Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
You want to start writing your parent’s story, but aren’t sure how to begin. There’s love and grief. Gratitude and regret. Admiration and resentment. No wonder it’s hard to know where to start.
I’ve seen the overwhelm on the faces of family story writers on their first day. I’m guessing you’ve felt it too. Maybe your parent’s story feels too big, or what you know about them feels too small.
But when you write down a few places that mattered in your parent’s life, your project starts to move forward. The place they were born. Their school or workplace. A place tied to hardship or to joy. Their dining room table.
You don’t need to be clear about the whole story. You just need one place that helps you get a few words on the page.
This post is part of the First Timer Storykeeping Series, designed to help you start writing your family story using the Storykeeping® method.
Get Ready to Write
Capture First, Craft Your Story Second
Before you can start writing, you need a place to write. This is an underrated action step in the writing process. It’s the turning point where you’re no longer just thinking about writing, you’re doing it. Having two places to write will make your writing process easier.
If you’ve already set up your two writing spots, skip to the next section.
Why two writing spots? Because there are two kinds of writing in a family story project.
- Capture is writing down what you already know about your family, like places, names, and events. It also includes writing down questions about what you want to know.
- Craft is using what you’ve captured to write words that become a story.
Set up one place to capture and another to craft.
#1 – Your Home Base for Capturing
It’s much easier to capture what you know once. So set up one writing spot devoted to capturing. This is your Home Base for your family story project, a place you can return to as you write.
I designed the Writing Family History Template, available as a printable PDF or a Google Sheet, to make it easier to set up your Home Base.
The template includes space for your questions and the family details people often want to preserve in a family story: NAMES, PLACES, OBJECTS, EVENTS, TIMELINE. These details help you write your story.
When you capture what you know in your Home Base, you create a meaningful family history document you build on and eventually share with your kids.
But you don’t have to use the template. You can set up your Home Base in any way that works for you.
#2 – Your Notebook for Crafting
Choose one Notebook for writing about your parent’s life. I suggest writing by hand because many people find it easier to get a few words down with a pen than with a keyboard.
Your Notebook is your private space to get messy and explore. Here, you’ll take something from your Home Base and jot a few words about it.
Next, you’ll move to your computer and keep crafting, building on the words you wrote in your Notebook.
If writing by hand isn’t for you, a Word document or Google Doc can serve as your Notebook. Again, choose one spot and stick with it.
If you need more help setting up your writing spots, see How to Write Your Family Story: A Simpler Way to Start.
3 Reasons WHY
A Place Makes it Easier to Write About Your Parent’s Life
Your parent’s life is big. A place is smaller. Starting with one place makes it easier to begin writing your parent’s story. Here are three reasons why.
1. A Place Helps You Access Your Memories
Places can bring to mind rich memories because we form stronger memories in familiar places. These memories often include specific details and feelings you can write about.
You may have two kinds of memories about places in your parent’s life.
- Memories of a place you know firsthand. This may be a home you shared with your parent, a workplace, a grandparent’s apartment, a place of worship, or a place you visited on your own because it mattered to them.
- Memories of a place your parent talked about. This may be where your parents got married, a country they lived in, or the family store. You can write down what your parent told you about that place, and your memories of them talking about it. For example, my mom’s face always lights up whenever she talks about family reunions at her great-grandmother’s home in Roan Mountain.
2. You Can Describe A Place With Your Senses
A place is physical, so you can describe it with your senses.
- What would you see there?
- What sounds would you hear?
- What would the weather feel like?
- What would you eat there?
- What would you smell?
Questions like these can help you get down a few words. Even if you were never there yourself, you can look at a photo, a map, or an online image and jot down a few sensory words.
Pay particular attention to any smells you might find in a place. They often bring vivid, emotional memories. Include the feelings that come to mind when you remember the smell of your mother’s perfume, your dad cutting the grass, or your grandmother baking bread.
3. A Place Can Reveal More About Your Parent
A place can help you understand more than where your parent spent their time. It can help you notice what shaped them as a person.
- Where did they find community?
- Is there a place connected to a particular hardship?
- Is there a place that brought them joy?
Writing about a place that mattered to your parent can also create connection across the generations. When your kids know why a place mattered to your parent, their grandparent, it may matter to them, too.
The places that mattered in your parent’s life can matter to your family, even if you never go there.
