Interview...with novelist David L. Robbins

"I hope it is a mistake to catalog my work as anything along the lines of a genre."

David L. Robbins doesn't like classifications. Of the eight novels he has published, half features battles and events of World War II. His ninth book, due out next summer from Simon & Schuster, also takes place during WWII. Still, Robbins reluctantly accepts the idea that he is "a WWII writer."

"It is fair to say I have carved out a niche in WWII," he admits, but adds, "I use war as a cauldron to bubble away my human characters. It's a great conflict to find out what characters will do."

How does he pick his story ideas?

Robbins loves history. Even when he's not writing about WWII, he usually sets his novels back in time.

"I don't have any contemporary books in mind," he says when asked what other topics he'd like to explore. "That's being done by a lot of people. I like going back a couple decades."

Although he usually picks out the time and the place for the novel first, his emphasis is always on the characters. He "auditions" his characters to see who will tell the story. For instance, the book Liberation Road is about D-Day so Robbins needed characters that had access to every aspect of that battle. He first looked at a squad medic, but dismissed him because he was limited to his squad members. He finally found a division chaplain and a black truck driver, both of whom have the ability to move throughout the units and the battlefields.

"You have to have characters that can carry the banner of your story," he explains. "If there's a narrator on the page, you know nothing's going to happen."

How much research ends up on the page in a historical novel?

Robbins typically researches for six months. He first reads everything he can find on his topic, but never fiction. He doesn't want to be influenced or to appear to have been influenced by anyone else's creative work. He feels the reading is the most vital part of his research.

For his current novel, he broke his research in three parts. First, he studied all aspects of the Japanese military, the men, the strategies, the protocols. Next, he looked at the internment camps and the Western captives, what they ate, did, wear, the plant and animals of the area around the camp, the weather. He researched the "comfort women," the Chinese, Korean and Filipina women captured and forced into the role of sexual slaves.

"I spent most of March in the Pacific," he explains the next step in his research, "visiting Manila, Hong Kong and Australia. I was in South Korea some too." Visiting the locations is vital so you'll have a clear sense of your setting.

He then looks for living witnesses to the events, but admits these interviews aren't as important in fiction as in nonfiction. In this case, the women had been interviewed and their stories recorded years ago when the memories were fresh. "And these 45 women in this one book had stories that sounded the same as these 90 women over here in that book."

Robbins admits that only five to ten percent of his research will ever make it into his book. This is typical of historic fiction, but still the research must be done. "You have to be sure your reader is comfortable in the book, that he knows the time and the place and the lexicon."

"When I can play the film of the scene in my head and I know the trees in the ravine, the humidity in the air, the color of a Filipina woman's skin, when I know how late the sunsets and what time it rises…When I know all these things and I can inject myself into the scene and everything I need is right there, then it's time to write."

How does Robbins write?

He struggles with the opening pages during each book. His primary complaint? "That goes so slowly!" In the first 25 pages, you have to set up the "teams" of who wants what and who will work to stop them from getting it, not to mention the setting and the backstory leading up to the opening line.

"You have to be so careful and you have to be patient" as you integrate all that information so that it flows for the reader and keeps him moving forward in the book.

"Once all that's established and action, dialogue and plot take over the book, and you don't have to explain who someone is when he opens his mouth, that's when it comes so fast. That's my favorite part."

Robbins writes seven days a week from 10:00 to 1:30 or 2:00, reaching for 1000 words, but generally producing between 700 and 900. At that pace, he can finish writing in six months. He edits as he goes, covering the day's work multiple times before he moves ahead. As a result, he turns in a highly polished manuscript.

"I write a first draft. I'd never write a rough draft." He says the words with more than a little distain.

"I don't understand how anyone can put language on a page they know isn't any good, saying 'I'll get back to it later'." He gives an audible shudder. "The thought that that could exist in the world…Well, I'd be sleepless."

When he's not writing himself, Robbins likes to help other new and aspiring writers. He founded the James River Writers in Richmond and serves on its advisory board. He recently created the Podium Foundation, which will develop a literary magazine for student writers in the five area high schools.




You can learn more about David L. Robbins and his novels, including photos of his research trip to the South Pacific, at his website.