How to Decide What Story to Tell in Historical Fiction or Genealogical Storytelling

When you’re writing historical fiction based on real people—especially your own ancestors—it’s tempting to start at birth and tell everything. After all, you’ve done the research. You’ve tracked down the census records, military registrations, and newspaper articles. You know when they were born, who they married, how many children they had, and where they ended up.

But here’s the truth: you don’t owe the reader every fact.
You owe them the truth of the story.
And more importantly, you owe them a good read—something engaging, memorable, and making them want to come back for more.

Start With the Burning Question

Before you begin writing, ask yourself:
What is it about this ancestor that compels me to tell their story?

What’s the defining moment or series of events that you find yourself telling over and over to anyone who will listen?

That moment—the one you can’t shake—might be the climax of your story. Once you have it, you can start to shape the narrative around it.

Look at what comes before that moment. What needs to be included to “set the stage”? Then look at what comes after. What do you need to show to bring the story to a close and give the reader a satisfying ending?

Congratulations. You’ve just defined the timeline of your historical novel.

Don’t Start at Birth Unless You Have To

Readers don’t need a cradle-to-grave biography. If it’s important to know when your character was born, work it into the story naturally. Maybe they give their birthdate when registering for the draft or applying for a marriage license. Details can (and should) be woven in, just like they would be in any other novel.

When I began writing my novel, His Greatest Regret, I thought I needed to tell the whole story of Richard Woolsey’s life.

He was born in Indiana, married Alice, had children, farmed. And while I love knowing all of that for my family history, the truth is—none of it was very interesting on the page. There were few surviving records, and no major events to anchor the chapters. It was an ordinary, quiet, rural life.

Then I realized: the real story didn’t begin until his wife died.

That was the moment everything changed.

As I often told people (only half-joking): “When Alice died, Richard went off the deep end.” That’s where the story was. That was the hook.

He made one selfish decision after another without thinking through how it would affect his children. That pattern continued for the rest of his life. And that’s the story I needed to tell—not his quiet years as a young husband, but his unraveling.

Knowing When to End

Once I had a clear beginning, I faced another challenge: when to stop.

After telling the story of Richard uprooting his family, traveling west in a wagon train, helping found Arkansas City, Kansas, and chasing fortune through mining in Washington Territory, the story felt complete. That arc revealed the kind of man he was and the choices that shaped his legacy.

I didn’t need to recount every detail of his later mining ventures in New Mexico. Instead, I gave the highlights: he moved there for his health—he had tuberculosis—and later, his granddaughter’s husband had to travel there to bring him home, because by then Richard was blind and paralyzed from TB and a likely stroke.

Originally, I had four chapters dedicated to that part of his life. I condensed them into one. That was all the reader needed to see that the patterns of his life—impulsiveness, self-focus, and poor decision-making—continued. There was no great transformation, no last-minute redemption, just a slow, steady unraveling.

And that was enough.

On that note, your story doesn't need a happy ending either because, let's face it, many of our ancestors did not have happy endings.

While the story was true to life, dragging out the final chapters would’ve put my readers to sleep. What they needed was closure, not repetition, so I ended the story with emotional finality rather than factual exhaustion.

Final Thoughts

The best historical fiction doesn’t try to be an encyclopedia.
It tells one story from a life, not the whole life.

Start with what matters. Focus on the part of your ancestor’s story that moves you. Then shape your novel around that truth, with a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Your readers will thank you for it—and they just might come back for the next one.