When is it time to start a new story?

How do you decide whether you have one story or several?

It's the first question RemiStories asks you, and the one people hesitate over longest. You've got photos from a summer that included a camping trip, a birthday, and about eleven ordinary weekends. Is that one story or four?

Here's the honest answer up front: you will not get this wrong in a way that matters. Stories can be renamed, moments can be moved, and a slightly odd grouping still makes a lovely book. But there is a rule of thumb that makes the decision quick.

What is the one-story-per-thing-that-ends rule?

A story wants a natural edge — a point where you'd say "that's done now". Not necessarily a happy ending, just an ending.

A trip ends when you come home. A school year ends in June. A first year ends on a birthday. A house renovation ends when the last box is unpacked. Each of those makes a clean, satisfying book because it has a shape.

What are the four signals that it's time to start a new story?

Something is beginning. A baby, a move, a new school, a big trip, a puppy. The most obvious signal, and the easiest — if a chapter of life is starting, start the story on the same day. You'll capture the beginning properly instead of reconstructing it later.

The people have changed. If a different set of people are in the photos — the friends you travel with rather than the family you live with — that's usually a different story, because the people who'd want to contribute are different.

You'd need a different cover. Picture the finished book. If a single cover photo can't honestly represent everything inside, you've got two stories wearing one name.

Scrolling it has become work. When you open a story and have to scroll past forty unrelated moments to find the ones from last week, it's outgrown itself. Split it, or start the next chapter.

When should you keep adding to the same story instead?

It's the same continuing thread. "Leo's first year" doesn't need splitting because the seasons changed. The thread is the child, not the weather.

The story is still thin. Four moments is not a book. If a story only has a handful of moments, add to it rather than starting a rival next to it.

It's a recurring thing with a longer arc. Sunday lunches, monthly hikes, the allotment. These accumulate slowly and are better as one long story spanning a year than twelve tiny ones.

What two story patterns work well for most families?

The rolling year. One story per calendar year, for ordinary life. "Our 2026". Everything unremarkable goes here, and at the end you print a book of the year that would otherwise have vanished entirely. Most families should have one of these running permanently in the background.

The event story. Started for something specific, closed when it ends. The trip, the wedding, the summer camp. Short, dense, and often the best books — because the ending was built in from the start.

Run both. The rolling year catches the everyday; event stories catch the peaks. Between them almost nothing gets lost. The only genuinely wrong answer is the one where you spend so long deciding how to organise it that you never add the first moment at all.