HOW TO PREPARE A LIFE STORY

Unfortunately, a graveside memory capsule is not something that can be purchased and installed the same day. The example life story shown on this site required several months of work to put together. Most of our pictures were not in digital format since most of them were taken before digital cameras were available. Many of the images came from portraits hanging on our walls and those of our children. These had to be gathered, disassembled, scanned, then reassembled and returned to their proper places on the walls. Many more were stored away in the keepsake boxes that every family accumulates.

How do you tell a life story? Conceptually one should remember that the story should not be told from the standpoint of death but from the standpoint of life. Remembering is not the same as mourning though the two are often blended together. Keep in mind that this story is not for those who assemble it as a permanent family record. They already know the information that will be recorded . Even then they will learn much more while preparing the story and will gain much insight, all of which will add value to the record. The main objective is to produce a chronology of events that describe a life, in the manner of acts in a play, with each event (act) taking place within a given social and physical stage setting. Another view is that the life story is like a long series of mile markers on the road of life. The main reason for this endeavor is so the deceased remains an active member of the family and community by continuously providing life experience information to generations that will follow.

Care must be taken during the preparation of a life story to:

1. Provide facts and images of and about the person that will give physical substance. The future readers need to feel that this is a real person, one they can equate with, one they can understand, and one who has experienced the problems and joys of a life, that you, the reader, may face in years to come. Give this person the respect that is their due by showing them as they were. If they had a temper then by all means say so. If you read the sample ebook you will find that Marian Stevenson, like Don Quixote, was a hopeless romantic with the noblest of intentions, but she continually built windmills with which to joust. She was one who was so overly anxious to be good and kind that she did not receive her just rewards for being so in a world that was much more calloused than she.
2. Provide as much human description as possible. What did they attempt to do? What did they accomplish? What were their failures? What were the lessons they learned that are of value to generations to come?
3. Provide as much background as possible of the social and physical environment in which the person lived. Future readers can then judge the actions of the subject against the requirements they faced.
4. Provide kinship. This document must be told in the manner of a doting aunt, not a Dutch uncle.

There are probably many ways to write a life story. One to consider is the format used in the life story of Marian Ruth Stevenson, the sample available on the home page. The following procedure describes a non-computer (the hard way) preparation:

1. Start with a big cardboard box and a big bunch of envelopes of various sizes.
2. Gather all of the photographs that can be found that contain the subject. Don't forget the collections of relatives and friends when doing this research and don't miss the portraits hanging on the wall.
2. Organize the photographs in chronological order, placing a date on the back of each photograph.
3. Select from this stack those photographs that are the most important in portraying the life experience while keeping them in chronological order.
4. Place each photograph to be included in the life story into a separate envelope.
5. Identify each photograph on the back with a unique name and place the name on the outside of the envelope. It is suggested that the envelope names be numerical and in a specific order. Insertions may be made later by adding a letter after the previous number. Photograph 78a can be inserted after 78, for example.
6. When satisfied with the collection and with the order within the collection, then write the life story by writing text and referring to the photographs by number where they should ideally be inserted. If you write by hand, place the text about a particular photograph in the envelope with the photograph. If you have a large block of text that you wish to have appear between photographs, place it in an envelope and assign a number to it as if it had a photograph in it and insert it in the proper order with the note "text only" written on the outside of the envelope.
7. Add in any legal documents (photo copies if you wish), that you want to make a matter of record in the final life presentation, in a separate envelope and label as such.
8. Determine the boundaries of the chapters that the story is to be divided into. Indicate by separate note sheet your suggested chapter locations and titles.
9. Determine any special add-ons that will enhance the story, such as voice-over, music and/or video. The script, dialog and functional files for those are required.

You have now completed the research for a life story but you do not have a useful story yet, since it must be in computer language. You now have the elements that the movie people would call a story board and script. Now it is time for the production.

 

GETTING THE STORY INTO COMPUTER FORMAT

Those with computer expertise in the family will have shortened the above process from the start. It is not a simple procedure even with a computer. In general, the following procedure will be the most likely to cause the least amount of work finalizing the story for storage in a capsule:

1. Scan all of the photographs in .jpg digital format, giving them unique names, and store them in one digital file folder.
2. Prepare the text in Microsoft Word as a series of individual chapters.
3. Size and place the photographs in with the text. Build each page the way you want it to appear.

4. Keep each chapter smaller than 25 megabytes. If a chapter is too large, seek a way to break it into 2 chapters.
FINALIZING THE RECORD FOR INSTALLATION IN THE CAPSULE
Currently we are limited to Microsoft Windows files. Our filing system is Windows. Within that restriction you may file whatever you wish in the capsule and in as many files as you wish.

So what are the different approaches available:

1. Use Microsoft Word to produce the final document, add all of the pictures, and format the entire document the way you wish it to be, and let us file it in the capsule. We will then keep a digital copy of that document on file as a read-only file and will never allow it to be modified. If someone should change or destroy the graveside file, we will be able to supply a certified copy of the original document for re-entry at the grave side.

A document produced in MSWord is an attractive document, The story will always be seen as you produced it. If filed in a read-only memory, it will always remain just so.

 

Converting Your Document To Acrobat Ebook Format

Converting your document to an Acrobat ebook format makes the document more interesting and more readable:

1. The full page mode presents each page of the life story in your arrangement and layout in a black background field on your monitor and devoid of all distracting control icons. It is easy to turn from page to page in a number of ways and provides a restful experience.
2. By pressing the escape key, the presentation immediately turns into a fully controllable document. One may obtain a chapter by chapter index that allows instant moving from chapter to chapter by clicking on "BOOKMARK".
3. Full zoom capability is in the control mode. One may zoom in and out on images to the fullest extent of the monitor screen.. There is a dynamic zoom function that allows zooming in and out at will by moving the mouse icon. There is a "loupe zoom" that allows closer inspection of a particular point of interest.
4. Clicking on "PAGES" provides a thumbnail picture of every page in the book to aid in finding a particular page.
5. In the control mode one may select to have the viewed page as wide as possible on your screen or as tall as possible on your screen.
6. Video may be added.
7. Voice over background may be added.
8. Music over background may be added.
9. MSWord will only display on a Windows machine or an Apple that has conversion software installed. The Adobe ebook displays on Windows computers and native unmodified Apple computers.

We will be happy to install any number of files, however we archive only the life story and stand able and willing to provide certified true copies of the original on demand.

Also check our notes on scanning old photographs: About Scanning Old Photographs