Tuesday, June 06, 2006
The Continum of Written History
There are a number of different genres within the broad field of written history: academic history, popular history, historical fiction, family history, memoirs and perhaps others. I am beginning to see the virtue of dialogue among practitioners of these very different approaches to history: we have a lot to learn from each other.
Just yesterday, I was intrigued to learn about the North American Historical Novel Society, which held its first conference in April 2005 in Salt Lake City. The kick-off speaker on opening night was Jack Whyte, who admonished the assembled writers, “Just tell a story, Forget trying to write classic literature. Keep it simple.”
The Society's second conference, by the way, is scheduled for early June 2007 in Albany, NY.
Whyte's advice brings back to mind several conversations I had about six months ago with two friends with long experience in the book publishing business. Both knew about the three years of research I've done and the general theme of the story. And both told me, "Stop focussing on research. Write!" And they both followed up with advice: emphsize character and action; historical detail is less important.
I found that advice very unsettling. It did, however, come at a crucial stage, just as I myself was beginning to write the first draft of a book proposal and to undertake a search for a literary agent. Over intervening months, I've struggled with issues of "how" to write history.
Google led me to a few websites that mention the difference between academic history and popular history. My meanderings through bookstore shelves have put into my hands quite a number of books about seafaring expeditions, naval battles, shipwrecks, even medical history that fall into the same kind of territory I'm beginning to write about. Many of those books are clearly of the "popular" variety. I do not find them satisfying.
Nor do I find much of academic histories very engaging either.
I'm beginning to understand that I wish to occupy that space somewhere between the "popular" and the "academic." Nathaniel Philbrick, whom I've mentioned in an earlier post, is this kind of historian. Rigorous in research, faithful in his retelling of events, accurate in his quotations, yet very well written -- a genuinely good read. That's what I hope to accomplish.
One would think, with my lifetime of writing, teaching and fascination with cultural history, that I would not be fidgeting so much about the writing process I'm engaged in. At the core of my problem is inadequate documentation: while the timeline of my story is quite well documented in archives in Spain, the Canary Islands, the Caribbean countries, Mexico, the Philippines and even Macao, almost nothing is known about the characters themselves. While there are plenty of officials letters describing the highlights of events, there is no true first-hand account from any of the participants or their contemporaries. And, in many ways, the story becomes very repetitious and boring after awhile.
All of these deficiences in the record encourage one to "fill in the blanks" with invented description and dialogue, with characterizations drawn out of thin air. I'm not satisfied with that.
Consequently, my research has reached far beyond the story itself, searching out corollary information. For example, when my main character is caught in a frightening and destructive typhoon at sea, I've turned to a description of such a storm by a contemporary in the same waters. It took months and lots of patience to find that description. I've been writing up that section of the story over the past few days, finally with enough detail and drama to satisfy the demanding historian in me. Altogether, it amounts to little more than a page of single-space text. Whew! So much work, so few words to show for it!
Just yesterday, I was intrigued to learn about the North American Historical Novel Society, which held its first conference in April 2005 in Salt Lake City. The kick-off speaker on opening night was Jack Whyte, who admonished the assembled writers, “Just tell a story, Forget trying to write classic literature. Keep it simple.”
The Society's second conference, by the way, is scheduled for early June 2007 in Albany, NY.
Whyte's advice brings back to mind several conversations I had about six months ago with two friends with long experience in the book publishing business. Both knew about the three years of research I've done and the general theme of the story. And both told me, "Stop focussing on research. Write!" And they both followed up with advice: emphsize character and action; historical detail is less important.
I found that advice very unsettling. It did, however, come at a crucial stage, just as I myself was beginning to write the first draft of a book proposal and to undertake a search for a literary agent. Over intervening months, I've struggled with issues of "how" to write history.
Google led me to a few websites that mention the difference between academic history and popular history. My meanderings through bookstore shelves have put into my hands quite a number of books about seafaring expeditions, naval battles, shipwrecks, even medical history that fall into the same kind of territory I'm beginning to write about. Many of those books are clearly of the "popular" variety. I do not find them satisfying.
Nor do I find much of academic histories very engaging either.
I'm beginning to understand that I wish to occupy that space somewhere between the "popular" and the "academic." Nathaniel Philbrick, whom I've mentioned in an earlier post, is this kind of historian. Rigorous in research, faithful in his retelling of events, accurate in his quotations, yet very well written -- a genuinely good read. That's what I hope to accomplish.
One would think, with my lifetime of writing, teaching and fascination with cultural history, that I would not be fidgeting so much about the writing process I'm engaged in. At the core of my problem is inadequate documentation: while the timeline of my story is quite well documented in archives in Spain, the Canary Islands, the Caribbean countries, Mexico, the Philippines and even Macao, almost nothing is known about the characters themselves. While there are plenty of officials letters describing the highlights of events, there is no true first-hand account from any of the participants or their contemporaries. And, in many ways, the story becomes very repetitious and boring after awhile.
All of these deficiences in the record encourage one to "fill in the blanks" with invented description and dialogue, with characterizations drawn out of thin air. I'm not satisfied with that.
Consequently, my research has reached far beyond the story itself, searching out corollary information. For example, when my main character is caught in a frightening and destructive typhoon at sea, I've turned to a description of such a storm by a contemporary in the same waters. It took months and lots of patience to find that description. I've been writing up that section of the story over the past few days, finally with enough detail and drama to satisfy the demanding historian in me. Altogether, it amounts to little more than a page of single-space text. Whew! So much work, so few words to show for it!
# posted by Tom Colvin @ 12:22 AM 
