Book Review: How to Write Compelling Stories from Family History

How to Write Compelling Stories from Family History. Annette Gendler. Nana’s Books, December 3, 2019, Trade Paperback and E-book, 102 pages.

Reviewed by Deb Lecos.

How to Write Compelling Stories from Family History, is a guide for those who want to pen personal stories for future generations, research and confirm oral lore, and publish a memoir. Her newest book is the successful memoirist’s message to “someday writers,” who might say, “Someday, I’ll write about when I was in the circus or when grandma survived the Great Depression.” Ms. Gendler offers storytelling dreamers a framework for writing worthwhile and inspirational memory-keepers for readers.

The quote that begins the book, by the Maharal of Prague, is a reminder and an invitation: “If you don’t remember your past, you will not be able to adequately assess your present.

If you don’t remember where you came from, you will never be able to judge where you have arrived at.” Memoirs, either reading or writing them, are windows to the past, bread crumbs linking moments with historical relevance to the present day. 

There are two aspects presented by the author for writing a memoir. One is a structural “how to” research approach, with suggestions about where to find information and open-ended questions to ask family members. These are nudges to life-in-the-day historians to reveal their past because, as Ms. Gendler states, “Stories give meaning to traditions.” Included in chapters on research are the author’s successes and missed opportunities as she investigated the life of her Great Aunt Rezi. Each of these as-they-happened accountings gives future family-memoirists areas to focus on and tips for avoiding similar problems.

The other aspect of this book focuses on direct statements about what makes a compelling story. Compelling stories aren’t only tragic, dark, and painful. Even happy, mundane, or seemingly unimportant events can have value for cataloging—followed by a note of caution from the author. “Events that are worth telling are those that were transformative.” An example is a story of a child stealing plastic fangs from a drug store who must face a challenge, have learned something, and been changed by dealing with it. The author adds, “As soon as you find yourself in an ‘and then this happened, and then that happened’ mode, you’re boring.”

Throughout this writer’s guide, the author ends chapters with more than the standard “how-to” prompts. Having read other books on writing memoir, I found this book the best at keeping it simple and clear while giving creative suggestions. I have written memoirs and published true-life essays and still found these prompts providing beneficial, fresh perspective as well as plenty of new information. This book isn’t just for beginners. In my opinion, the advice is helpful for those at every stage of the memoir or fiction writing process. Good fiction also needs to be compelling, well-researched, and believable. 

Along with prompts, the author provides writing samples, her own and others, as tools for the reader to understand concepts on compelling story design. From the first sentence and through the details, including what works and what doesn’t, each example further defines what is compelling and what isn’t. A few years ago, I attended a question-and-answer session with published memoirists. A woman in the audience asked, “I had a happy childhood and a happy adulthood, why can’t I get my happy life memoir published?” One of the authors on the panel replied with a question, “What’s in it for the reader?” The woman was instantly angry, saying, “Oh, I see, you need to be messed up to write a memoir?” Then the panelist gifted her with a two-stage answer that I think encapsulates why it’s advantageous for future memoirists to read Ms. Gendler’s book on writing compelling family history. “It helps . . .” The audience laughed, then the author continued. “. . . Not everything is happy in my life, but maybe it is in yours. I might want to read your book if it has a transformational element that has meaning for me.”