3 Goals for Writing Great Historical Fiction
In a lot of ways, writing historical fiction is a double-edged sword. You have the framework and structure of real
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Your story “War Dogs” takes place in an animal-care facility at an airport. When did you come up with this as the setting for a piece of fiction? This is hardly an original thought—and there are tons of writers who have been exploring this for a long time—but as I was working on my last book, “The Hive and the Honey,” I began to form a deep artistic interest in the possibilities of using the canvas of fiction to tell stories where the points of view and perspectives are less centered on . . . humans. Is there a way to create narratives where I can bring animals into the foreground, the center stage, without sacrificing, say, character? Or is it O.K. to sacrifice character? Can I reimagine how we tell stories and shape narratives to include more of all the layers of this world and beyond? These days, when I read books like Samantha Harvey’s “ Orbital ,” my brain explodes. I’m filled with such awe and inspiration, and I think: This! How do you do this?! Maybe this is how I’m evolving as a writer. But I’m open to it, and gleefully want to step into that room. Anyway, at the same time, I stumbled upon a Times article on the animal facility at J.F.K. I’ve always been fascinated by how dogs in particular perceive these spaces of transience—the airport, the flight. As they walk through a terminal are they aware that they’re in a limbo place—a place of transition and of gateways? So the story began as a means by which to explore all these questions, and to live in those questions for a while. The chief animal protagonists in this story are two dogs and a polo pony. Their cognition can seem almost human at times. Was that a deliberate decision? Did you ever worry about anthropomorphizing them—or is that something that doesn’t have to concern a fiction writer? The decision was deliberate, in that I’ve also been interested in how certain fables are crafted and work, but I was always weighing whether I was […]
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In a lot of ways, writing historical fiction is a double-edged sword. You have the framework and structure of real
In the digital era, the art of writing has evolved beyond the traditional pen and paper. Technological advancements have introduced
