Dig Deeper:

• Historical Fiction and the truth in Time Raiders
  
  
• Reality Check: The writing of Blood of the Incas

Historical Fiction and Truth in Time Raiders.

History told as cliffhanger adventures. Some of my basic guidelines are:

• Research, research, research and keep going back to the original writings of the real-life archaeologists.
  
  
• Adapt. Be true to the spirit and high moments of the history, while changing the original memoirs into a cliffhanger.
  
  
• The telling of a cliffhanger is driven by the hero’s obsession, crises, fearful uncertainties, and by danger, action, adventure, people pushed to the edge. Biographical and historical information is revealed through the eyes of somebody caught up in the emotions of dramatic moment. The settings are not stage backdrops. Places are what my people see and feel in moments of crisis.
  
  
• The readers. Content, structure, themes, vocabulary, sentences are designed with the readers, aged 10+, always in mind. But style, like the story, must challenge the readers to go beyond themselves.
  
  
• The length. I can’t tell the whole story, so I choose the parts that say it all. That means agonizing selection.
  
  
• The beginning. I never start at the beginning, but at an exciting moment. Rather than explain what’s going on and why, I let the readers discover things bit by bit, as the people in the story do. (People in my books get really upset with me if I call them characters. They want their name used. They aren’t objects. I am permitted to call them people.)
  
  After lots of experimental first pages, I began Blood of the Incas with Hiram trapped on a mile-high cliff during an earthquake. The earthquake actually happened later, but for this cliffhanger, it worked better at the beginning. True earthquake. Fictional time.
  
  
• Compress time, space and people. One good example is Castillo, the guide, in Blood of the Incas. Castillo is one of my best imaginary friends. Of course, Hiram Bingham had many guides. But readers don’t need the confusion of lots of names and the irritation of yet another guide trotting up to smile at the camera. Castillo is an imagined guide, who took Hiram into true places and events.
  
  
• Develop potential adventures. Hiram Bingham briefly mentioned a dangerous panther. I seized upon that idea as a great way to reveal personalities, history, places and to increase suspense. True panther. Imagined hunt.
  
  
• Clear, powerful motives, not events, drive the story. Otherwise plot degenerates into just one damn thing after another. In Blood of the Incas, we need to know why Hiram Bingham has a passionate obsession with the past. His grandmother’s gift and the scene in the cave with the mummy are important to show what drove the hero to endure such hardships and take so many risks. True motives. Imagined grandmother.
  
  
• The ending must be an exciting, credible climax, which ‘closes the circle’ by resolving the main problem set up in or near the beginning.
  
  
• True discovery. True lives and true lies. Historical fiction and official historical ‘truth’ may be bias, propaganda, mistakes or lies. But academic historians and novelists are in the same hunt for truths of the past. Sometimes different, but complementary truths. My Time Raiders have imagined characters and situations, but they give us a glimpse into all kinds of truths about human beings, places and historical events. Readers are welcome to join the hunt for What Really Happened.

^ top

Reality Check: The Writing of Blood of the Incas

• Writing is messy. It also messes with the author’s head. Our minds go at a thousand miles an hour. Or go blank. While writing one sentence, our brain will freefall through memories, flashes of ideas, bits of conversation, details of research, sounds outside, worries about our unmentionable habit, music, thoughts of chocolate...
  
  I love that mess. It’s my job. I’ve special ways of making sure I get into a worse mess, then find a way out. There are different messes at different stages of writing a story.
  

• The First Draft. This follows months of research and soaking up Hiram Bingham’s writings, studying maps, checking other versions of the story and so on.
  
  This draft is called the Discovery Draft, because I find out what I do and don’t know, and about what’s working and not working in the way I write.
  
  It’s best written as fast and furiously as possible. I try to let the story tell me, without checking spelling or even going back to research notes. Stop to find the correct latitude or spelling of Choqqueqquicho or something like that, and the story dies. Fix it later.
  
