In this series, we’re talking about how to craft your genealogical research into engaging stories to share with family.

• The first post covers the facts, clues, and in-between bits that form the backbone of your story, and you can find it here.

Today we’re looking at the key components to a story. The research, impressions and suppositions you’ve gathered give you a good start, but in order to make it interesting, you will need a Character, a Conflict, and a Cost. To put it another way, successful stories tell of someone who does or experiences something with some significance.

Character

To convert research into stories, you must identify the characters.

Without people, events lack meaning and context. Even in national terms, we mostly vividly remember where we were when we heard the news. We make it personal. To tell interesting stories, we must do the same with our ancestors.