The Writing Journey – David O. Stewart

Author David O. Stewart joins us today to talk about his writing journey. David writes both fiction and non-fiction – more about that in his interview. We met quite a few years ago when David led the Washington Independent Review of Books. In an earlier career he was a trial and appellate lawyer. (More about his background below.)

I’ve read and can highly recommend several of his historical novels.

~~~

Mary: How do your more recent novels differ from earlier novels, particularly the first few novels you wrote?

David: The biggest difference is that my first three novels (not historical fiction) have never been published and never will be.  The next five (historical fiction!) are still in print. The greater success may reflect my own improvement as a writer, and/or the popularity of the historical fiction genre. Having also written several narrative histories, I enjoy building stories in different historical eras and populating them with historical characters, desperately trying to avoid the anachronisms that can undermine readers’ illusion of entering a different era.

My first published historical novel – The Lincoln Deception – probably succeeded for a few reasons unrelated to the writing.  It had the magic name “Lincoln” in the title. (Note to self: titles matter, as do covers). Also, the novel attempted to unpack the assassination conspiracy, which remains startling in its scope. And the book’s structure was inspired by Josephine Tey’s marvelous Daughter of Time. In both books, a protagonist in a later era attempts to solve a crime from decades (or centuries) before, which is the classic activity of an historical researcher. I loved creating my own solution to historical puzzles about the John Wilkes Booth Conspiracy.  

How has your writing process evolved since your first years as an author? 

For fiction, the major difference flowed from advice I got from mega-author Jeffery Deaver. For my first attempted novels, I followed the “pantser” model, advocated by many fine writers, so I sat at the keyboard and waited for the characters to reveal the story. My characters, however, either didn’t know what the story was, or chose to keep it to themselves. Deaver (also a former a lawyer) very courteously explained that he writes a detailed outline of the story that can reach 80 single-spaced pages, then converts it to a novel.  I have followed that practice.  My first “outline” will include snatches of dialogue and place or character descriptions which occur to me as I’m outlining. When it’s time to open the story up as a novel, the outline is not a straitjacket – I may have to change the story, add characters or lose them, and I definitely will fill in their stories.  That first “outline” (which might also be called an extremely rough draft) is a way to make myself think hard about where I want to go.

Tell us a little about your writing process. Possible topics – not intended to limit your response: outlining, POV, editing, research, character choices, time periods.

I prefer third-person omniscient point-of-view. I found that first-person POV created awkward situations when POV characters have to somehow acquire information occurring beyond their experience. That seemed artificial and slowed the pace of the story, which you do not want. Third-person-omniscient can tell any story, while allowing the narrative to jump inside the heads of multiple characters, which is fun for both readers and the writer. As a general rule, I’m not looking to reinvent the novel, but rather to entertain.  

I’m a compulsive editor. Some days I edit the previous day’s work when I start in the morning to give myself a running start into new material. And when I have a draft of the book, I first go back to parts that I found difficult to nail down. I generally have a mental list of trouble spots that probably need attention. Then I do several rounds of revision. My final revision involves reading the text aloud to myself.  The ear picks up problems that I’ve missed – things like pronoun antecedents, speaker tags, grammar, and clarity. When editing a printed page or on a screen, I usually know what I was trying to say so I may not notice that I need to say it better.

I’m first attracted to a specific story, not a particular era. Because the publisher of The Lincoln Deception wanted me to produce a series, and since that first book had to occur in 1900, (teaser alert) when former Congressman John Bingham of Ohio (he prosecuted Booth’s co-conspirators) died, I was locked into the early twentieth century for the series. Happily, the period fascinates me as a time of constant change.  Book 2, The Paris Deception, is set at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, a larger-than-life event that I always wanted to explore.  And for Book 3, The Babe Ruth Deception allowed me to scratch an itch to combine sportswriting with bootlegging with mystery.

My next two novels also were destined for specific time periods. I wanted to build stories around the struggles of my mother’s German ancestors when they came to America. They emigrated in the 1750s, so they endured much of our history, while also having the challenges of every immigrant group, which I wanted to explore. Knowing something (though not that much) about their settlement in Waldoboro on the Maine coast in the 1750s, I dug up an impressive amount of that community’s early history during the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. That produced The New Land, which covers the family’s first two generations in America

I also knew a good deal about a later ancestor who fought in the Civil War; pension records and army records can be a treasure trove!  Those, combined with stories from my mother that were sometimes true, supported The Burning Land, which traces both the war years and the postwar westward migration. Eras of high stress and sacrifice make for compelling stories.

I have a notion to write a third number in the series set in World War II, but it hasn’t happened yet.

You have written five historical novels and five books of narrative history (nonfiction). What have been the essential differences in your experience of working with those two different genres?

Each genre imposes different responsibilities and opportunities for the writer.  

With historical novels, writing about purely imagined characters gives the writer the greatest freedom.  The imagined characters should be presented in a plausible fashion, acting and speaking in ways that are believable for a person in that situation at that time and place.  For true historical figures, however, the scope for imagination shrinks – as the rule states, you can make up a lot, but Lincoln has to be tall.  For both types of characters, the writer can imagine conversations and internal monologues, which are great fun – characters can crack jokes, be rude, wax rhapsodic, or (my favorite) be oblivious, just so long as the words spoken or thought are believable for the person under the circumstances.Also, unless you are writing alternate history (not my thing), the great events have to remain the same: Anne Boleyn loses her head, the Gettysburg Address lasts only five minutes, and the Germans lose World War II.

