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Inherited Stories: Lacey Herbert on Turning Family Lore Into Fiction
by Writing Workshops Staff
An hour ago
Every family contains stories that hum at a frequency only the people inside it can hear: a grandmother's near-myth, an uncle's running joke, the version of an event that quietly contradicts the official record.
Television writer and producer Lacey Herbert built her career by listening to those stories. The pilot she wrote, fictionalized from her grandmother's real life, led directly to two TV writing jobs spanning six seasons, including a stint on STARZ's NAACP Image Award-winning Power Book II: Ghost and her current role as co-producer on Amazon Prime's Reacher spin-off, Neagley. Now she is teaching writers how to do that work for themselves.
In Inherited Stories: Building Fiction from Family History, a one-day Zoom seminar at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature, Lacey shows you how to mine ancestral lore for compelling narrative without slipping into memoir. Over a single Sunday afternoon, you will identify the central dramatic question inside an inherited story, learn to heighten stakes without betraying emotional truth, and leave with a drafted scene plus a concrete roadmap for developing the material into a short story, novel, or screenplay.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Lacey:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Lacey. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Lacey Herbert: Hi, everyone! I'm Lacey! I'm a virgo sun, scorpio moon, aquarius rising — but I promise I'm not as scary as that sounds! I grew up in Maryland and Washington, D.C. and I've lived in Los Angeles for almost nine years now. I came here a journalist and morphed into a TV writer with a couple stops along the way.
Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life, and how does this class address that?
Lacey Herbert: I wish someone had told me earlier that I'm allowed to put myself in my writing. I'm not only allowed to exist in it, but I should! My emotions, my memories, and my family belong on the page too. Writing can be a way of preserving the people and moments that shape you. And that's what my class is all about!
"Writing can be a way of preserving the people and moments that shape you."
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?
Lacey Herbert: They'll learn how to shape real life material into structured, juicy fiction!
Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Lacey Herbert: "But for the first time, she admitted to herself that she was scared to leave the cacophony of her family's laughter and bickering and the sunlight and moonshine and enveloping darkness of closing her eyes, and the bright green of the first new leaves in the spring, and the pure white of a first snow before her shoe left its imprint, and the big wonder and warmth of love love love love and yet, we must." — Elizabeth Acevedo in Family Lore
Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop, one you were teaching or one you took as a student, where something clicked for someone. What happened?
Lacey Herbert: I was in a sci-fi writing workshop, finishing a short story where I'd spent much of the drafting process sanding down anything that felt too lyrical. I had this idea in my head that sci-fi had to sound a certain way — a bit cleaner, more controlled. Part of that came from reading sci-fi/fantasy TV scripts, where the action lines needed to be especially explanatory to make the world clear for production purposes. After I shared it in-class, my teacher paused and said, almost casually, "Have you read a lot of Octavia Butler?" At the time, I had only read Parable of the Sower. He suggested I read the sequel Parable of the Talents and her novel Kindred, and then pointed to several examples of her work that proved the poetic and the speculative don't cancel each other out or compete — they coexist. It immediately clicked that I had been overthinking, trying to strip my voice away to fit a genre I was still new to, instead of bringing my voice into it.
Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept, but a small, specific technique.
Lacey Herbert: I'm always obsessed with voice, especially writing the way people actually think and speak. I love paying attention to what word choice and cadence reveal about someone's background, and how even people from the same household can end up with completely different ways of speaking based on their experiences. That's what I'm looking for on the page: how life becomes voice.
Ready to bring your inherited stories to the page in your own voice?
Enroll in Inherited Stories →Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Lacey Herbert: I read In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez at a fairly young age, and it has stayed with me ever since. Alvarez manages to hold both this big world of history and resistance, and an intimate family story at the same time. It does exactly what I think great storytelling does — it turns the personal into something universal, while still feeling deeply grounded and taking the reader into a world they might not know otherwise.
Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Lacey Herbert: I constantly hear people say you need to write every day, and I don't agree. Writing matters, of course, but you gotta live! You can't spend all your time hunched over a laptop and expect to have something meaningful to say. The best stories come from experiencing the world — your community, your relationships, heartbreak, joy, and everything in between.
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but..."
Lacey Herbert: Most writing classes won't tell you this, but being honest on the page is more powerful than being perfect.
"Most writing classes won't tell you this, but being honest on the page is more powerful than being perfect."
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Lacey Herbert: I was completely hooked on the Junie B. Jones series growing up! It was one of my first real reading obsessions. I always had a book within reach, whether it was in my backpack, my mom's car, or the bathroom, and I'd often be juggling a few at once. I loved jumping into her world and POV!
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe, in one sentence, not a paragraph?
Lacey Herbert: I believe that there are no bad questions or bad ideas — just don't forget to bring your sense of humor!
Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?
Lacey Herbert: I got my first paycheck dancing in The Joffrey Ballet's Nutcracker at The Kennedy Center in DC when I was in elementary school!
It tracks: a writer who earned her first paycheck on the Kennedy Center stage has spent her career paying close attention to how stories move audiences. In Inherited Stories, Lacey brings that same attention to the histories you carry: the lore, the voices, the moments that ask to be put on the page. Whether you are starting a novel rooted in your grandmother's kitchen or shaping a screenplay around the family argument no one will say out loud, you will leave with a clear concept, a drafted opening, and somewhere real to take it next.
One Sunday afternoon. One inherited story. One drafted scene to take home.
Save Your Seat in Inherited Stories →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
