Cheryl wrote: >I've been working on a biography of my 3rd gr grandfather who served in the Civil War who was captured at the Battle of Chickamauga and sent to Libby prison. >What I did was construct a very detailed time line of his experiences in the Civil War using county clerk records, his military file, his pension file, a regimental history of his unit and his diary of his experiences while a prisoner in Libby prison. I also took notes of the Libby prison system itself, studied histories, etc., etc. > I want to share this with my peers, posterity and other relatives. I want to make it flow, keep it enjoyable to read and have certain details in it. My problem is I can't seem to stop the project. Cheryl, the most important element in our effort to "make it flow and keep it enjoyable to read" is this: Don't adhere to that timeline! A chronology of everything we know about a person is essential in the research phase. Assembling all our research notes in chronological order is the way we see gaps in our research, the way we see overlap in associations, and many other important patterns. But following that chronology at the writing stage creates the kind of droning account that suffers from what writing teachers call "the notecard syndrome." When we start to write we need to think about those *patterns.* We need to appraise what kind of man he was, what motivated him, what handicapped him. We need to think about what each event in his life meant to him and his family--whether he participated actively or passively. We consider how each event affected them, and how he responded to each. The themes we define for him from these patterns of his life should determine how we structure the narrative and how we put what we know about him into a meaningful context. >I have about 17 pages written on his biography so far. What I am wondering is "how much is enough or how much is too much?" This is a tough question that prompts an easy answer: Just write whatever it takes to tell his story! When you do a biography, you're not doing a journal article or entering a contest in which you have arbitrary page-count limits. If you feel more is needed to do justice to his story, add it. Just don't get bogged down in minutiae that is not relevant to his story. (And DON'T let yourself fall into the old rut of saying: "On the 1830 census, he had x-number of people in his household in the age bracket A-B, and y people aged C-D, and z-people aged E-F; and on the 1840 census, he had q-people aged L-M . . . . " The moment we do that, our narrative loses ALL our non-genealogist cousins!) Elizabeth --------------------------------------------- Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG www.HistoricPathways.com www.EvidenceExplained.com & for daily tips on records, record usage, and historical writing: www.Facebook.com/EvidenceExplained.com

Elizabeth, I am so glad you picked up on this.  I did explain some about the census records and how I used them to track his whereabouts through the decades, also showing his property ownership.  And I will now want to change some of this so as not to lose the non-genealogist cousins.   I have broken his life down into topics, such as religion (he was an intinerant preacher), education, so on and so forth.   I like that you said: "think about those *patterns.* We need to appraise what kind of man he was, what motivated him, what handicapped him. We need to think about what each event in his life meant to him and his family--whether he participated actively or passively."  That is what I truly want to bring out.  I want my relatives to know the kind of man he was.   So I guess what I need to really pay attention to is to not get (as you so eloquently put it) "bogged down in minutiae that is not relevant to his story."  And to "not adhere to that timeline."   I appreciate your advice.  Thank you and have a Merry Christmas!   Cheryl Proctor ________________________________ From: eshown <eshown@comcast.net> To: cmproctor1@frontier.com; 'Harold Henderson' <librarytraveler@gmail.com>; 'Debra Hoffman' <dalhoffman@gmail.com> Cc: 'TGF Mailing List' <transitional-genealogists-forum@rootsweb.com> Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 8:49 PM Subject: RE: [TGF] Applying Harold Henderson's "Why We Don't Write, and How We Can" Cheryl wrote: >I've been working on a biography of my 3rd gr grandfather who served in the Civil War who was captured at the Battle of Chickamauga and sent to Libby prison. >What I did was construct a very detailed time line of his experiences in the Civil War using county clerk records, his military file, his pension file, a regimental history of his unit and his diary of his experiences while a prisoner in Libby prison.  I also took notes of the Libby prison system itself, studied histories, etc., etc. > I want to share this with my peers, posterity and other relatives.  I want to make it flow, keep it enjoyable to read and have certain details in it.  My problem is I can't seem to stop the project. Cheryl, the most important element in our effort to "make it flow and keep it enjoyable to read" is this: Don't adhere to that timeline! A chronology of everything we know about a person is essential in the research phase. Assembling all our research notes in chronological order is the way we see gaps in our research, the way we see overlap in associations, and many other important patterns. But following that chronology at the writing stage creates the kind of droning account that suffers from what writing teachers call "the notecard syndrome."  When we start to write we need to think about those *patterns.* We need to appraise what kind of man he was, what motivated him, what handicapped him. We need to think about what each event in his life meant to him and his family--whether he participated actively or passively. We consider how each event affected them, and how he responded to each.  The themes we define for him from these patterns of his life should determine how we structure the narrative and how we put what we know about him into a meaningful context. >I have about 17 pages written on his biography so far.  What I am wondering is "how much is enough or how much is too much?"  This is a tough question that prompts an easy answer: Just write whatever it takes to tell his story!  When you do a biography, you're not doing a journal article or entering a contest in which you have arbitrary page-count limits. If you feel more is needed to do justice to his story, add it. Just don't get bogged down in minutiae that is not relevant to his story. (And DON'T let yourself fall into the old rut of saying: "On the 1830 census, he had x-number of people in his household in the age bracket A-B, and y people aged C-D, and z-people aged E-F; and on the 1840 census, he had q-people aged L-M . . . . " The moment we do that, our narrative loses ALL our non-genealogist cousins!)  Elizabeth --------------------------------------------- Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG http://www.historicpathways.com/ http://www.evidenceexplained.com/ & for daily tips on records, record usage, and historical writing: www.Facebook.com/EvidenceExplained.com