BellaOnline Forums Career Nonfiction Writing Writing Family Histories

How accurate are you when you write family histories? Do you gloss over parts that might upset someone?

I'm not writing an expose, so I don't try to embarrass anyone when I write. I'm writing something to hand down through the generations. When I am given stories, I really like the inspirational ones and don't care about the others. I just want to capture the flavor of the family. I don't want to make myself sound perfect, but I try to present others nicely.

I have collected a lot of information over the years but have not written the family history. Just remember to respect privacy and the feelings of the family members you want to include in your book.

I just went to Memphis for the weekend to tape the stories of my great-aunt and great-uncle, who dated right before WW2 and he then was a trainer of bomber pilots. They have all sorts of stories, and it's not that some are "mean" but there are definitely ones that show the people in funny lights. I will gladly include those in with the rest - because they show that these were real people, with all sorts of different sides to their personalities.

While I love the stories about how she went out to a county in Tennessee to help train housewives how to do family sorts of things, like canning and so on, I also love the other stories. Like when they first met, and she was a passenger in the back of his car, and he drove like a madman over the curbs and down hills to impress his then-girlfriend in the front seat. She was feeling very mature and confident and proper with her new role to be guiding the housewives of america, and here this brash young fighter-pilot-wannabe was driving like a maniac <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I would never not write one thing or many things just because someone or more could be upset. Reality is reality!

Nancy, I know this is an old post but the best thing to do is write about a person's life - their accomplishments. As records are collected, stories around the records are written. For example, if a person was in the military, the story can include when the person served, where, who they may have served with, if they were wounded, medals received, and some other historical facts. The story doesn't have to be dark. We just celebrated the end of WWI and our society traced the stories of a number of the service men who came from this county.