A Family-Tree thingy Problem.

I have a couple....well a few stories going in which the character are ancestors or related to the characters of other stories, and so I'm finding I'm having a major issue of keeping them striaght and how to keep a timeline of when each are around. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas, I know some authors like to keep a family tree but I find I'm struggling with how to start one....or where one should start from when dealing with Vampires and Elves, Immortal creatures with HUGE trees?

I would really appriciate any suggestion,
FA

Well perhaps when making a family tree for this you might want to go backwards, and keep it simple.

Perhaps you should start with the "youngest" at the bottom/top and then put his/her parents. then the parents parents, and so on and so forth. don't even worry about aunts and uncles at first.

Here's what I'm thinking of.



Then once you have that down you can branch off from there starting at wither the mother or father's side.

I don't know if it makes since to you but it kinda does to me. >.< I've never done an immortal family tree before though.

It makes sense and I'll try it, thanks for the advice. This may really help keep me strightm because right now I think I'm beyond lost!