And Now We Lie: Lessons Learned from Revising Historical Fiction
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1In the summer of 2018, while enrolled in a program at Exeter College, a professor asked if anyone had an idea for a novel. I was blindly confident at the time – in the way all young writers are, having been doing so for less than a year – and raised my hand since no one else would. This was just an idea, with no research or follow up: “A World War One story, where a deserter assumes the identity of his dead commanding officer.”
2The teacher asked a few more leading questions, then took several minutes to write every single version of my story that was already published, in fiction, film, or television, on the whiteboard. It filled most of the space. Afterwards, she told us: “Nothing is original. It has all been done before.”
3 At the time, her words felt like a challenge; years later, I realize they were an invitation to think differently about what originality even means in historical writing. That question, of how invention and history coexist, has guided every iteration of “And Now We Lie,” and forever impacted both my writing and teaching process. By understanding the importance of research – used and abandoned – as it relates to world-building, as well as the necessity of time spent away from creative works, the looming weight of “originality” begins to lift. Historical fiction serves as the mediator between personal interest and established fact; how the two are merged is what makes a novel particularly timeless and unique.
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- 1 John McCrae, In Flanders Fields and Other Poems, New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1919, p. 3.
4When returning from Oxford, I received a travel award from Duke University to research this premise in greater detail. And Now We Lie was, and still is, the working title – a nice double entendre of death and deceit – pulled from a line from Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae’s 1915 poem “In Flanders Fields.”1 This award marked a significant step in my burgeoning identity as a writer; until then, I had only imagined myself a historian in practice and an athlete by trade. The modest sum hardly covered airfare, but for ten days, I traced my proposed protagonist’s route from Belgian battlefields to a Parisian château, piecing together as much of the narrative arc as I could. Limited funds meant often spotting important locations through train windows, without proper time to visit. On the flight home, I felt to have confirmed my fictional imaginations, but to also have stifled my creativity. There was so much more I needed to learn.
- 2 Sam Mendes, director, 1917, Universal Pictures, 2019; Peter Jackson, director, producer, They Shall (...)
5By then, the recent centennial and continued success of World War I in both fiction (Daniel Mason’s The Winter Soldier, Simon Tolkien’s No Man’s Land) and film (1917, They Shall Not Grow Old) had shown a resurging interest in an often-overlooked conflict.2 By chronicling the breadth of civilian life (ranging from French trench officers to Indian gravediggers; German turncoats to American reporters; the moneyed elite to the destitute and desperate), I aimed to display the interconnectedness of human experience at wartime as a portrayal of our tenacious existence. Knowing fiction sometimes serves best as an arbiter of the past, and by researching accurately and writing honestly, I believed I could showcase the closeness of a populous at war in ways it had not been seen before.
6Upon returning, my advisor told me: “You’ll only ever use ten percent of your gathered information for a work of historical fiction.” She was right, of course. We evaluate historical fiction on both micro- and macro-levels. For the micro, we seek a clear commitment to authenticity: What are the characters wearing? Where are they eating? How are they talking? And, most importantly, how deeply does this concern the five senses? As for the macro: How does the work embody historical feeling, about that time, and also about today? Not everything needs to be echoed in the present, but the most poignant of historical writing often allows us to see reflections in our reality, given that writers of historical fiction are granted that distance.
7 I had a whole lot of the former (micro) and absolutely none of the latter (macro). As mentioned, I imagined myself a historian; I was comfortable nose-deep in old books, recording in a soon-to-be illegible script, making sure every little detail found its place. To establish an origin point for the first chapter, the process went something like:
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First, finding a moment in the war that would enable desertion. Deeper into war meant additional strains on the home front. I contacted professors of military history at my alma mater and elsewhere, eventually settling on the Battle of Passchendaele, in the fall of 1917.
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- 3 War Office, Manual of Military Law, 1914, London, Harrison and Sons, 1914.
Then, utilizing a library edition of the Manual of Military Law, I noted mandated punishments for refusal of orders (desertion was almost always death by firing squad).3 Learning that, between April and June of 1917, nearly half of French infantry divisions on the Western Front mutinied to some extent, the movement’s impact was also felt along British lines, and caused flare-ups throughout that year.
