Fiction makes explicit what historians must infer

A character's internal struggle can be the main story even when readers expect the battles to take that place. Glynn Stewart describes moving toward that emphasis in his recent fiction. Alex Clarke finds it useful in teaching because a novelist can reveal thoughts directly, whereas a historian has to infer motives from what was written down and what happened. Stewart draws on those historical reconstructions to imagine what people would think in situations he invents. He also corrects the assumption that he reads many autobiographies: he has read some, but Nelson Mandela is the only example he can recall immediately.