How to Write Like Shelby Foote
Total immersion in his subject and writing in pajamas were just part of his style.
Shelby Foote considered himself a novelist, yet his magnum opus is a classic work of narrative history.
Between 1954 and 1973, Foote produced the three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative. It began at the behest of Random House publisher Bennet Cerf, who wanted a brief narrative of the Civil War in time its centennial.
Foote joked that the project “expanded” over the years — to a hefty 1.5 million words.
Foote had published four novels by the time he began the Civil War project, and he imbued it with the tools and sensitivities of a novelist. It flows seamlessly, despite its size. It has plot, tension, and suspense, even though readers know the outcome.
The characters in The Civil War are not the thin cardboard silhouettes we pinned on bulletin boards in grade school. They are rich, animated, flawed people. Foote loves them because they are as complex as any character he could ever create in fiction.
Civil War historians and aficionados, of course, were well aware of The Civil War trilogy from its debut.
But in 1990, Foote and his work earned household recognition when film maker Ken Burns made him the…