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- 4 Chris McCarthy, Passchendaele: The Day-By-Day Account, London, Arms & Armour Press, 1995, p. 119.
A work entitled Passchendaele: The Day-By-Day Account by Chris McCarthy enabled me to investigate troop communications, maps, photographs, temperature, and weather reports of each day, as I wanted the window to begin at a time that felt messy, after a major clash and before another, with weather that was unimaginably poor.4
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Eventually, all this (and more) led me to Friday night, October 12th, 1917, one day after the First Battle of Passchendaele, where British troops could barely move and were mostly massacred before they could reach their objectives. Afterward, troops were ordered to wait for the weather to clear, with 11 millimeters of day-long rain, at a high of 52 degrees Fahrenheit.
- 5 Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That, London, Anchor Books, 1998, p. 193; Mark Bostridge, Vera Britt (...)
8This, of course, was just the beginning. Language was extremely important, even among an English-speaking unit, to ground readers from the outset. As my fictional unit would be on wiring duty (laying barbed wire, to prevent enemy attacks, often put up in the dark, and fired at by both sides), primary accounts, such as Robert Graves’ Good-Bye to All That, describe wire as “light” or “vintage”; Vera Brittain’s collected letters discussed the importance of scouting during these duties; Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road elaborated on how few soldiers carried weapons while on wiring duty.5
- 6 Ford Maddox Ford, War Prose, Manchester, Carcanet Press, 1999; Anthony Clayton, Paths of Glory: The (...)
9For sound, I juxtaposed Ford Madox Ford’s War Prose, which is English, with Anthony Clayton’s Paths of Glory, which provided a French perspective: 5-9’s, for instance, are a type of German shell that emitted a thick, black smoke. The British referred to these as Jack Johnsons, whereas the French called them Marmites. Nicknames like these helped me discern the differences between German 4.2’s from 99 pounders (“Rum jars” and “trench mortars,” respectively), all of which have varying sonic impacts.6 This, accompanied by descriptions of rifle and machine gun fire, whistles and tank treads, enabled me to accurately imagine the sonic landscape at the time, often through the use of modern film and documentary, as referenced previously.
- 7 Jacob P. Smith, Jacob P. Smith Diary, Rubenstein Library Collections, 1917, p. 18. Accessed Septemb (...)
- 8 “Vitesse des Trains” from Encyclopédie Industrielle: Les chemins de fer. 1902; Robert J. Young, Und (...)
10And the list goes on: For food, primary sources at both Duke and Columbia’s Rare Book Rooms proved a godsend, particularly the diary of an American artilleryman named Jacob B. Smith, who meticulously noted what he ate and drank during his time in France. (French bread was no longer white, due to a terrible harvest in 1917; Corned beef was a delicacy, mentioned across the works of Graves, Ford, and Remarque; as for drink, well, “Nobody was drinking water, instead everyone carried around flasks with wine.”)7 I uncovered French railway texts to determine train speed and points of origin, input arts-based research to contact Louvre historians to determine its shutdown and reopening, and even connected a 1917 Chicago Tribune article entitled ‘France Mother to its Orphans Under New Law” to help introduce two characters who are “orphans of the war.”8
11All this to say: In the following year, I completed the manuscript, won a small mentorship competition, began querying literary agents, and then COVID hit. I faced denial, took on different projects, and ultimately shelved the work indefinitely.
12I was too much of a historian. There was much more comfort in research than in writing. That part would have to be improved upon later. Much later.
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13In hindsight, shelving the novel was not abandonment but methodology in disguise. It created distance, perspective, and the space to approach the material differently – to write not as a historian confirming facts, but as a novelist interrogating them.
14Three years after shelving the novel, in 2022, in between degrees, I found myself again on a flight to France, this time funded not by an institution but by a baseball team. Reviving my career to play professionally for the Metz Cometz, I embarked on a journey across the country, pitching against clubs in Rouen, Montigny, and Montpellier, among others. This “comeback” was really an excuse to begin a different novel-length project, a story about America’s pastime set well before I was born. My time abroad in 2019 taught me that to truly understand a work from all sides, one must fully live the experience. No matter how much I enjoyed playing that summer, I couldn’t shake the feeling of unfinished business from before. The day of our game against Paris Université Club, I emerged from the Gare de l’Est – where two pivotal scenes of And Now We Lie took place – and realized I needed to come back to do the story justice. But where to begin?
