As I’m an avid consumer of historical military fiction (authors like Jeff Shaara, Bernard Cornwell, Gingrich & Forstchen, PJ Nagle, and Harold Coyle), I decided to try writing a Civil War novel. I built the story around the real outfit which our reenacting group uses for our name and which we hold to as our “primary impression.” That’s Company K of the Sixth Texas Infantry, CSA, aka The Alamo Rifles, whose men were recruited around San Antonio, Texas.
This article, however, is not about the Alamo Rifles or the
plot of Whittled Away. This article is about the process of writing a first novel. With
each new chapter I rediscovered that military historical fiction is a whole
different beast than anything I’ve written before. All the magazine articles and newsletters I’ve
written were easy compared to writing a novel.
First of all, the darned book just wouldn’t leave me alone. I’d wake up
early in the morning eager to hit the keyboard to get the gist of a new scene
recorded, since breakfast and the morning newspaper tend to wipe clean any
sleep-inspired ideas. I kept jabbering to my wife about the characters and how
to take them down the path the real Civil War put them upon. I took to e-mailing
scenes to my sons and brother to gauge their responses. I read whole chapters
out loud to my cornered family during holiday gatherings.
For over three years, I practically lived with one or
another of six primary accounts of the war written by soldiers in the regiment
or brigade to which my characters belong. One of the most pleasant surprises was
learning how many odd and exciting anecdotes are in those six primary accounts.
Honestly, truth is stranger than fiction, so much so that I decided the book
needed an “Afterward” to list the memoirs and note that the most unexpected
vignettes in the story really did happen.
Then there has been the core question that seems common to
writers of historical fiction: Is the historical war storyline mainly a vehicle
around which to create human conflicts and the development of fictional
characters, or are my fictional characters primarily the vehicle to tell the
story of the war for this one regiment? I think I started with the characters
being the means to tell the war story of the Sixth Texas, but the characters
kept growing and demanding more attention than was my initial plan, so by the
end perhaps the human side prevailed over the war itself. But I’m not sure, and
each reader will decide that answer for himself.
The fictional characters became my family. My job was to
dream them up; name them; put personalities on them; put them in tight spots
and get most of them out again, deciding who to kill off and who to keep alive
until the end. That was great fun, but not as easy I thought it would be. I
learned it’s tough to knock off a good guy. Even more, the main characters had
become my kids, and you just don’t “do in” your own kids. Also, it was much easier to create good guys
than real meanies, yet good stories need villains. On the other hand, even
good-guy characters need human shortcomings, like we all have. I confess that my guys are not overly complex
and with a few intentional exceptions, are good people, but sometimes the dark
side pops up in all of them. I hope.
With the story about three-fourths written, I had an
epiphany and decided the book needed a romance. Bear in mind that I’m a big
admirer of the novel The Killer Angels and the movie Gettysburg,
which have no female characters, much less a romance thread. All along I’ve just wanted to tell the war story
of the Alamo Rifles, nothing more. Then the
light bulb clicked on to remind me that war is depressing and reading about
battle after battle and hardship after hardship is also depressing. Prisoner-of-war
camp and then the Atlanta campaign in 1864, which are big parts of the story of
the Sixth Texas, may have been long periods of terrible hardship and non-stop
fighting, but a book about it needs a distraction every now and then – like a
romantic interlude for some lucky soldier. The other thing is that I have never
written a romantic scene and wanted to try. Turns out it was great fun, and
more importantly, my wife gave it a passing grade. I don’t yet know if the
lovey-dovey bird-walk away from the war itself detracts from the essence of the
novel, but I hope not, because it’s one of my favorite parts.
Then there are the forbidden words. The unspeakable “N” word,
which is the racial slur that continues to plague Mark Twain’s books today. Huck
Finn is truly one of the great American classic novels, but it still gets
banned from school reading lists and classroom instruction because it includes
the “N” word. I’m not even in Mark
Twain’s shadow, but to be authentic in 1860’s dialogue, should I include that “N”
word in the everyday conversation of my characters? What about the other “N” word? The one which
is an anatomical reference, not the place where we put priming caps on our
muskets. If I use that word in the romance, will the book be deemed too racy
for teenage readers? I’m not telling if either of those hot button words fell victim
to the delete key. Writing this before the novel is finished, and certainly not
fully edited, I don’t even know if
any forbidden words will be in the final version. (Author’s Note: The book is
now done, and I can’t be coy, both N words are in the book.)
Since war is an ugly business, how many light-hearted
experiences should be part of a war novel?
My answer has been enough to flesh out the personalities of the handful
of very young men who are my main characters.
Young guys are not known for a lot of serious introspection, they are
known for doing stupid things, saying stupid things, taking risks, ribbing each
other, and somehow enduring crappy situations. The primary account memoirs and
diaries helped here, because those veterans remembered many of the mischievous
and light-hearted things they did between the battles and other hardships they
endured. Again, I hope my guys reflect that in a realistic way.
Since my novel is first and last a war story, how many
battles should be included? How often
and in how many ways could I take my characters through the horrific
experiences of Civil War battle?
Wouldn’t the battle experience be too repetitive and intense to include
time after time? Again, a close reading of regimental and brigade histories led
me through this challenge. I found that not one of the Sixth Texas’ dozen battles
were fought in the same circumstance as any other. In the real war, sometimes
the Sixth Texas was attacking, sometimes defending. Sometimes they were in the
forward skirmish line, sometimes they were elbow-to-elbow. The terrain varied.
