What do you envision when you think about writing a family history? Chances
are your project that you have in mind is too big for you to accomplish which
is why you haven't finished yet, in today's video I'm gonna tell you how to
narrow your scope so you can be successful writing your family history.
Welcome to family history fanatics where we help you understand your DNA climb
your family tree and write your ancestors stories along the way and
chances are you haven't written a family history and published it because your
project is too big. I have heard people say things like "I want to write a family
history that covers four generations of my surname Brown." Wow good luck with that.
And that's just on the lower end of things some people want to go all the
way to their Mayflower ancestor and then write all of those stories for every
generation all the way down to the present, yeah they're not finished yet.
Now some people want to write about eight families from New Haven
Connecticut. Wow yeah, that's pretty big it's pretty
ambitious and I don't think you can't achieve that goal, but if you've never
written a story or you have never finished a story the reason is because
your project is too big. So instead of trying to write this size books perhaps
you want to write this size book or write even a scrapbook where the stories
are even smaller. So let's talk about ways that you can narrow your scope in order
to get a story written and then you can fill shelves and shelves at home of
books about your ancestors. To illustrate my points I'm going to talk to you about
a person that I grew up watching on TV. His name
is Giff Nielsen. So Giff Nielsen was the sports commentator on KHOU in Houston
when I was growing up. Now if I was going to write about death let's just pretend
he's my ancestor if I was going to pick him I have a lot of things I can write
about well first I can talk about the fact that he was a news broadcaster. I
could also talk about the fact that he played for the Houston Oilers, Houston Oilers
Oilers Houston Oilers, oh wait sorry. So he played for the Houston
Oilers for a number of years, I can also write about the fact that he played for
the BYU football team, and now he is devoting his life to be a servant of
Christ and serves in his church. That's a lot and chances are your ancestors have
maybe not as many stories at this Giff Nielsen has, but they have a lot of
stories. So if I were writing about Giff as my ancestor then I'm gonna narrow
down the focus just a little bit and since I enjoyed the Houston Oilers when
I was child let me narrow down to his years and his involvement with the
Houston Oilers. So I can narrow down to what was it like forget you play
quarterback for the Houston Oilers and just focus on those years in fact I can
even just focus on one particular season maybe his last one. The other thing I can
write about is I can write about his role as a sports broadcaster covering
the Houston Oilers. There were two years that the Houston Oilers were part of the
AFC Central Division playoffs but they could never clinch the division
championship or go to the Super Bowl so chances are he has lots of stories of
being a sports commentator covering the team he used to play for or I could talk
about the fact that he was a sports commentator when the Houston Oilers left
Houston and went to Tennessee that was his team that he's covered for
so many years and that's his team when he played for as a professional football
player so I could narrow down to just the year or the few years leading up to
the Oilers leaving and what replaced the void until we now have the Houston
Texans in h-town so I hope you see the benefits of narrowing your scope if
you're going to write a story you need to start with one ancestor and one event
in their life and maybe even a subset of the events in their lives if you do
you'll be far more successful full more tips and tricks on how to write your
ancestor stories check out this playlist here and to see our latest video sign up
here and don't forget to look in the description for a free guide for 5 tips
to start writing about your ancestors quickly