Writing talks by
Carol Baxter
Carol Baxter began researching her family history while she was a high school student, and continued to do so after gaining full-time employment in the genealogy industry.
In the early 2000s, while writing a family history, she stumbled across the story of an extraordinary New South Wales political sex scandal, one that contributed to the recall of the governor. She decided to tell the story in the form of a "popular history".
Her unfinished manuscript was purchased by the first major publisher she approached (Allen & Unwin). Another five books followed. International reviews included The Times (London): "as lively and readable as a crime novel".
Carol was well-known in the genealogy industry, so libraries and genealogy conference organisers asked her to help genealogists write interesting family histories. And so began her journey as a genealogy writing teacher.
While Carol's publisher and literary agent want her to write more books, she loves teaching writing skills to genealogists. So she established the business Writing Fabulous Family Histories, which provides online courses for genealogists.
Genealogy groups and conferences can also employ Carol to teach writing skills to their members and attendees. A list of her writing talks is provided below.
If you are organising a genealogy conference and would like an "after dinner" speaker to lighten the atmosphere, Carol also practises what she preaches. She tells gripping true tales of murder, mystery and mayhem on cruise ships and elsewhere. A link to these talks is provided below.
Writing seminars
Turning Dry Facts into Exciting Narrative
The literary world condemns most family histories as ‘fact-driven and tedious’ because they are usually little more than prose timelines. Yet the phrase ‘family history’ communicates the three ingredients needed to produce a piece of prose that is interesting to read: ‘family’ (the facts about the family), ‘history’ (the historical context) and ‘story’. This seminar focuses on the first two ingredients and shows how we can weave our facts together in such a way that the reader is keen to keep on reading.
Structuring a Family History
To write a family history, we must convert our ancestral information into paragraphs of prose. But how do we group the resulting paragraphs to produce a coherent structure? We start by asking ourselves what we wish to achieve. Are we writing a history that focuses on a surname line? Or one that covers all of our ancestors, or all of our descendants, or all of the ancestors and descendants of a particular person? And how do we craft an individual biography? These and other subjects are discussed in this simple guide to structuring a family history.
Crafting Vivid Sentences that Hook our Readers
Financial planners advise that the best way to acquire more money is to make the most of what we already have – aka, don’t fritter away our money. The same can be said for writing. The simplest way to craft an interesting family history, or other piece of prose, is to make the most of the words in our language. There’s no need to send our readers to sleep when a simple word replacement or two can bring a sentence, a paragraph, a story to life. This webinar discusses the basic tools in our writing toolbox, the tools that were once monopolised by fiction writers but are now used by non-fiction writers to hook our readers.
Crafting Vivid Scenes from a Few Dry Facts
We’ve learnt how to craft vivid sentences but how do we combine them to produce a vivid scene, especially when we have little information to work with? This webinar describes the process of doing so, using practical examples from Carol’s own writing. It shows how she began with very little information then followed one path after another in a desperate attempt to find something … anything … to make her description interesting. It shows how you too can apply the same strategies to your own research and writing, whatever the subject.
Once Upon a Time: It's all about the story
‘Facts’ send people to sleep; ‘stories’ keep them awake and alert and eager to learn what happens next. In this seminar, Carol shows you how to tell a gripping story within a family history, and by extension, how to write a gripping a family history.
Publishing seminars
Publishing
Many researchers are daunted at the thought of publishing a family history or memoir or “how to” book because they lack knowledge about their publishing and marketing options. Carol has been associated with the publishing industry since the 1980s and her 24 books have been variously mainstream, boutique, indie, and self-published. In this webinar she discusses the editing processes that all works of prose should experience before they are published. She discusses publishing and printing options, along with marketing approaches to family members and the broader public. She also covers the practical aspects of self-publishing: writing and publishing programs, font choices, paragraph and column layouts, page sizes, book weight and postage requirements.