  This draft is for me. Nobody else reads this. They can’t. It’s an embarrassing shambles. Lots of pages disintegrate into lists of questions I’ll need to answer, but not yet. There are scrawled maps, scenes begun and not finished, chapters in the wrong order because while I was writing one, another insisted on being written. Scenes pop up from another point of view. My people jostle and demand attention. Some will get in the book. Others won’t and they get really angry. If they are really lively, they’ll find a place in another book.
  
  To find a way through this maze, I write from within my people. I sit them down, get eye-contact and demand answers to a few tough questions, such as: What’s your problem? Can you see a way out? What makes you keep going? Why should I or the readers care about you?
  
  And I don’t believe in the so-called Writer’s Block. It’s a weak excuse. Sure, writing the first words is scary. So is the first brushstroke of a painting, or the first notes of a performance. But with writing, we don’t usually know the best beginning until we’ve finished the entire draft.
  
  
• The Second Draft.
  
  What has the first draft given me?
  
  I draw diagrams of the structure and make lists of scenes already written- those to stay and those that might be deleted. Another list is of extra scenes that maybe should go in to be true to Hiram Bingham’s book. Get the balance right.
  What about the pace? Does each chapter end on a cliffhanger?
  
  One other person reads this when it’s finished. My wife, Christine, has written more than fifty exciting books, is a brilliant editor, the publisher of Launch Press, and she finds lots of things I’ll need to think about and fix.
  
  This second draft gets me further into the mess. While writing it, my mind jumps back to something to add to a scene, my people have found their voices by now and shout each other down, new ideas bubble up, and always my research keeps nagging at me to stay faithful to Hiram and his discoveries. I fling the mess on the page so that I don’t lose it. This writing is like surfing the subconscious.
  
  The thing is to finish each scene. Then, later, like an oil painter, go back and add layers of color, personality, relationships, conversation, thought, place...
  
  If I’m confused, I ask my people: What do you want, right now? What are you feeling and what are you going to do about it?
  
  If I’m totally lost I ask them: What’s the real conflict here? Where’s the real danger? How can I make things even harder for you and myself?
  
  
• The Third Draft
  
  What sort of book have I got here and what am I going to do with it?
  
  One reality check is my storyboard. (I had to do an outline way back, when I first worked on the concept for my agent and publisher. But we all knew that while certain scenes were obligatory, nevertheless, in the writing, the book would take on a life of its own.)
  
  To find what the story is now really about, I reduce each chapter to one sentence. Some writers at this stage, shrink the novel to a short story, or draw the book onto a whiteboard or huge sheet of paper, or minimize each scene onto library cards, then shuffle the cards.
  
  Whatever, it’s time to face reality. I force myself to say what the story is in no more than 8 words. I go back time and again to Bingham’s account. Have I kept the point of view consistent? What’s the best place to end? Have I answered enough of the readers’ questions?
  
  I also show it to readers with specialist knowledge. For example,
  Blood of the Incas was read by our daughter Jennifer and her husband Troy, because they’ve done lots of mountain climbing and treks in jungles. They found mistakes I didn’t know I’d made, for example the date around which the word backpack became common in the USA. Phew. I had Hiram Bingham using a rucksack. Big mistake. And I checked details of Machu Picchu with our son, Sam, who trekked there with his wife, Alison.
  
  Christine cross-checked the exact species of birds I’d mentioned. She used websites of international bird-watchers who photograph and record the songs of birds all over the world. She also found that I’d used the wrong kind of leech. Leeches ain’t just leeches. There’s all sorts with up to ten eyes or multiple mouths and some, like disgusting fingers of gloves filled with blood, dangle from tree branches and drop on your neck to form a pretty black necklace that sucks. Anyway, I had an African species in the Peruvian Amazon. Der. Panic. Quick, correct it.
  
  When all this correcting is done, I send the manuscript to my agent, Jacinta di Mase, who gives her good suggestions about improving the manuscript before she sends it the publisher.
  
  Professional pride. I revise it again. Then off it goes to the publisher, who gives it to editors and proof-readers. My first editor for Time Raiders was an archeology graduate.
  
  What I’m saying is that in the real world of writing, writers are actually re-writers.
  
  We take enormous efforts to put ourselves into messes, and find ways out. Then we hide those efforts so the book looks easy.

^ top