Family History Writing Group
Description
When you are ready to turn all of your research into an entertaining story, or even before, the Family History Writing Group can help you. This is a friendly and accepting group, which includes experienced writers and beginners. We are always keen to welcome new members.
We devise a yearly program of topics and challenges, but you may choose to write your own stories or just sit in until you are ready to write. Stories written for the meetings are often published in the Queensland Family Historian.
The challenge aspect of each month involves an element of the story. You may be asked to focus on the beginning of the story, the end the story or on an aspect of writing style. We will provide resources for the challenge.
Meetings
The group meets on the third Saturday in January, March, May, July, September, and November between 9.00 am and 11.30 am online, until further notice.
Next Meetings:
- 19 Jul 2025
- 20 Sep 2025
- 15 Nov 2025
Convenors
Program
QFHS Writing Group 2025 Program
Considerations for Writing a Family History Book
Clem Ditton
Clem has written this account of some of the issues you might consider when preparing a family history and has kindly agreed to make it available here.
Meeeting Notes 2025
March - Writing a news item
January - Writing family history for children
Meeting Notes 2024
November - Acknowledgements, Copyright, Privacy
September - Indexing your book
July - What is a bibliography?
May - Footnotes and/or endnotes
March - Citations—what are they, and how do we create them?
January - What goes into the front matter of a book?
Meeting Notes 2023
November - Writing the family story: How do I deal with sensitive issues?
September - Writing the family story: How do I involve others?
July - Writing the family story: What media--book, ebook, webpage?
May -Writing the family story: How do I organise my information for a writing project?
March - Writing the family story: How do I start my story?
January - Writing the family story: Where do I begin?
Meeting Notes 2022
November - Metonymy, oxymoron, hyperbole, and litotes
September - Parallel construction and the rule of three
May - Alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia
Meeting Notes 2021
November - Forward slashes, ellipsis, and brackets
January - Apostrophes and exclamation marks
Meeting Notes 2020
QFHS Writing Group 2020 Program
September - Noun/adjective stacks
May - Adverbs and strong verbs
March - Comma splices and run on sentences
January - Active and passive voice
Meeting Notes 2019
September - Enhancing bare facts
Legal Deposit
National Library of Australian Legal Deposit
State Library Of Queensland Legal Deposit