Opponents differed. Engaging Yankees armed with Henry repeating rifles led to a
very different fight than engaging Yankees armed with old Springfield
smoothbores. Fighting US Colored troops brought about different emotions than
fighting other white men. The outcome of the battles ran the gamut from great
success to utter defeat. It turned out that I could highlight those
differences. Moreover, being historical “fiction,” in some battles key
characters die, or are captured, or are seriously wounded. In other battles the
whole group skates through unscathed. I tried hard to put the same core elements
of combat into each battle: Fear, the fog of war, chaos, the nastiness of blood
and offal, but I think each battle wound up with a different feel to it. I hope.
The internet has been a blessing for quick research to
identify which Federal divisions and brigades opposed Cleburne’s Division in
their engagements. It was then surprisingly easy to find online histories of Union
regiments that might well have fought the Sixth Texas. Those internet sources
usually included officer’s names, after-action reports, and more cool anecdotes
that I could weave into the storyline.
A final challenge was how to use my experiences as a 15-year
Civil War reenactor to write a better Civil War novel, without writing a novel
that’s obviously written by a reenactor who is eager to display his knowledge
of the material culture of Civil War soldiers, or the field craft of Civil War
soldiers. It was very tempting to describe the brass buttons on the characters’
uniform jackets, or list the nine steps of loading a musket, or quote the
specific orders to move a formation of soldiers about, or tell how to turn a
sack of cornmeal into edible food, or how to make a brush shelter that might
keep men dry during an overnight thunderstorm. While it’s neat we learn those
things in our reenacting hobby, I found it very tempting to overdo them in
writing. Nonetheless, I included some Civil War reenacting “trivia” because,
after all is said and written, I am a devoted Civil War reenactor, but only a
fledgling novelist.
The completed first draft
was 120,000 words long. I quickly sent a printed copy to my brother, who since
our teenage years has guided my choice of books to read, and is an astute Civil
War historian. I asked my English teacher-librarian wife to tackle an
electronic version. She is an avid reader of novels, but doesn’t know much
about the Civil War. I thought this pair of willing “prime-readers” would give
me candid, but not too brutal feedback. Waiting for them to read and critique
the drafts was like holding my wife’s hand while she delivered each of our
sons. I was on pins and needles, time slowed to a crawl, and I was really
scared my newborn child would be missing something important. (Turns out both sons
were missing hair, balding by thirty, but that came much later.)
Brother and Wife each provided me a fair set of compliments.
When talking by phone about the book, Brother laughed a lot at the parts where
I hoped readers would at least smile. Wife blessed my main characters as
believable and interesting. On the other hand, they both gave me lists of
suggestions, chapter by chapter. That stung, but I had asked them for it. I
returned to the keyboard, not too sullen, and started patching the fabric that connected
the chapters, reluctantly grateful to have guidance from critical eyes of
people I trust and respect. I don’t transition very smoothly in real life, and Brother
and Wife confirmed my story line needed smoother segues too. It took some work
to lessen the gaps between the chapters.
It was harder to reshape a few of the characters. It took some nipping, tucking,
and injecting little bits of personality and backstory here and there, but
again I concede the prime-readers’ observations helped me improve the
believability of the characters. In the months of revisions I also added a few
new characters to better paint the whole picture.
Both were too nice to suggest I delete or rewrite whole
chapters, for which I’m grateful. Well, that’s not true. Wife did urge me to
delete one complete, albeit short, chapter right at the end of the book, a
chapter wholly based on a quietly remarkable incident in a diary, but an
incident that was not particularly germane to the storyline. Wife said it
detracted from the core story at a time when the focus needed to stay tight on
the key action. So, I did it. It’s gone.
But it hurt to hit that “delete” button.
Wife was also not shy about suggesting whole paragraphs of
“boring history and irrelevant details” bite the dust. She didn’t want to get
bogged down in either the minutia of the stuff soldiers carry, or the bigger picture
of the war, she wanted the characters to carry the tale. After zapping a whole
chapter, paragraphs became easy victims. Her suggestions shortened the story by
2,500 words, and I think it is now a leaner, better, character-driven book.
Did writing the book make me a better reenactor? I don’t think so, although the ongoing reading
and research did make me better appreciate the hardships Civil War soldiers
endured for long periods of time during the campaigns. Those guys were tough
hombres, no doubt about it.
On the other hand, some of my campaign reenacting
experiences did more to enrich my writing than the writing the book did to
enrich my reenacting. I recall the immersive event I did in 2007, Bank’s Grand
Retreat, where we marched over twenty miles in the deep woods of Louisiana,
fought skirmishes every day, camped and ate for four days without modern
logistical support, but did do picket duty every night, and never saw more of
modern America than a stray plastic bottle or beer can on the trail. We had
experiences like filling canteens in creeks (the water purified with iodine
pills), cooking in the dark, depending on hardtack crackers for sustenance,
packing up in the pre-dawn, hitting the trail early for four days in a row, marching
most of the day, then fighting while more tired than I thought possible. Then
we did it again the next day for four days.
Those experiences helped me get in the heads of my
characters in a way I couldn’t have done before the four days of immersive
campaign reenacting. I had to endure discomfort for more than an isolated hour
in order for the deprivations, hardship and endless activity to make an impact,
to give me just a taste of the real circumstance of Civil War soldiers on
campaign – and no one was really shooting at me.
Conversely, the casual reenacting static camp weekends
didn’t provide any helpful insights for writing the novel. Those weekends are
great fun, they are not the right kind of virtual time travel, and do not
provide enough “magic moments,” to help me write realistic scenes about a
terrible war that happened 150 years ago.
Hunters shoot different game, athletes play different
sports, and authors write different genres. My plunge into military historical
fiction was the biggest challenge I’ve had as a writer. I hope the result is
something worth reading.
