Who

I guess since I am trying to learn how to write, I should go back to basics. Who, what, where, why and how.

Who. OK, umm, who...

Who am I writing for?
Who am I writing about?
Who am I trying to convince should believe my version of history is the right version?
Who am I kidding?


The first thing I realized when I tried to write about Ben Franklin is I had no idea how to set the tone of what I wanted to write. Did I want to approach this with the same super causal tone that I write this blog, did I want to try my hand at making it more academic? It’s hard to know just who your audience is. As an undergrad it’s hard to adjust each semester to the expectations of new professors. Even a week in to three different history classes, each one of the three professors has different expectations and will all require me to change the level and tone of my writing. I think this is a common problem many undergrads face. There is no constant expectation. Last semester, I was fortunate enough to have a professor who pushed hard for writing, who expected college level writing. This semester, I am getting “fun” assignments. One class is asking for writing in an academic style for research. Another wants you to present an argument, and yet another is for fun, in the first person to tell a story. It’s hard to determine how to set this tone on your own without being told. That is just simply with in the context of school, when left on my own to write, I really have no clue what my personal style would be. If this blog is any indication it’s amazing I don’t write lolcatz style.

Then comes the topic of who am I writing about. In historic writing you’d think it would be simple. The characters are all laid out for you. It’s like a simple solution to tell the story

 EVENT = PEOPLE + PLACE

OK GO!

I never have to offer writing advice again, I never have to read another book on writing again! It was that simple. Except, who do you include, how much is too little how much is too much. Let’s revisit my Ben fiasco again. When I sat down to write 10 random facts about Ben Franklin, I didn’t know when to stop. I could start talking about his early life, and his family and his parents and that lead me to his parents candle shop, and his early life working with his brother and the Silence Dogood letters and then I started writing too much about his brother. You can see where this is going. In fiction writing you have to create a whole person. The backstory is all yours to build. In historical writing, it’s there. Details and all. Primary documents can be a blessing and a curse. Letters and pictures for example can provide you with so many details of a particular person’s life that you want to include every detail, but you can’t. How do you know what to leave out? How well can you tell a complete history if you leave someone or some event. The smallest detail sometime has the biggest affect. If you remove Ben Franklin’s brother from his life story, you remove a huge part of the story. His brother is where he learned the printing trade. When do you make the judgement call? I don’t think there is a simple formula for this. Much like learning to write for your audience, I think over time you learn. Maybe as each piece of writing evolves you learn. You start off leaving a something out, when you get to a later point you decide you might need to include it, and the opposite also might be true. You write and re read and you realize you’ve included too much. You can leave out telling your reader
 “Halfway to concord” is your favorite of Ben Franklins expressions for being drunk.

Recently when I talked to my history advisor about my issues with writing he gave me some great advice. Don’t try to write someone else’s version of history. Take your research and interpret it for yourself. As long as you can back up your version with research, you aren’t wrong. If you want to say that George Washington wasn’t the first President of the United States, well then go for it, but you better have some amazing sources. It’s a hard idea to grasp. I have the control to interpret history. I am barely  a historian. So who am I trying to convince. Myself most of the time. When I write I realize I have to construct some sort of argument to convince the reader, but it’s not a true argument. My research should speak for itself. While I may not be a good writer I’d like to think I am a good researcher, and I want my writing to reflect that. I want my writing to flow naturally so the argument is hidden in the story. I don’t want the reader to feel like they are being convinced with an argument, but instead finish reading and have a new perspective on the topic.


Who is hard. Who is complex and is going to take much thought. Writing history involves writing biography. Who is a huge part of history. Without the who, there isn’t much of a story to tell. Learning who to tell the story to, who needs to be in the story and who is really going to believe you in the end is a long struggle, but it’s a key point in learning to write.