Write Lightning is a blog from writer Deb Thompson.
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Thu, Apr 15 2010
When a main character takes a back seat to the ancestors
My husband found a bit of genealogical information for me tonight that I had tried to obtain in earlier years with no success. It appears that there are a great deal more records online nowadays than even just a few years ago. If I had been writing a family history I would have been better off to wait until now. And I suppose there will be another whole round of census records available soon. Some of us may find that we have whole branches of family that we never knew existed, giving us a sort of new identity and maybe the notion that our own life holds more depth because of it.
If you write fiction, have you ever written a genealogy for your characters? I tried doing this a few years ago. I wrote several details about the main character's mother and was having a great time. The mother began to take on quite a life of her own. One afternoon it occurred to me that maybe I should have written the story about the mother in the first place. I suppose the danger in these sorts of exercises is that writers find we've been telling the wrong story altogether. Still, it's certainly best to know that before traipsing too far down the wrong fictional path, now isn't it?
posted at: 22:01 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry
My husband found a bit of genealogical information for me tonight that I had tried to obtain in earlier years with no success. It appears that there are a great deal more records online nowadays than even just a few years ago. If I had been writing a family history I would have been better off to wait until now. And I suppose there will be another whole round of census records available soon. Some of us may find that we have whole branches of family that we never knew existed, giving us a sort of new identity and maybe the notion that our own life holds more depth because of it.
If you write fiction, have you ever written a genealogy for your characters? I tried doing this a few years ago. I wrote several details about the main character's mother and was having a great time. The mother began to take on quite a life of her own. One afternoon it occurred to me that maybe I should have written the story about the mother in the first place. I suppose the danger in these sorts of exercises is that writers find we've been telling the wrong story altogether. Still, it's certainly best to know that before traipsing too far down the wrong fictional path, now isn't it?
posted at: 22:01 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry
