The Pre- Family History Writing Challenge: Storyboarding, Outline & Timeline

Two resources yet to be found...

After work today, I started thinking about what might still be missing from my writing sources and came up with three:

1. an email to my husband's siblings detailing the conversation between myself and Cousin Hattie (or the original notes...if they still exist),
2. a portfolio of poetry I wrote for my final project in Advanced Composition: Poetry back in the early 1980s, and
3. photos from this period.

After sorting through sixteen plastic file boxes, I found other bits of memorabilia that will assist me, but these remain the illusive pieces yet to be recovered. Only three more containers to go, and if they're not there, they could be amid the stacks of moving boxes. 

However, I am determined to locate them by the end of tomorrow to be ready for the start of the Family History Writing Challenge on February 1st!

W Storyboard Three Act Structure

5 Islands: 

I came across this video last year during the Challenge, and have decided to use it to help organize my writing. I found it very helpful in placing the major events of my memoir along the story line. Take a look and see if it might not help you as you begin planning your family history book.

Below is how I have initially structured my memoir.

You can see that it acts as a means of outlining the sequence of events.

Act I

1.Triggering Event

Setting up the Problem:

2. First Turning Point

Recovering from the Problem:

• Hattie's call
• The family reunion
• Piney Grove
• The promise

Act II 

3. Second Triggering Event

Back Story:

Deepening of the Problem:

4. Lowest Point in the Book: Worst case scenario

• The prayer
• The harbinger
• Living with death
• The anniversary

Solving the Problem (new light, understanding, change)

Complication

Act III 

5. Resolution or Epiphany Moment

• Present, past and future sight
• Learning from Job 
• Slowly fading 
• Branching out

Timeline

Since the major events of the memoir take place between the years 1990-2009, a period of nineteen years, I have not yet generated a timeline of events. The detail over a shorter time period is astounding; and for that reason, I will work on it as I develop each Act. In that way, I will create three timelines more focused on each island I will be writing.

I hope you'll stop by each day and see the progress I am making, as I participate in The Family History Writing Challenge 2013!