Thinking about a family memoir book? Penning a book about your life can be daunting, and an autobiography is often written in response to a major life accomplishment. But every family has a story to tell, and a family memoir book can be the perfect place to do that. Writing a family memoir book can help you create lasting memories that will stay for generations to come.
- A Meaningful History for Your Family
- 10 Tips for Crafting a Family Memoir Book
- 1. Ask Family Members for Their Story
- 2. Preserve the Stories
- 3. Transcribe or Write the Story Out
- 4. Gather Photographs
- 5. Look for a Logical Organization
- 6. Create a Rich, Multi-media Experience
- 7. Keep the Focus on the Content (and Not the Book Design)
- 8. Use a Traditional Book Size
- 9. Make Creating a Family Legacy the Focus
- 10. Print Copies of Your Family Memoir Book for the Family
A Meaningful History for Your Family
More than a book that tells a single story, a family memoir book is a personal narrative that can help you keep the stories, traditions, memories, and people you love alive on the pages for future family and friends to read and remember. Family memoir books are unique because they have the power to preserve a variety of important events or ideas for future generations to treasure.
Cultural Heritage: A thoughtful way to preserve your family’s history and culture is to document them in a family memoir book. Personal stories, photographs, and interesting anecdotes can be passed down to show their significance to your family.
Family Traditions: Instead of losing heartfelt family traditions with the passage of time, memorialize them in a family memoir book that focuses on them, so your future generations will understand their heritage.
Historical Events: Local, national, and international events can make an impact on your family’s history. A family memoir book that shows the connections between your family and the events they experienced can make a powerful story for future family members to read.
Life Lessons: Passing down personal stories that reveal life lessons in a family memoir book ensures that wisdom will be appreciated and acknowledged.
Personal Memories: Retelling consequential stories acquired over a lifetime on the pages of a family memoir book can be just as meaningful for the reader as it is for the writer.
10 Tips for Crafting a Family Memoir Book
1. Ask Family Members for Their Story
The best place to start is by engaging family members in your project. Tell them about your vision for the book and how their stories and contributions will play a pivotal role in making it a success. Reach out to different generations to encourage them to recall what they know, names, events, and how they felt. Depending on the focus of your memoir, contacting as many people as possible is likely to give you a wide range of content to use in your book’s manuscript.
2. Preserve the Stories
As you discover tales and anecdotes that could be book-worthy, be sure to have a plan to preserve them to use in your family memoir book or to keep safely for any future use.
- Record: The least invasive way to preserve a conversation is with an audio recording. A transcription of the recording can produce a strong basis for parts of your book’s manuscript, making this form of preservation an excellent choice for novice writers.
- Video: Watching a loved one retell a story in their own voice is a precious memory. Creating content for your memoir through videos is an excellent way to learn directly from your ancestors, and videos can be a great resource to use as extra content that can supplement your memoir.
3. Transcribe or Write the Story Out
Once you have a workable amount of family history, stories, and anecdotes, you can begin to put them into story form. Carefully transcribed audio or video can be quickly transformed into chapters or sections of your family memoir. Written portions can be used with appropriate introductions or explanations added to the original writer’s words.
4. Gather Photographs
The best way to capture the essence of the people, traditions, and stories in your family is to curate a selection of photographs. First, ask family members to help. Each person is likely to have a different selection of pictures to choose from, and you may end up hearing some new stories from your family in the process. You can also look for historically preserved pictures in yearbooks, city history, or other places where your family lived and worked. Depending on the focus of your family memoir book, these types of pictures can be an important part of presenting the slice of history that coincides with your family’s story.
5. Look for a Logical Organization
As the content for your family memoir comes together, you must consider how you want to structure the book’s contents.
Year by Year: For clarity, a chronological order may make sense when your book covers a longer time period.
Family Members: Dedicating a chapter or section to each family member can be a smart organization for a memoir that includes multiple family members.
Events: Giving each important event a section or chapter may be the best structure for a memoir that focuses on how specific historical, cultural, or personal events shaped your family.
Travel Adventures: If your family memoir book recalls different travels your family has taken together or separately, you can organize your book geographically or sequentially. You may want to highlight the lessons learned or the significance of each trip, and structure the book to focus on those valuable outcomes.
Childhood and Adulthood: Dividing the book into two simple timeframes allows you to cover lots of content in each section.
Life Lessons and Personal Reflections: These types of memoirs often start with an initial lesson or reflection, and then each one successively builds on the previous lesson.
Traditions: A memoir intended to capture a family’s traditions can be organized thematically, by family member, or by time or season.
Life Milestones: A memoir focused on showcasing important achievements can be organized by family member, chronologically, or by importance of the milestone.
Career Experiences: When writers want to feature a family with notable career accomplishments, chronological order might make the most sense. Another way to highlight meaningful career success is to begin the book with the highest achievement and then skip back to the beginning to explain chronologically how it all came to pass.
6. Create a Rich, Multi-media Experience
A printed book can also include multi-media aspects to extend the reader’s experience beyond the pages of the book. QR codes can be included to reveal video and audio interviews or extra photographs that didn’t make it into the memoir’s printed pages. Website links printed in the memoir can send readers to historical sites, news stories referenced in the book, or even an author’s personal website, where additional content can be found that supports and connects to the memoir.
7. Keep the Focus on the Content (and Not the Book Design)
Don’t get too caught up in crafting the perfect book when you write a family memoir. Your focus should be on writing the stories, collecting the pictures, and reflecting on the heart and soul of the people you are presenting in your memoir. While a beautifully designed book is wonderful, spend the most time on finding, shaping, and presenting the important stories about your family that you want to preserve for the future.
8. Use a Traditional Book Size
Save money and time by choosing a traditional book size. Books that are 5.5 x 8.5 inches are standard for memoirs, and you can easily create a layout and beautiful pages within a book with these dimensions.
9. Make Creating a Family Legacy the Focus
The purpose of writing a family memoir book about your family is to capture the stories, people, and lessons learned by your family in a format that can be passed on to future generations. While you may not consider yourself a professional author, your efforts as a family historian who wants to preserve the family’s legacy are leading you to write and publish this book. Be sure to remember the reason for your efforts and know that your family and future family members will cherish this book for years to come.
10. Print Copies of Your Family Memoir Book for the Family
Most authors don’t write a family memoir book with the hopes of landing on the best seller lists (although it could always happen). Instead, when your book is finished, be sure to make plenty of copies for everyone in your family who contributed to the book or who would love to read about their family’s history and notable accomplishments.
When you partner with a budget-friendly digital printer like Dazzle Printing, you can order small quantities when you need them. If you find more pictures, want to add a new chapter or something notable happens after your book has gone to print, you can update your manuscript and print new copies to keep and distribute, making it possible to update your family memoir book at any time when you work with a digital printing partner like Dazzle Printing on your family memoir.
