How to Complete Your Online Chapters
written by: the Write Your Life team | 29 May 2017
Online Chapters provide you with the framework to produce a well organised and fascinating record of your life story. By taking a moment to think about your approach, your writing process can run more smoothly.
Before you make a start your Online Chapters, a good idea is to have a notebook or exercise/lesson book that you use to take notes as you go through the process. You can even divide the book up into different areas of your life - maybe by decade, or however makes sense to you. Undoubtedly as you are writing about one life experience you will be reminded of others, so to avoid getting distracted or veering off track, you can simply write a few sentences in the appropriate section of your notebook to remind yourself later.
First, read through the questions in all the Online Chapters you are completing. You will find that some questions are briefly touched on in one chapter, and then delved into more deeply in another chapter. For example, in the age-group chapters, broad questions are asked like “did you get married”, “did you have children”, “did you travel overseas”, however these questions are expanded on in great detail within the chapters that specifically cover those areas. As you read through the questions you may want to write in your notebook reminders of where certain subjects will fit into your Online Chapters.
When you start answering questions, remember that if you don’t know the answer to a question, or it is not relevant to you, or if you just don’t want to answer it, leave it blank. Any questions left blank will be completely removed from your final document. It is important to remember that the questions are simply prompts to encourage memories, you shouldn’t feel that you need to answer them all. This is your story, and you decide what you want to record.
Don’t hesitate to ask family or friends for their memories of certain times or events. Usually they will have a different perspective, or additional memories to your own. This is a great opportunity to reconnect with family and friends, to reminisce and open the conversation about shared past experiences. There will certainly be some areas of your story where you will need the help of either photographs or input from family and friends, such as your younger years.
When considering what information is relevant to include, try thinking of what you would find most interesting about the lives of your own Grandparents. You don’t need to write every single thing that happened. If you focus on creating a detailed description of one particular event or day, you provide your reader a sense of being there. Adding in small details such as sounds, smells, prices or addresses makes your story come alive.
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