With narrative history, I have the responsibility to present only those events, statements, motives, and consequences that I can determine actually happened or very likely happened. No fabricated dialogue, no characters looking nervously out of a window unless I can point to a record as a source. Also, I should not present a character’s internal thoughts unless I have a source that records those thoughts (say, a diary or letter), though I have to consider whether the character had a motive to misrepresent her thoughts in that source, which can be a delicate calculation. I can speculate a bit about the character’s thoughts or what she might have said, so long as it’s clear that I am offering a possibility, not a fact – e.g., “It would have been natural for her to think about X or Y,” or “On similar occasions, Ms. Z had looked to her Bible for solace.” And it’s fair game to note that nothing suggests that the individual considered some other, very relevant factor.  So, as with fiction, you are trying to unpack that person’s character, but you must stay within the guardrails erected by your research.

I also have noted a significant difference between readers of fiction and readers of nonfiction. Fiction readers ordinarily will tolerate (even applaud) ambiguity about the nature of the characters, about what actually happened, and even about a character’s motives and goals.  The fiction reader expects to be teased and to have so some thinking, though before the end of the book you may need to clarify central matters that you previously left unclear.

Nonfiction readers, in my experience, have less patience with ambiguity. They basically want to know what happened.  They will accept the writer’s assertion that some fact or motive or consequence is unknown, but they expect you to tell them what you know – no teasing, no cat-and-mouse.   

Has your readership changed over time? Do you have any insights on why your readership has or has not changed?

My knowledge about my “readership” is pretty thin, largely based on who turns out for book talks, how many of them turn out, and how many copies of a book sell.  My first (nonfiction) book told the story of the writing of the Constitution, The Summer of 1787, published in 2007. Back then, audiobooks were the merest sliver of the market.  That’s very different now.  They represent twenty-five percent of the sales for my most recent book.  My audience has always skewed toward older people, who are more likely to read books and to care about history.  

Publishers of history seem increasingly interested in “unknown stories” focused on types of people (women, minorities) whose lives are less well documented. That seems an opportunity for historical novelists who can use their imaginations to fill in the blanks of poorly-documented stories.

Has there been a fork in the road that changed your writing? Some event, person, book or whatever that has changed what you write?

Two come to mind.  My first submission in my first fiction-writing workshop totaled about a dozen pretty bad pages.  After going around the room for comments, the instructor lavishly praised a scene in the submission that consumed less than a page.  I was pretty pleased with myself until I reread the submission after class. I realized that the other eleven pages were miserable, but I could see what was good about the brief scene that was praiseworthy, and what was lousy about the rest.  It was a powerful lesson, delivered without a whisper of public humiliation. I’m still grateful.

Several years later, I had abandoned fiction writing for historical narratives when I stumbled upon an unverifiable account that seemed (if true) to undermine the standard version of the Lincoln assassination.  I walked around for weeks and scoured sources, trying to figure out a way to explore that story in a purely factual narrative, but without success. When I related the problem to my daughter and her then-boyfriend – neither particularly enthusiastic about history – they were intrigued and peppered me with questions. That persuaded me that the story could have legs in a fictional treatment, using the Daughter of Time model I mentioned before.  Without their interest in the story, I might well have walked away from the idea and never published a novel.

What kind of historical fiction appeals to you as a reader?

The good stuff, which British writers seem especially likely to produce.  (There, I’ve said it!)  Anything by Robert Harris; he jumps around in eras and cultures, but has a great eye for a good story and writes so well.  I gamboled through Philippa Gregory novels, and Wolf Hall, until I was truly Tudor-ed out. (Side note: The second season of the Wolf Hall television series seems much better than the first.)  I had a passionate Bernard Cornwell phase; my enthusiasm has never flagged for his Sharpe series, which is always good, even in the cheesy TV series where the soldiers seem to march back and forth over the same piece of land in every episode.  

I recently stumbled into Finding Margaret Fuller by Allison Pataki and Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray, which are examples of how untold or neglected stories can produce good historical novels. A fairly rough takedown of the Margaret Fuller book points out several squirmy anachronisms: for example, that nineteenth-century New Englanders would have run screaming from the dinner table if served food seasoned with garlic. It’s an object lesson in the need to be careful with every fact, but I still enjoyed the book.

Many thanks for sharing your writing journey, David. So many intriguing insights along with some great advice for authors. The authors you’ve listed are also favourites of mine 🙂

David O. Stewart received the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Washington Independent Review of Books. His writing has included monthly Supreme Court columns for the American Bar Association Journal, and items in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and on Bloomberg View, History News Network, and American Heritage.  He’s also done commentary for CNN, C-SPAN, Bloomberg News, and MSNBC.

He has been on A Writer of History before:

• The Birth of the Lincoln Deception
• From Family to Fiction
• The story behind his book about George Washington
• Discussing The Paris Deception

FOR MORE ON READING & WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION  FOLLOW A WRITER OF HISTORY. There’s a SUBSCRIBE function on the right hand side of the page. 

M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel THAT WAS THEN is a contemporary thriller. Mary’s other novels, THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on her website www.mktod.com or by leaving a comment.