Preserving History

@kaya-young

First of all, yes this is a cool idea! And I definitely think that there would be other people in your local area who would find it interesting! I’m not sure what it’s like in America, but in Australia local and family history is very big and a lot of people write books on it. They can be very interesting if they’re well written!

I think the writing style should be relaxed and informal, but very informative and interesting. I’ve never tried to write nonfiction beyond short articles or essays, so I probably wouldn’t be the best person to talk to about this, but I always enjoy nonfiction when it’s written in an engaging and informal way, more like it’s being a family anecdote being told to you, rather than a history text book.

Interviewing isn’t really my forte either, but I did something similar to this a few years ago. it was a novel, but I set in my tiny little country town, and what I did was write an article in the local paper asking if anyone who had information about that time period would like to contact me to tell me a bit more about it. I got a lot of responses to that, and I arranged to meet a lot of these people, and they’d just tell stories and give me books or articles and such. I think that if there’s specific things you’d like to know, ask them, but for the most part, just let them talk and recount things, because most people will be completely happy to do that, and it will give you ideas you might never have thought of! You could try something similar and get people other than your grandparents involved and get their perspective on the same things, or other things, since everyone has a different life to live.

I hope that’s helpful!

I think you can check out some autobiographies or biographies that people have wrote about their own families to see if anyone has a writing style that is effective and suits your vision.

However, a major challenge I think you are likely to face would be finding a way to approach this task and present the information you find. Especially if you want to gather the different perspectives about different things from many different people. You may have trouble coming up with specific interview questions to ask without some idea as to how you want to write your book.

Just a few suggestions you may want to consider if you do encounter this issue:

1) Maybe you can write a book with one chapter dedicated to one person you interview and ‘connect’ them together. So maybe you start with your grandfather and talk about his life and you mention him and your grandmother together in one scene. Then in the next chapter you write the same scene but from your grandmother’s perspective this time and then go into detail about her own life and the people she knows. At the end you will have a book that showcases your local history and the vibrant relationships within your community.

2) Choose some specific events or things from your local history to write about in each chapter. For example, I read a biography about one of the politicians in my country. Basically it was just a dialogue script between him and the interviewers. But each chapter of dialogue covered a specific theme (his childhood, his marriage, why he believes in a certain ideal or policy etc.). You can do the same by choosing to cover certain things you feel are particularly interesting or important about your town’s history. For example, you can devote one chapter to the one room schoolhouse and put everything your interviewees said about it there. Another chapter can be about the day the town first got electricity…

I hope you find this helpful. Your idea sounds very interesting! I’ll love to see what you come up with!

@kaya-young Great idea! I’ve been thinking about doing this as well, because my grandpa can trace our family history back to the the first settlers who came to America from Ireland and it would be nice to have it written down.

I agree with @seekjustice on the relaxed writing style. I find that historical books written in a storytelling-type voice are more engaging while still being able to convey the facts. You could even write a chapter or two as a story from your grandparents’ point of view (as long as you make it clear that part is dramatized.)

As for interviewing…I guess I don’t know any tricks. I’ve found that if my grandparents (or just about anyone) know they’re being interviewed, they’re less relaxed and more stiff. It’s kinda tricky.

Well, good luck. I hope it turns out!

@kaya-young

*Cups hands to ears* I hear…something!!!

No worries! I hope you work something out 😀