02 Structure - Plan to Publish

I think of the structure for my book as the skeleton that the flesh of the story is going to be attached to.

With my two books that I'm working on, I'm really lucky that the reprint of the family history already has an established structure, we're just updating it.

However for some of my clients we are starting from scratch. The best way I've found to get started is to take a descendant report from our family history software and use this as the structure for the family narrative.

For those that only have their tree online e.g. at Ancestry, then there is an intermediate step of transferring your tree via a GEDCOM file to family history software and then creating your reports. If that seems to difficult, talk to us about helping you to convert your family tree.

For the second book I am working on, about the ships my family came to New Zealand on, because this is going to be a photo book, I'm using the My Story - Planner and Template to plan the books structure.

We have some more thoughts about Structure in our free guide. 

Download the Plan to Publish 02 guide for free (you get all the guides together).

We've also set up a Plan to Publish - Your Family History Facebook group where you can join like minded family historians. We hope that by declaring what you plan to do and working with others we can share our ideas, struggles and keep each other on track.

Find us on Pinterest.

Plan to Publish is a 12 step programme to publishing your family history by the end of the year. 

What sort of family history is totally up to you, but the aim is to get some of your research off the shelves and out of the computer and to create something to share with your family.

Blog Posts on other steps can be found here:

01 - Plan