15When I came across the Fulbright Program’s Doctoral Research Award at the Université Paris-Saclay, I contacted Dr. Gilles Malandain, Professor of History through the Centre d’histoire Culturelle des Sociétés Contemporaines (CHCSC), and explained my interest in reconfiguring this work. I admitted to not knowing how it would be done, but believed it could be. He graciously encouraged me to apply. With my dissertation committee composed of three novelists who specialize in historical fiction, as well as a linguist, and the support of a campus committee, I submitted a proposal in October of 2023, was notified of my acceptance in February of 2024, and was scheduled to begin in September. The only thing that stood in my way were four full days of PhD preliminary examinations, being tested on my major, “The History of the Novel,” to qualify for the fellowship, which required me to be officially ABD (all but dissertation).
16While reading for these exams, the line between academic and creative work became blurred, and I began to explore the canon not only as a scholar, but as a novelist seeking new structures through which to reimagine the past. There, I came across the three prevailing truths that changed everything: War has been best, or most accurately, depicted when written from an insignificant character’s perspective (in terms of rank, with varying POV); from a significant distance (typically a decade or more); and, until recently (with Pat Barker’s Regeneration, Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong, etc.), best depicted by those who have fought in it. We can see this trend established in American Realism, through modernism, postmodernism, and beyond, where the most popular additions to war literature – by Stephen Crane, Erich Remarque, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut – have ultimately defined a literary movement’s core features on an otherwise “traditional” backdrop (that of war). Crane could only imagine what Remarque would expound upon, just as Heller managed to depict Yossarian’s life (in Catch-22) as a bomber as much as Vonnegut understood what it was like to be on the receiving end (in Slaughterhouse Five). The descriptive impact of Red Badge of Courage is present in each subsequent work, just as the dissension towards government exists in All Quiet onwards, the disjointed structuring of Catch-22, and so on.
17 What did this mean for me? And Now We Lie featured two out of the three: insignificant character from a significant distance, but was not innovative, nor written by a military veteran. When I declared in my Fulbright proposal “... the initial draft needs a major reconfiguration in narrative drive – one which will overhaul both its story and themes…” I had never anticipated the “reconfiguration” to be so drastic. Yet it soon became clear.
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18There’s a personal theory I always preach to writing students: One good idea is never enough for a novel. It takes two truly original ideas, at minimum, to really land on something unique. This means that no matter how worthwhile the original concept for a story may seem, if you cannot combine it with another equally original one, there is a major chance its originality will come into question. This not only helps propel the story from the outset but also can revive a work when stuck. (That other novel of mine, the baseball one, was revived last fall by doing exactly this.)
19Living in an era without a defined literary movement, I began to realize that the original concept of And Now We Lie contains an exciting enough plot for half of a story.
- 9 “Living History,” as a discipline, has seen a recent uptick in academic circles, beginning in the l (...)
- 10 S. Jansen’s, “Reenactment as Event in Contemporary Cinema” (2011), Martin Bostal’s, “Medieval Video (...)
20What also began to interest me, however, were the modern attempts at reliving memories through war reenactment, bridging a gap between the studies of history and anthropology.9 My generation is surrounded by, and obsessed with, war in the media (especially through film, television, and video games, as well as documentaries, YouTube videos, and other short-form content), yet doesn’t quite understand why.10 Many young men, who have not served, feel disenfranchised at having “missed out” on the popularized conflicts that may have “justified” their belonging. In September, I visited the Musée de la Grande Guerre in Meaux for an event that celebrated these “living history” groups, and although there is little historical research dedicated to the history and psychology of reenactment, its dedicated members take the process extraordinarily seriously. This, finally, was the chance for me to pursue something different, and potentially unique.
21And Now We Lie will benefit from its predecessors by avoiding tropes of “war” altogether. Writing as a soldier, set in a distant conflict, provides detachment through modernity. My aim now is to flip these truths on their head: writing as a character who believes to be significant, present, and a veteran – only to have an alternate reality come to light: that he is not a soldier in a World War, but a man, in the 21st century, obsessed with a particular war artist from a hundred-year-old conflict. Through picaresque plotting and dark humor, I hope to uncover our obsession with stories of violence and war, as they intersect across disciplines, and modern media’s impact on our doing so.
