The Reality of Writing Obituaries That Actually Mean Something
Most obituaries follow the same predictable template. Birth date, death date, surviving relatives, a brief career summary, and a closing line about "resting in peace." They read like corporate press releases and that's because they often are. There's a growing movement to treat obituaries as narrative nonfiction, and the people doing this work tend to use similar workflows regardless of what publication or platform they're attached to. I've spent years editing and writing these. The shift from template to storytelling isn't as simple as adding a few anecdotes. It requires a fundamentally different approach to how you collect information and structure the final piece.
Vandemay Obituaries The Untold Stories Behind The Headlines
When people reference Vandemay Obituaries The Untold Stories Behind The Headlines, they're usually talking about a methodology for producing obituary content that goes beyond the standard biographical form. The concept centers on mining interviews, personal documents, and community records to find the moments that actually defined someone rather than just listing what they did. It's more journalism than it is genealogy. Here's how the process actually works in practice. You start by gathering raw material before you ever sit down to write. That means requesting digital archives, old emails, social media posts, and having at least three separate conversations with people who knew the deceased in different contexts. A coworker. A family member from a different generation. A neighbor or friend from outside the immediate family. The first conversation almost always gives you surface-level information. The third one is where you find the actual story. I remember working on a piece for a man who had been a school teacher for forty years. The standard version was predictable. He was dedicated, loved his students, and was remembered fondly. It wasn't until I spoke with his former student, now a grown man living three states away, that I learned the teacher had quietly funded that student's college education after his own father died, never telling anyone in the community.
That's the difference. The headline version captures the facts. The untold version captures the impact.
Get the Full Details
Setting Up Your Research Workflow
You need a system for organizing everything you collect. I use a simple folder structure on my local drive. One folder for each deceased person, divided into subfolders for audio recordings, interview notes, document scans, and draft files. Every audio recording gets transcribed immediately while the voice is still fresh. I don't wait. Transcription drifts quickly and details get fuzzy within a few days. For transcription, most people use automated tools and then manually correct the output. This approach cuts the time significantly compared to typing everything out from scratch. I've seen it bring what could take four hours down to about forty-five minutes of editing. The accuracy on standard speech is usually around ninety-four percent, which means you're fixing small errors rather than building from zero. I keep a master timeline spreadsheet for every subject. Date, event, source, and significance. This becomes the backbone of the piece. When you're writing and realize you need to verify something, you can find the original source in seconds instead of digging through notes.
Interviewing Without Getting Clichés
The biggest problem with obituary interviews is that people give you polished, sanitized answers. They've rehearsed them. They want to make the deceased look good, and sometimes that's appropriate. But it also means you're getting the public version of a person's life, not the private one. I avoid questions that have yes or no answers. Instead of asking "Was he a good person?" I ask "Tell me about a time he surprised you." Or "What's something people wouldn't know about him just by looking at his resume?" These questions force the interviewee to dig into actual memories rather than reciting prepared sentiments. Another technique is asking about contradictions. Everyone has them. A stern principal who secretly let kids stay late to eat meals. A generous philanthropist who was notoriously cheap with his own family. Those contradictions are where the story lives. They make a person three-dimensional instead of a cardboard cutout with a birthdate.
I also ask people to describe a specific object that belonged to the deceased. A watch. A tool. A recipe card. Objects anchor memories better than abstract qualities. When someone holds a physical thing and talks about it, their stories become more detailed and emotionally honest.
Writing Structure That Doesn't Read Like a Template
Most obituary writers lead with chronology. Born here, went to school there, worked at this company, retired, died. It's the default structure because it's safe and easy to research. But chronological order is also the structure of a résumé, and nobody reads obituaries the way they read résumés anymore. They want narrative. Try starting with a moment instead. A specific scene from the person's life that encapsulates who they were. Then move backward to give context, and forward to show where that person ended up. This in medias res approach forces you to write like a storyteller rather than a compiler of facts. I usually draft the opening paragraph last. I write the full piece first, figure out what thread connects all the sections, and then craft an introduction that reflects that theme. This prevents the generic opening that says "John Smith, age 72, of Springfield, passed away peacefully on Tuesday." That sentence belongs at the end if it belongs anywhere.
Paragraph length matters more than people realize. Long, uniform paragraphs create a reading experience that feels flat. Mix shorter and longer sections. A three-sentence paragraph after a long one creates a natural pause and emphasis. It's a simple rhythm technique but most obituary writers never consider it.
Common Pitfalls and What They Cost You
The most expensive mistake I've seen is publishing a piece that requires corrections because someone misidentified a relationship or got a date wrong. These errors spread fast once something is online. Family members share the obituary widely, and a single factual mistake can undermine the entire piece within hours. I always send the draft to at least two people before publication. Not the closest family, who might be too emotionally involved to catch errors. Someone removed from the immediate circle. A colleague or distant relative who can read it with fresher eyes. Another frequent problem is over-quoting. People love including direct quotes in obituaries, but too many makes the piece read like a transcript rather than a narrative. I aim for one or two strong quotes maximum, and only if they add something the surrounding prose can't convey on its own.
Death notices and obituaries serve different purposes. A death notice is a factual announcement that often runs in the back pages of newspapers. An obituary is a written portrait. Confusing the two leads to pieces that are either too brief to be meaningful or too long to function as official notices. Know which format your audience expects and write to that standard.
Where This Approach Falls Short
I should be upfront about the limitations. This method requires time and access that not everyone has. You need willing interview subjects who are comfortable sharing personal stories. You need access to records and documents. For people writing obituaries for community figures or public personalities, those resources are usually available. For ordinary people with smaller social circles, the process becomes much harder and the result inevitably thinner. There's also the issue of conflicting accounts. Different people remember the same events differently. I encountered this with a woman I was writing about. Her sister described her as fiercely independent and stubborn. Her brother painted her as anxious and controlling. Both were true in different contexts, and neither was complete. I resolved it by presenting both perspectives without declaring one the definitive version. The tension between them was more honest than a single smoothed-over narrative. If you're working under tight word count limits, some of this methodology simply doesn't fit. Newspaper print sections have hard constraints. In those cases, you prioritize the single best anecdote over multiple supporting stories. It's a compromise but a necessary one.
Practical Resources and Next Steps
There isn't a single software tool that handles all of this for you. Most professionals in this space build custom spreadsheets and use standard writing software. I recommend setting up your own system early rather than trying to adapt something designed for fiction or academic writing. Those formats don't account for the hybrid nature of obituary work, which sits between journalism, biography, and family documentation. If you're looking for references, the American Obits and Biography Writers Association maintains public guidelines and a directory of practitioners. Local newspaper archives are also underutilized resources. Reading obituaries from fifty or seventy years ago shows you how the genre has evolved and what techniques have persisted. The fundamental takeaway is that a good obituary is a researched document, not a filled-in form. The people who produce the best work treat it like investigative journalism with a deadline. They ask better questions, verify more carefully, and write with more intention than the standard template allows. That distinction is what separates a forgettable announcement from a piece someone actually keeps and rereads.
