In The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews sings, “Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.” That may be good advice for the Von Trapp Family children, but a writer might want to think twice about it. Many writers tell stories in a perfectly chronological sequence. This happened. Then that happened. Then the next thing happened. This method of telling a story is called linear narrative. Events are presented in the exact sequence in which they occurred. That’s a very effective way to tell some stories. Sometimes, however, the drama of a story can be heightened by breaking out of strict chronology and employing a nonlinear narrative. I Am Born might have been a fine title for the opening chapter of Dickens’ David Copperfield, but few contemporary readers of fiction or nonfiction will cut an author the slack to begin a book that way. Your book must engage its reader in the first page or two. To do that you need to begin with a dramatic scene. That may mean starting your story at its chronological end or in the middle to begin on the high note you are seeking.

As we sat around a campfire in the Trinity Alps on the other side of the Central Valley from the worst of the wild fires, Nancy’s nephew, who just graduated from high school mentioned that he had written his senior thesis on The Hero’s Journey. He enthusiastically took us through the great mythologist Joseph Campbell’s description of the universal elements of heroism in his classic, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. As Cam spoke, I wished some of the authors with whom we work were listening.

This weekend Nancy and I taught four classes at the Family History Expo in Sacramento, California. All of them dealt with creating family history books Most members of the audience were not experienced writers. They were undertaking the writing of a book for the first time. We were dealing with practical topics like planning and organizing or the elements of storytelling. We provided specific step-by-step suggestions to guide the participants on the path to successfully creating a family history book. They were enthusiastic and appreciative. Any time we finish sessions like these, I always feel I should stop people as they are leaving and admonish them that what we have said is only a series of suggestions. There are no rules about how you have to do any of the things we talked about. Any writer must ultimately find her own way of creating a book.

Giving a book a good title is hard. Author’s often struggle with it. Would you read a novel titled Trimalchio in West Egg? That’s what F. Scott Fitzgerald titled his third novel until his editor Maxwell Perkins convinced him The Great Gatsby might work better. As Michael Hyatt, Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers explains, a book’s title is “…like a newspaper headline: If prospective readers are intrigued, they keep reading. If they don’t, they move on to the next book…” How do you make sure you have a good title?

The writer of fiction, the memoirist, and the family historian are all story tellers. To be sure, they tell stories differently. But in each literary form, the author is the teller of a tale. In that role what do these story tellers have in common? It is instructive to see what two of our greatest contemporary storytellers have said about their art.