#fiction #writers #fictionwriters #foster #fostercare #family
A family mystery can do more than answer questions, it can hand you an entire novel. After a long break, I’m back to talk about why genealogy has become my most surprising tool for fiction writing, and how digging through records can turn half-remembered oral history into a living, research-backed story world.
I share what I’m working on now: Stay Outside, an Australian foster story set around 1900, inspired by the oral history passed down about my maternal grandfather, Frank Cohen. He and his siblings were abandoned by their birth parents and placed into foster care, and that early trauma shaped everything that came after. I avoid spoilers about what I’ve learned, but I explain how genealogy websites like Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, and Geni.com help me build a factual backbone while still writing a novel rather than a memoir.
From there, the research widens into the bigger forces that shape character choices and family conflict. I talk through studying Ballarat, Victoria, the aftershocks of the Victorian Gold Rush, and the Victorian Depression of the 1890s, and how those economic and social pressures can become plot, not just background. I also touch on the practical ethics of writing from real roots: changing names and some dates for privacy, using the “cobweb of reality” approach when details are incomplete, and leaning on the genuine sense of community that appears when relatives contribute their own discoveries.
If you’re interested in genealogy for writers, historical fiction research, or building character backstory from real documents, this is a focused listen with plenty to spark your own project. Subscribe, share the show with a writer friend, and leave a review telling me what piece of your family history you’d be tempted to fictionalize.
Pastime With Good Company by King Henry VIII, played by The Chestnut Brass Company
Pastime With Good Company, composed by King Henry VIII, played by The Chestnut Brass Company
