Random Thoughts While Writing A Brother’s Vow
As I have been serializing my story A Brother’s Vow, the fictional aspects have been easy and fun to write. But navigating the historical context and facts of a tumultuous time period, one I know only through books, articles, memoirs, letters, and speeches, has not been so easy.
It is an epoch that reads almost like a fairytale. A dragon sweeping across the world with fire and brutality, grinding everything underfoot.
Then, from the ashes, a white knight rises to save the village from utter ruin.
The struggle seems hopeless. More loss than victory.
Only at the very end does the knight, bathed in blood, sweat, and tears, drive his javelin through the heart of the monster.
But to the people of Europe, it was anything but a fairytale. It was a six-year-and-one-day nightmare that no one could wake from or escape.
Aerial bombing and the incessant Blitzkrieg forced places like London to utilize Anderson shelters and blackout windows so landmarks and targets would be harder to see. In areas controlled by Nazi Germany, civilians endured extreme oppression, forced labor, and the looting of food and resources.
But that is only the obvious suffering.
Then we read of labor and execution camps filled with every imaginable horror. People starved and tortured. Families separated, never to find one another again. Men, women, and children gassed to death without hope or help.
And I pull myself out of my research of all this darkness and look at my serial.
I lean back in my chair.
As a writer, how do I take a reader into this madness?
How do I show it without turning the story into a horror novel? How do I portray it without becoming grisly for the sake of being grisly?
Where is the line between what I include and what I withhold?
And if I draw that line, am I still being honest to what violence actually is—especially wartime violence?
These are the questions I am wrestling with as I continue writing my story, and as I try to understand how history and storytelling can exist together.
Like flies to honey, I have always been drawn to history. I do not remember exactly how it started, but I have vague memories of reading Davy Crockett’s and Daniel Boone’s journals at a very young age.
I remember reading Robinson Crusoe and being confused because it was written in first person. At the time, I did not yet understand that fiction could be written that way.
While most kids wanted to be outside or visiting friends, I was the child reading encyclopedias and dictionaries in my room or sprawled across a couch, trying to better understand how to communicate and learn facts about the world around me.
I remember hearing my mother tell a friend, “Give him a book and he’s happy.”
She was right when she said it, and it remains true to this day.
The words of Thomas Babington Macaulay often come to mind:
“Books are becoming everything to me. If I had at this moment any choice in life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries...and never pass a waking hour without a book before me.”
Long before I ever published the first chapter of A Brother’s Vow, I had already been living on Crete in my mind, learning its geography, music, food, and cultural traditions so I could understand, as best I could, what life looked like before war parachuted from the sky and shattered peace and tranquility in the name of conquest.
The fictional heart of A Brother’s Vow was born from two questions:
What if everything a character knew about herself was false?
Is love truly stronger than blood?
And once I began writing, the fiction flowed easily.
But as a first-time writer of historical fiction, I found that all my research had ultimately left me unprepared.
I do not know how much time I have spent researching and studying everything related to the Battle of Crete, but it has been several years at the very least.
And whatever people say, research is fun when it is something you are passionate about.
Just me?
Oh. Okay.
But dear reader, you have no idea how difficult it is to stay on track and not wander into hours’ worth of historical context and rabbit holes that will probably never see the light of day.
When it has no real weight on the story, do readers need to know that King George II of Greece was restored to power twice during his lifetime? That his first reign lasted just over a year following a failed royalist coup, and that the Republican-led military exiled him to Romania in 1923, only for him to return to power after another political shift in 1935?
Or do readers need to know that King Alexander of Greece died from sepsis in 1920, three weeks after a pet Barbary macaque attacked his dog and then bit him on the leg and torso when he tried to intervene?
The dog, a German Shepherd named Fritz, appears to have survived, though there is little information beyond that.
I was honestly more upset about the dog…
But dear reader, you do not know how difficult it is to stay on track and resist writing hours’ worth of historical context and rabbit holes I have gone down that will likely never see the light of day.
I often think about John Keegan’s opening line in his book The Face of Battle. It is a wonderful book that analyzes warfare from the perspective of the common soldier, focusing on the human experience of combat rather than grand strategy.
You might expect, with a title like that, to be plunged straight into a scene of battle. But it simply begins:
“I have never been in a battle.”
And I never have either.
I do not know what it is like to be shot at, to have grenades tear people apart, or to be struck by a bullet. I have never heard a bullet whistle past my ears. I have never watched friends die at the hands of an enemy. I have never smelled blood, gunpowder, and sweat mixing together in that strange, unbearable atmosphere.
But I have known men who have.
My great-uncle Russell served our nation during the Second World War, and like so many of his generation, he rarely spoke of it—though in his later years he did.
On June 6, 1944, he was one of the frogmen in the water, tasked with blowing up underwater defenses so the landing craft could reach the beaches of Normandy safely.
On another occasion, he described how so many bullets were flying that he was left with barely any clothing intact.
And in a third account, a piece of shrapnel pierced his helmet and lodged in his skull. With nothing else available as a bandage, he scooped up dirt and pressed it into the wound.
So when I write battles or scenes of a violent nature, I knew from the beginning that I did not want to write ‘gore,’ but instead to work in a style closer to Tolstoy’s psychological realism. This meant focusing on character-driven moral dilemmas, precise physical detail, and sweeping epic themes.
And I am happy with that choice.
I wonder, though, are you happy with A Brother’s Vow as it is right now?
I know this piece is a bit of a muddled mess of thoughts. But I think I may write more specifically in the future about my writing process, rabbit holes, and the things that have shaped the way I write A Brother’s Vow over time.
In the end, I am trying to write a historically accurate story about the Second World War.
She is a girl with a family she would do anything to find again.
He is a boy too afraid to lose her.
What does the future hold for them both?
Thanks for reading!
God bless!!!
Very interesting how you have deep-dived into WWII history and earlier facts to make this story so authentic. Well done.