Before You Begin Writing
What Kinds of Places Matter?
Before you begin writing, take a quick look at the kinds of places that often matter in a family story. This is a partial list to help you notice. You may have others.
- Birth — at home, a hospital, or somewhere else
- Childhood — home, family gathering places, or summer places
- School — college, or other education that shaped their life
- Workplace — one or two workplaces, if you know them
- Community — house of worship, a place where they found their people
- Burial place — cemetery name and plot location, if you know it
- A place tied to hardship — during war, injury, illness, or another difficult time
- A place tied to joy — where they celebrated, found peace, or felt most alive
💡 Quick Tip: Don’t try to list every place that mattered in your parent’s life. You only need one to start writing.
Let’s Write Your Story
Start With Places
Choose one parent to focus on for this activity. Start with whoever feels easiest to write about. You can always repeat this activity for your other parent.
Step 1: Capture Places in Your Home Base (5 min)
Write in the PLACES section of your Home Base. Write the name of the parent you are focusing on, then use the prompt below to get started.
- Set a timer: 5 minutes
- Write down: Places that mattered in their life.
- Write what you already know. A country, state, or city. If you know a street address of a home or family business, write it down.
Done. Now you have a short list of places you can return to anytime.
Step 2: Jot About One Place in Your Notebook (5 min)
Choose one place from your Home Base and write it at the top of a page in your Notebook. Then use the prompt below to begin.
- Set a timer: 4 minutes
- Prompt: What comes to mind about this place?
- Jot down: Words and phrases that come to mind about this place.
- No need to polish anything. You’ll do that later. Just get whatever is in your mind down on the page, even if you go off-topic.
- Review: 1 minute. Read what you wrote like a gentle, curious reader. What do you notice? Jot down a few more words. If you notice a feeling, name it.
🌟Optional: Repeat with another parent, or another place.
💡Be Aware: More may come to mind when you walk, drive, do household tasks, or take a shower. Jot it down, even if you’re not sure it belongs in your story.
Next Steps
What Feels Easiest?
Take a moment to notice what you’ve accomplished today.
- For first-time writers: You set up your two writing spots and wrote a few words in your Notebook. Your parent’s story is underway.
- For continuing writers: You captured more of what you know about your parent in your Home Base and wrote a few words in your Notebook. You made meaningful progress in 10 minutes.
Choose whatever feels easiest to do next.
Stop for Today
If you are out of time or energy, stop and feel good about what you’ve done. Come back another day and continue writing your parent’s story.
Capture More of What You Know
If you’d like to keep going, consider writing down any questions you have about the places you’ve just written about. Questions can help you write, even if you never find all the answers.
Below is a list of categories you can choose from. Click one for step-by-step guidance.
Share With Someone
You’ve already shared with one person: you. This may have been the first time you’ve written about your family’s past, so pause to recognize this moment.
If you want, you can also share what you wrote with a child, your spouse or partner, your sibling, or someone else in the family. You can read from your Notebook or tell it from memory. Family story writers often tell me how much they’ve enjoyed the conversations that follow when they share.
Subscribe below to receive our Story Starter Workbook, a simple guide to help you keep taking small, meaningful steps in writing your parent’s story.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs
Start with whoever feels easiest to write about. I suggest you focus on one parent’s story at a time, unless their lives were intertwined from a young age, in which case you can switch back and forth between them.
Not yet. Keep time and place separate for now. While chronology can help jog your memory, it is also more likely to interrupt your flow of thoughts. Just list the places. Later, you’ll make a timeline.
The activity will take no more than 15 minutes from start to finish. If this is your first time here and you’re setting up your writing spots, it may take you a little longer.
That’s okay. Write down what you know and leave the rest blank. Jot your questions in the QUESTIONS section of your Home Base so you can come back to them later.
That’s okay. Sometimes it takes time to understand what’s meaningful. When you start writing your parent’s story, it doesn’t have to be the most important place, just one that helps you get words on the page. Often, those first words lead to more. Next, try another category such as NAMES, OBJECTS, EVENTS, or QUESTIONS. You’ll find links to those guides above.
You can still write about the place. For example, you can recall things your parent said about it, notice details in a family photo, or look up a map or photo online and write about what you observe.
That’s okay. You don’t need to think of yourself as a writer to do this. Just write like you speak. Your kids will enjoy hearing your voice in your stories.
Photo credits: Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.
