Ask the Author: David Dyer
Answered Questions (12)
David Dyer
Thank you, Alexa, for your question! In fact, being devilishly handsome can be a bit of a challenge at times, but I do my best. Sometimes I give myself a break by trying to look a bit middle aged.
Now, which Titanic passenger sticks in my mind the most? Why, Stella Sage, of course! She was a feisty young woman who did her very best in difficult circumstances.
Now, which Titanic passenger sticks in my mind the most? Why, Stella Sage, of course! She was a feisty young woman who did her very best in difficult circumstances.
David Dyer
Funny, I was asked this question just a few days ago by Harry C Marks, host of the wonderful literary podcast ‘Covered’ (I highly recommend it.)
As I explained to Harry, in fact I had initially set out to write a lengthy, technical non-fiction account of the Californian affair. But then:
‘I thought: this project isn’t going to work. I don’t think people will read it, there are already nonfiction accounts of this incident. And the more pressing problem I had was that the central puzzle of this historical incident is: Why didn’t Captain Lord, when he was told of distress rockets, go up to the bridge and take his ship to the rescue? ... And I found as I was writing my book, as I began my project, that the answer was a psychological answer. It’s not to do with the facts and figures of navigation … it was a complex psychological answer, and I found that really the only way to convey that was to use the tools of fiction. I wanted to try to create a sense of the complex interiority of these characters, I wanted to be able to relate their thoughts, their conversations, and the subtle nuances of their relationships, and really I could only do that with fiction … But a lot of what is in that book is true – as true as I could make it.’
If you want to hear Harry and me talk about other aspects of The Midnight Watch, you can download the episode here: https://hologramradio.org/covered/s2e... .
You can find about more about ‘Covered’ at Harry’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/coveredfm
As I explained to Harry, in fact I had initially set out to write a lengthy, technical non-fiction account of the Californian affair. But then:
‘I thought: this project isn’t going to work. I don’t think people will read it, there are already nonfiction accounts of this incident. And the more pressing problem I had was that the central puzzle of this historical incident is: Why didn’t Captain Lord, when he was told of distress rockets, go up to the bridge and take his ship to the rescue? ... And I found as I was writing my book, as I began my project, that the answer was a psychological answer. It’s not to do with the facts and figures of navigation … it was a complex psychological answer, and I found that really the only way to convey that was to use the tools of fiction. I wanted to try to create a sense of the complex interiority of these characters, I wanted to be able to relate their thoughts, their conversations, and the subtle nuances of their relationships, and really I could only do that with fiction … But a lot of what is in that book is true – as true as I could make it.’
If you want to hear Harry and me talk about other aspects of The Midnight Watch, you can download the episode here: https://hologramradio.org/covered/s2e... .
You can find about more about ‘Covered’ at Harry’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/coveredfm
David Dyer
I really enjoyed my four years of study at the Australian Maritime College. The course was structured in such a way that I spent half my time at the college and half my time at sea on merchant ships. It was a great way to see the world. I worked mostly on oil tankers, some of them large enough to carry three times the Titanic’s weight in oil!
My experience at sea was essential in my later writing of The Midnight Watch. It not only gave me the knowledge I needed to understand the technical and navigational aspects of the Californian’s story, it allowed me to describe the atmospherics and psychology of shipboard life. A ship at sea is an isolated place, many miles from the ordinary world, and it has its own codes of behavior and subtle power dynamics. Understanding these dynamics was key to unlocking the mystery of what happened on the Californian.
During my time at sea I also experienced the mesmerizing isolation of the ‘midnight watch’, the ship’s watch which gives my novel its title. The midnight watch takes place during the dark hours of 12am to 4am, and is usually kept by the second officer, who stands on the bridge staring into the blackness. It is a lonely time because almost everyone is else on the ship is asleep. Whenever I stood the midnight watch I would wander out to the bridge wing, lean against the rail and stare out to the starry horizon. I felt very small in a vast universe, and sometimes the water below seemed to beckon me to jump in. I’d quickly step back from the rail!
My experience at sea was essential in my later writing of The Midnight Watch. It not only gave me the knowledge I needed to understand the technical and navigational aspects of the Californian’s story, it allowed me to describe the atmospherics and psychology of shipboard life. A ship at sea is an isolated place, many miles from the ordinary world, and it has its own codes of behavior and subtle power dynamics. Understanding these dynamics was key to unlocking the mystery of what happened on the Californian.