22The beauty – and danger – of historical fiction is tracing things down rabbit holes. Professor Malandain has been patient, because with my work’s current development, I am constantly pursuing scarcely researched threads, hoping to discover additional inspirations along the way. My recent tasks have included arranging a meeting at the Imperial War Museum in London to inspect the largest collection of original war art, corresponding with reenactor groups in England, the United States, and in France, and visiting various WWI museums to handle artifacts (feeling the weight of certain weapons, the make of clothes, et cetera). As my project expands, so do the research trends. The scope of representation now includes war artists, colonial troops, and unexpected theatres of war, meaning my current focus again moves outwards, to now include:
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France’s celebrations during the centennial, as well as Great War remembrance.
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War Tourism immediately following the First World War.
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The role and impact of La Coloniale during WWI (primarily those who came from French West Africa, particularly Senegal, and were deployed along the western front).
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The role of war artists in England, beginning in 1916, and France’s closest equivalent to their War Artists scheme.
23With much more to come.
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24To recall the words of my original advisor: I would be overjoyed if ten percent of this research ever made it into the finished product. The truth is, so much already does not show up even in the current draft. But what fails to appear shouldn’t matter to a reader, anyway: it is the writer’s job to do the work, to play the role of historian, and to provide a narrative that is honest enough, and well researched enough, that the reader never has to ask. No reader of historical fiction should need to be an expert to pick up this story and understand it, nor should a story contain a portrayal that fails to incorporate various perspectives and ideas. The importance of that unused 90% is necessary in forming a cohesive reimagination of time passed, and readers should leave with not only a greater understanding, but the want to learn more.
- 11 Sam Paul, “The Mainstreaming of Historical Fiction,” Esquire, 17 Nov. 2023, www.esquire.com/enterta (...)
25Historical fiction, on the whole, is said to be trending upward: Some of the world’s most famous authors are publishing historically (Zadie Smith, Lauren Groff, James McBride); three out of five of 2023’s National Book Award nominees were historical (as was the Pulitzer Prize winner, Hernan Diaz’s Trust); film and TV adaptations are coming out for the novels All the Light We Cannot See, Daisy Jones and the Six, The Sympathizer, and more.11
26Although this is being reported as artists pushing against established trends, the truth is, a resurgence of historical fiction is far from a new phenomenon. Writers have been consistently reevaluating history for decades, and since the outset of postmodernism, seeking out “untold” histories with the urge to amplify them. Our resurgence does not mean these stories weren’t being told to begin with, but rather that the cultural – and more often, critical – gaze had failed to keep them in the limelight.
- 12 N. Mouton, “A literary perspective on the limits of leadership: Tolstoy’s critique of the great man (...)
27The First World War, by the complex nature of the conflict, has always been “untold” in this way; for all the poignant art and literature that emerged from veterans of that conflict, subsequent generations saw it fall under the shadow of the Second World War. Because of this, it aligns quite well with this concept of “trending” historical fiction, especially in focusing on “normal” people living everyday lives, unexpectedly thrust into epic situations, with a chance to make a difference (a not-so-original thought, tackled by Leo Tolstoy in 1869).12
- 13 Axelle Brodiez-Dolino et alii, « Les écritures alternatives : faire de l’histoire “hors les murs” ? (...)
28During a talk I gave at the CHCSC in the fall, we read a paper on “The New Writing of History,” which contained a wonderful insight from Jacques Bouveresse that best encapsulates much of what has been said here: 13
- 14 This is a generated translation of a quote from an article. Original quote: “Ce qui ne signifie auc (...)
“This does not mean that literature and social sciences in general, and novels and history in particular, are interchangeable forms of knowledge of the social; rather, it is a question of considering literature as one of the possible forms of producing knowledge about reality and, ultimately, one of the possible paths to the truth.”14
29My attraction to historical writing stems from the desire to create accessible worlds from times past, combining factual evidence with reimagined situations. Creative literature continues to find ways to better capture the “essence” of a subject and help readers connect across eras and cultures. These are the kind of works that resonate with the students I teach, regardless of their academic discipline or background – plot-driven stories that bend genre through diverse voices, challenging what it means to be “literary.”
