottish records in 1851 giving birthplace in Ireland.  A marriage in 1855 specifies a birthplace of Donaghmore parish Donegal which helped me find land records which gave me the townland.  Year of birth is estimated based on ages in census, marriage and death.  As the move coincides with the famine and increase in emigration from Ireland and their arrival in Scotland coincided with new pits being sunk in the town and new rows being built, I was planning to discuss the likely causes of them leaving Ireland and likely reasons for their choice of place to move to.

[Greensleeves]

Martin, we might have a family link here as my father's families (Sedgwick/Sidgwick and Shadforth) came from Co Durham and more recently from Hartlepool and later, Middlesbrough.  My great uncle Walter Sedgwick (1880-1961) married Mary Mowbray James, daughter of William E James and Lavinia Mowbray of Hartlepool.

Regards
GS

[Mart 'n' Al]

GS, I'm only on my small tablet at present, but my great grandmother, Kate Loughborough was the granddaughter of Elizabeth Mowbray & George Loughborough. Elizabeth had a brother, James, who had a daughter by Mary Butcher, who I seem to have, recorded as Levina Mowbray, b1862. Could that be your Lavinia? I haven't followed her family down.  More tomorrow.

Martin