The Family Story Workbook: 105 Prompts & Pointers for Writing Your History

by Kris Spisak

The Family Story Workbook is a word to the wise for collecting the words of the wise. Have you ever wanted to write down the story of your family but never known where to start? Have you ever wanted to write your memoir, but you weren't quite sure what tales of your life best fit the narrative you hoped to capture? Have you ever wanted to reflect on the moments that transformed you into the person that you are today? Have you ever wanted to have a shared project between family members? Have you ever wanted a unique gift idea for a parent, grandparent, aunt, or uncle who you know has a powerful life story to tell? This workbook is designed for all of these reasons and more. Write it down because who else is going to? Write it down for you. Write it down for your family. Write it down for the historical record, whatever that means to you.

231 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 12, 2020

About the author

Kris Spisak knows that well-written words and well-told stories have the ability to change the world. A graduate of the College of William and Mary (B.A.) and the University of Richmond (M.L.A.), Kris wrote her first three books — Get a Grip on Your Grammar: 250 Writing and Editing Reminders for the Curious or Confused (Career Press, 2017; HarperCollins India 2020), The Novel Editing Workbook: 105 Tricks and Tips for Revising Your Fiction Manuscript (Davro Press, 2020), and The Family Story Workbook: 105 Prompts & Pointers for Writing Your History (Davro Press, 2020) — to help writers of all kinds sharpen their storytelling and empower their communications. Her Grammartopia® events and Story Stop Tour programs follow the same mission. Her award-winning debut novel, The Baba Yaga Mask (Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, 2022; Tantor Audio, 2023), was inspired by her family’s experience in the post-WWII Ukrainian diaspora and has been called “A complex, poetic tale” by Kirkus Reviews and “edu-tainment at its best” by the Historical Novel Society. Her fifth book, Becoming Baba Yaga: Trickster, Feminist, and Witch of the Woods (Red Wheel / Weiser, 2024; Tantor Audio, 2024), acclaimed as a “nuanced work of feminist literary criticism” by Foreword Reviews and "a delicious read" by Atlas Obscura, explores the complex origins of this Slavic folktale character and her lingering lessons for empowering us all.

Kris has been spotlighted in Writer’s Digest and The Huffington Post for her work as an author dedicated to helping other writers, and she is passionate about transforming book signings and storytelling events into humanitarian aid efforts when the opportunity allows. Kris is an active speaker, workshop leader, and literary historian.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Desiring to write a family story myself, I found The Family Story Workbook extremely helpful. Kris' writing style is approachable and encouraging. She makes you want to write even if you've never started anything.
I'd never have considered many of the prompts suggested in the workbook. The Digging Deeper questions within each prompt are nothing short of brilliant. The questions allow the writer to think like an interviewer, but they also prompt the writer to plumb their own depths. It's a terrific guide, a magic genie to help you get everything out of the bottle of your family's history.
Kris ends the book with a few word-choice grammatical suggestions. Having attended an editing presentation by Kris, I can only say, she knows whereof she speaks/writes.
Finally, as a fiction writer, I found some of the questions most helpful to my development of character profiles as well.

[John Musgrove · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great workbook with prompts to elicit family stories and history.