Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan

It's time to start making some decisions about what your journey is going to look like when it is done. I'm not sure how much help I can be here, except to offer some suggestions. If you are going to do a printed version and a web site, keep in mind that a printed document is not a web site and vice versa.

How Are You Telling Your Story?

The stories you have gathered for your journey will determine to a large part what your final document will be like. If you have written all the text yourself, you will need to decide what perspective you are going to use. If you have major contributions from several family members, how are you going to present them? Do you want to present each member's contribution separately, or do you want to tie them all together chronologically? If you have contributions from a lot of family members, make sure you are sensitive to all their contributions during this process. After you have made all these decisions, put together a rough outline of the final document with notes about what story goes where.

Where Do the Pictures Go?

After you have put together a outline of all the stories and how they are going to go together, it is time to go through the electronic photo album you should have made and make notes in the outline as to what pictures go where in the final document. Again, sensitivity to contributors is important during this process.

What is the Format of the Finished Product?

If you are doing a printed document, try to visualize what you want it to look like when it is done. Are you going to use color pictures in the printed version (high printing costs), or are you going to convert all the pictures to black and white (it's easy to do). If you are going to print it, how many pages do you think you will have in the final version. This is a practical consideration, especially if you will be doing a lot of copies. Printing isn't free.
If you are doing a web site, printing costs and number of pages becomes a non-issue, except for the amount of time needed to put it together. General page layout and navigation are an issue, though, and thought given to those issues now will be rewarded later.

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