I have always felt that this story is universal. When I began to understand the details of the history, I felt that the most compelling aspect was not what happened, but what continues to happen and how it is denied.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think what I was after was a unifying story that could bring everything together, that could give me a sense of the whole of history.
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.
As much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what's going to happen.
It was interesting to shoot history as it happens, without anyone demanding a huge story.
I feel like history is about going and discovering the great human stories that just are every bit as relevant as anything that's going on today.
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.
Although this is a fictitious story the history is real. You don't want to re-write history but you certainly want to portray events and characters as realistically as you can.
As a writer of historical fiction, I believe you don't want to fictionalize gratuitously; you want the fictional aspects to prod and pressure the history into new and exciting reactions.
It's really interesting to me how all of us can experience the exact same event, and yet come away with wildly disparate interpretations of what happened. We each have totally different ideas of what was said, what was intended, and what really took place.
There's no relationship to the narrative anymore. People want their own interpretation of history. We're compartmentalizing, forgetting what came directly before, like it's not a big deal. That, to me, is a crime.