Too much detail can bog down any story. Enough with the history of gunpowder, the geology of Hawaii, the processes of whaling, and cactus and tumbleweed.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Story and plot, not historical facts, are the engine of a novel, but I was committed to working through the grain of actual history and coming to something, an overall effect, which approximated truth.
The history of Hawaii may be seen as a story of arrivals.
Thanks to our modern era, facts are incredibly easy to come by. A few web searches for your subject matter, and you have all the information you could dream of.
Captain Cook discovered Australia looking for the Terra Incognita. Christopher Columbus thought he was finding India but discovered America. History is full of events that happened because of an imaginary tale.
Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around.
History is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.
It was interesting to shoot history as it happens, without anyone demanding a huge story.
Combine two words, Myth and History. What do you get? Mystery.
At thirteen, I accompanied my mother to the Hawaiian Islands. There, for the first time, I saw the wonder of a steamship and the vastness of the ocean. From that time on, I was eager to acquire the knowledge of the West and to fathom the mysteries of nature.
On my second swim at Deception Island, the water was very clear and I was looking at hundreds of whale bones beneath me. It was a graveyard from the whaling some time in the 1920s-30s.
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