- 15 Fulbright Program. “About - Fulbright.” Fulbright, 4 Feb. 2025, www.fulbrightprogram.org/about.
30The goal of fiction, above all, is to entertain. My goal is to create a work that is lasting and relatable. I hope that, in explaining what I have here, readers will feel compelled to investigate the histories that attract them most. This, I believe, aligns with Fulbright’s mission of a more interconnected and peaceful world, which often arises in the places we least expect it.15
Notes
1 John McCrae, In Flanders Fields and Other Poems, New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1919, p. 3.
2 Sam Mendes, director, 1917, Universal Pictures, 2019; Peter Jackson, director, producer, They Shall Not Grow Old, 2018.
3 War Office, Manual of Military Law, 1914, London, Harrison and Sons, 1914.
4 Chris McCarthy, Passchendaele: The Day-By-Day Account, London, Arms & Armour Press, 1995, p. 119.
5 Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That, London, Anchor Books, 1998, p. 193; Mark Bostridge, Vera Brittain and the First World War, London, Bloomsbury, 2014, p. 73; Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road, Toronto, Penguin, 2005, p. 29.
6 Ford Maddox Ford, War Prose, Manchester, Carcanet Press, 1999; Anthony Clayton, Paths of Glory: The French Army 1914-1918, London, Cassell, 2003, p. 137.
7 Jacob P. Smith, Jacob P. Smith Diary, Rubenstein Library Collections, 1917, p. 18. Accessed September 2018.
8 “Vitesse des Trains” from Encyclopédie Industrielle: Les chemins de fer. 1902; Robert J. Young, Under Siege, Oxford, New York, Berghahn Books, 2000, p. xxiv, 110-113.
9 “Living History,” as a discipline, has seen a recent uptick in academic circles, beginning in the late nineties. While most of its successful literature has taken the form of popular interest works focused on specific eras, the last fifteen years have showed broader academic routes, from Iain McCalman’s Historical Reenactment: From Realism to the Affective Turn, pub. 2010, to The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies, pub. 2020, edited by Vanessa Agnew, Jonathan Lamb, and Juliann Tomann.
10 S. Jansen’s, “Reenactment as Event in Contemporary Cinema” (2011), Martin Bostal’s, “Medieval Video Games as Reenactment of the Past” (2019); and Audrey Demésy’s, “Re-enactment of historical duels: ‘Immediate History,’ commemoration and pictures” (2013) all represent various avenues in which the hobby has become empowered.
11 Sam Paul, “The Mainstreaming of Historical Fiction,” Esquire, 17 Nov. 2023, www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a45846909/historical-fiction-mainstream.
12 N. Mouton, “A literary perspective on the limits of leadership: Tolstoy’s critique of the great man theory,” Leadership 15(1), 2019, p. 81-102. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715017738823
13 Axelle Brodiez-Dolino et alii, « Les écritures alternatives : faire de l’histoire “hors les murs” ? », Le Mouvement Social, 2019/4 n° 269-270, 2019, p. 5-45. CAIRN.INFO, shs.cairn.info/revue-le-mouvement-social1-2019-4-page-5?lang=fr.
14 This is a generated translation of a quote from an article. Original quote: “Ce qui ne signifie aucunement que littérature et sciences sociales en général, roman et histoire en particulier, soient des formes interchangeables de connaissance du social ; il s’agit plutôt de considérer la littérature comme l’une des formes possibles de production de savoirs sur la réalité et, finalement, l’un des chemins possibles vers la vérité.” Google Translate trans., Bénédicte Coste, Jacques Bouveresse, « La Connaissance de l’écrivain. Sur la littérature, la vérité et la vie », Études britanniques contemporaines [En ligne], 34 | 2008, mis en ligne le 06 juin 2019, consulté le 13 juin 2025.
15 Fulbright Program. “About - Fulbright.” Fulbright, 4 Feb. 2025, www.fulbrightprogram.org/about.
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Samuel Granoff, « And Now We Lie: Lessons Learned from Revising Historical Fiction », Revue d’histoire culturelle [En ligne], 10 | 2025, mis en ligne le 15 septembre 2025, consulté le 08 décembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rhc/14901 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/14z4l
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