Introducing The Craft of True Stories collection
Writing guides for folks who take true stories - and the people those stories are about - seriously.
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Release Date: May 26, 2026
Introducing The Craft of True Stories collection
Over the past two years, every story I’ve shared here at the Lost & Found Story Box came with a decision.
Not just the research decisions – which records to trust, which gaps to name, which details to let carry the weight – but the craft decisions. How do you write honestly about a family member who lied, manipulated and left a complicated legacy? How do you record the lives of children who never saw their first birthday, or died before they had a voice? Which details of a personal journey get shared and which get left behind?
Those decisions are where a lot family history writers get stuck. Not for lack of passion – the enthusiasm in this community right now is extraordinary – but because the resources that exist were mostly built for genealogists, not storytellers. Finding the record and knowing how to build a story with it are two very different skills, and almost nobody is talking about the second one.
So earlier this year I started doing just that.
For every story I’ve shared at The Lost & Found Story Box, I built a research and craft guide – written specifically for family history writers who want to understand not just what records exist but what they can mean to the structure of a story, what they can and can’t confirm, and – maybe most importantly, how to craft those details into stories that honor both the facts and the person being written about, honestly, completely, engagingly and ethically.
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Here are few examples of the questions these guides are built to answer:
When the Story Has Already Been Told Wrong: How to Find the Truth Behind a Historical Legend is the guide every family historian eventually needs. Every family has a legend. Some of them are true. Many are not. And arriving late to a story that’s already been told – and told wrong – raises questions about evidence, ethics, and what you actually owe the historical record that most writing guides never address.
The Complicated Family: Researching and Writing About Divorce, Remarriage, and Family Rupture in Your Ancestry came directly from Sam Reid – a man who walked into a California jail in 1925 with money in his pocket and stayed for three years and sixty-nine days rather than pay a dollar of alimony to a household he considered unfit. His story was documented extensively. His ex-wife Phebe gave one interview and said very little. Writing that story fairly, when the archive is anything but fair, required a framework I hadn’t seen written down anywhere. So, again, I wrote it.
Childhood in the Archive: Researching the Lives of Children and Young People in Historical Records addresses what is honestly one of the harder research and craft challenges in this work. Children’s records are partial, buried beneath the records of caregivers and institutions, and the children themselves rarely spoke for themselves in the archive. Finding them takes different tools. Writing about them honestly takes different discipline.
The full collection – one guide for every story shared here, with more on the way – is available on Gumroad.
These guides exist because I think true stories deserve better than enthusiasm without craft. Because the people we write about were living, breathing, flawed human beings who deserve the same honesty and complexity we’d want someone to extend to us. And because if we’ve been gathering facts for years and are now turning toward telling the stories those facts reveal – that pivot can be easier and less intimidating when we have a guide written by someone who takes storytelling as seriously as we do.
I’m excited and honored to put these guides out into the world, and I hope they encourage and inspire us all to go forth and tell our stories!
“Inside each of us is a natural-born storyteller, waiting to be released.”
― Robin Moore
Spotlight on America
Beginning next week and continuing through all of July, I’ll be retelling some of the lost & found stories of America’s first 250 years – and I am so excited to share them with all of you!
The first one out of the gate is about a chance meeting at a swanky New York Hotel and what it had to say about the continuity of history. I found this story several years ago and have been keeping it for just this moment. I hope you enjoy it, and the other seven stories that make up this 🇺🇸 Summer of Celebration 🇺🇸 here at The Lost & Found Story Box.
“We, the people, have only begun to write a great story that will be passed down through time – the story of America.” ~ Ronald Reagan
Copyright 2026 Lori Olson White
| Part 1 of 1 | Get the Guides →|
The Story Catalog is not an archive in the usual sense. What you’ll find here is a living catalog of Lost & Found Stories – deeply researched historical narratives told in parts, discovered through newspapers, letters, court records, logs, and the stubborn human habit of leaving traces behind.
Have you read the incredible true story of Aimee Henry and Mary Martha Parker? Call Me a Bastard is my longest serialized story to-date, and the one that started it all here on the Lost & Found Story Box. Check out the story from the beginning.
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What a wonderful resource for anyone thinking about writing their family stories. Packed full of great advice and suitable for both new writers and those who have been writing for a long time. Fantastic idea Lori 👏👏👏
What terrific guidance and such a wealth of expertise!