Retelling the Story

Retelling the Story

Bringing History to Life

I have learned a tremendous amount since I first drafted my novel, and I am now ready to apply what I've learned to turning a great story into a much more fun and engaging reading experience. I will no longer try to impress the academics in my life but will make sure to create a world general readers will enjoy!

First of all, a new title: After Bull Run.  This is a title that reflects the story much better and will be more engaging and less pseudo-intellectual than Year of Disunion was. Also, as I've learned more details of the trade, I realize having a title closer to the beginning of the alphabet will make it more available when readers search for it or related topics.

Second, I am moving to a full first person narrators, with several different voices interleaving over the same events. I have read many authors who have done this very well, none a better model than Alison Weir. She is a true artist with this form, especially in Innocent Traitor. Margaret Atwood also is a fine model. In her most recent, The Testaments, she applies this narrative style with great mastery.

Third, I have come to appreciate that my larger-than-average academic vocabulary is not always a blessing, and, when I use interesting words just for the sake of using them, it can make a narrative grind to a halt. I will think hard about what words will best express what I need them to say while still remaining within the easy (non-interrupting) grasp of a majority of readers.

Also, historical details are critical, and I want my readers to trust that I have been accurate in every verifiable historical fact I have included, but I don't want the historical details to submerge the story. As my grandmother, Anya Seton, has shown me, especially in The Winthrop Woman, my very favorite of her novels, historical details should be there to drive the narrative rather than overwhelm it. 

After all my time in the academic world, I only could think of academics as an audience when I began to try to recreate history through fiction. My twenty-five years of living since academe, mostly in the corporate and high school environments, have shown me how the majority of the world thinks and works. I have come to appreciate the joy of a good story told for the sake of the story, and not as a vehicle to show the learning and knowledge of the writer. All language and historical detail should be is props to help create the world of the novel. In the case of After Bull Run, this will be the world of the first year of the American Civil War. 

I am considering following the model of Harriet Beecher Stowe and serializing my novel. Do you all think it would work if I created it, blog post by blog post, in posts linked to my Facebook Page? I don't know if my followers would have the interest or the patience, but it would be fun if they did! I would welcome feedback and ideas as I go and make it into a living project much as Stowe once did as she published Uncle Tom's Cabin as she wrote it  in The National Era for forty weeks of  1851.