Since the year 2000, I have judged National History Day (NHD) district-level events—mostly in the documentary category—in Washington, DC; New York; and Virginia, and the national finals in College Park, Maryland. I always enjoy meeting NHD contestants and seeing their creations. They bring curiosity, energy, and imagination to the study of history, exploring the past not as a chore but as a passion. It’s an honor to work with these young historians.

The official NHD website offers contest rules and a lot of good advice, including lists of previous national award winners and several example projects. I encourage prospective contestants to review all of this, especially the examples, since we learn by modeling our work on others’ achievements.

I think I can add to this official advice in my capacity as a historian and long-time judge. Here, then, are my own, unofficial ideas about how National History Day students can present their best work, with references to the example projects on the NHD site.

Scope

Bite less, chew more

A 2,500 word paper or a ten-minute performance or documentary cannot cover a major epoch in the history of the world. The best NHD entries address big questions by telling stories that are narrowly defined by time, place, or action.

For example, the Civil Rights Movement is an enormous topic, covering everything from voting and education to access to public accommodations, jobs, and health care. By focusing on swimming pools and beaches, a documentary can explore core issues of racial justice and still tell a coherent story in just ten minutes.

Pick your people

One classic way to narrow your scope is to focus one just one person, or a few individuals. The NHD example page includes projects on Emmeline Pankhurst, Norman Borlaug, and Jonathan Letterman and William Hammond. The last two lack the name recognition of Pankhurst or Borlaug, but that’s a good thing. Judges appreciate learning from contestants.

Use the theme

National History Day annual themes not only count toward your project’s score, but can also guide you to more compelling storytelling. Broadly speaking, themes can help you highlight two forms of tension or conflict in history.

The first is people vs. people. Themes like Debate & Diplomacy; Conflict & Compromise; and Revolution, Reaction, Reform all remind us that history is often a story of opposing forces, with winners and losers. Try to both identify these forces and present their perspective.

Other themes—Exploration, Encounter, Exchange; Innovation in History—may help you think about people who confronted an external challenge, such as a scientific or technical problem. In these cases, explain the challenge. Why was it so hard? How did your characters overcome it?

Yet other themes, such as Frontiers in History, or Turning Points in History, can easily accommodate either kind of tension. Just be sure to define that tension and explain how people resolved it.

Research

Read secondary sources beyond reference entries

It’s fine to start your research with a basic web search and reference entries from Britannica or Wikipedia, but don’t stop there. Good reference entries—including those in Wikipedia—will cite more detailed accounts that you can find and read. Magazines such as American Heritage, The American Historian, and Smithsonian Magazine, and some museum and library websites report current scholarship in terms accessible to junior division historians. Senior division entrants (and some juniors) should seek scholarship in libraries and in databases such as (JSTOR), many of which offer at least some free content. Read these not only for facts but also for interpretive claims, which can help you form your own questions.

Use primary sources beyond images

The web makes it easy to find dozens, even hundreds of drawings, paintings, maps, photographs, and moving pictures relevant to almost any historical topic. The best NHD documentaries, exhibits, and websites take advantage of this visual cornucopia but also find and analyse textual sources. Seek the voices, and not just the faces, of historical figures, while looking for the multiple perspectives that form one of the essential project elements. When you do include images, aim to use them not just as illustrations, but also as sources, finding information you could not get from texts alone. Read them closely, and explain what you see.

Keep track of your intellectual journey

Keep track of surprises, of sources that changed your mind, of sources that seemed to contradict each other or themselves. In your projects, your process papers, and your interviews with judges, tell us not just what you read, but what you learned.

Presentation

Develop an act structure

Screenwriters often speak (and sometimes despair) of the concept of “act structure”: the idea that most movies are built of a sequence of smaller stories, each with their own mission. NHD contestants can do the same, dividing their projects into smaller chunks, to help themselves and judges understand what work each section is doing.

This may be most obvious for websites, which almost by definition consist of multiple pages, each with its own title. For exhibits, you can give each panel a different mission, or divide the panels into smaller sections. Papers can also be divided into sections, each with a heading. Documentaries can be broken into acts with title cards, and performances by a narrator’s addressing the audience .

Use music and special effects with care

This may be a particular problem with documentaries, but it can be easy for students to get carried away with music and editing tools that crowd out the work of historical analysis. When using music, find something appropriate to the subject matter, whose mood (menace, triumph, sorrow) matches the section of the story you are telling. Or consider turning it off to let us hear the voices of historical figures.

Stick the landing

“So what?” the Contest Rule Book asks. “Why does this matter?” In the final sentences of a project, try to answer those questions as boldly as you can. Avoid relying on other historians here. Instead, tell us in your own voice why this story resonated with you and should speak to us all. Historian, make us remember.