During my time at sea I also experienced the mesmerizing isolation of the ‘midnight watch’, the ship’s watch which gives my novel its title. The midnight watch takes place during the dark hours of 12am to 4am, and is usually kept by the second officer, who stands on the bridge staring into the blackness. It is a lonely time because almost everyone is else on the ship is asleep. Whenever I stood the midnight watch I would wander out to the bridge wing, lean against the rail and stare out to the starry horizon. I felt very small in a vast universe, and sometimes the water below seemed to beckon me to jump in. I’d quickly step back from the rail!
David Dyer
I first learned about the Californian incident when I was a very young child. I watched ‘A Night to Remember’ with my grandmother when I was about 4 or 5, and that film shows (a little inaccurately) the key aspects of the Californian’s role. Later, when I was in Grade 4, I wrote a story entitled ‘Titanic’s Disaster’, which has an intriguing couple of sentences on its second page:
“The wireless operator was sending SOS calls to the Calafornian [sic] which was only ten miles away but its wireless was shut down over one hour ago. Rockets were fired every five minutes but the Calafornian though that it was some sort of ship board celebration.’
We know now that the ‘shipboard celebration’ thesis cannot be true, but this shows that even as an eight year old I was grappling with the mystery of ‘why didn’t the Californian go?’
Although ‘the Californian incident’ is very well known – and, indeed, very controversial – in Titanic circles, it is less well known in the general population. And I think much of the reason for this is the James Cameron film ‘Titanic’. The film was extraordinarily popular, and it does not refer to the Californian. In the DVD version there is a deleted scene showing the Californian warning the Titanic, but no scenes at all showing the Californian seeing the Titanic’s rockets. I think the story was probably too complex, too subtle, too difficult for Cameron to fit within his narrative structure.
What can we learn from the Californian affair? Well, that the universe can be unfair, and that even small errors can have catastrophic consequences. More importantly, though, I think the incident shows us that there are different ways of ‘being a man’, of being strong. Sometimes the greatest strength a person can show is to admit weakness, mistakes, and vulnerability. None of us are perfect.
“The wireless operator was sending SOS calls to the Calafornian [sic] which was only ten miles away but its wireless was shut down over one hour ago. Rockets were fired every five minutes but the Calafornian though that it was some sort of ship board celebration.’
We know now that the ‘shipboard celebration’ thesis cannot be true, but this shows that even as an eight year old I was grappling with the mystery of ‘why didn’t the Californian go?’
Although ‘the Californian incident’ is very well known – and, indeed, very controversial – in Titanic circles, it is less well known in the general population. And I think much of the reason for this is the James Cameron film ‘Titanic’. The film was extraordinarily popular, and it does not refer to the Californian. In the DVD version there is a deleted scene showing the Californian warning the Titanic, but no scenes at all showing the Californian seeing the Titanic’s rockets. I think the story was probably too complex, too subtle, too difficult for Cameron to fit within his narrative structure.
What can we learn from the Californian affair? Well, that the universe can be unfair, and that even small errors can have catastrophic consequences. More importantly, though, I think the incident shows us that there are different ways of ‘being a man’, of being strong. Sometimes the greatest strength a person can show is to admit weakness, mistakes, and vulnerability. None of us are perfect.
David Dyer
The Titanic is the perfect drama; it’s as if fate conspired to put together in one time and place all the elements of great play. Or, as I sometimes think of it, the Titanic was a movie that wrote itself.
The ship was the largest in the world, and the most splendid and luxurious. She was on her maiden voyage and had been described as ‘unsinkable’. Her passengers were the rich and famous of her time: John Jacob Astor, one of the richest men in America; Mr Isidor Straus, co-founder of Macy’s; Major Archibald Butt, close friend of the President of the United States; Benjamin Guggenheim, millionaire and good friend of JP Morgan; Mr WT Stead, famous essayist and mystic; and many more.
But for me, I think the most important reason why the Titanic remains in people’s minds after all these years is the way the ship sank. The Atlantic that night was as calm as anyone had ever seen it – there was no wind, no swell, no waves, no moon – and the ship took almost three hours to sink, remaining upright for most of that time. This gave plenty of time and scope for all the individual dramas and moral dilemmas to take place which would later characterize all the movies, books and plays: the band playing to the very end; the elderly Mrs Straus refusing to leave her husband; John Jacob Astor helping his wife into a boat and then stepping back; the orchestra playing until the very end; and Mr J Bruce Ismay, the British chairman of the line, slinking into a lifeboat and becoming the world’s most famous coward.
There are, of course, many more stories from the sloping decks of that doomed liner, all of them dramatic, all of them worth telling.
And now we know too that there were men a nearby ship nearby watching it all through their binoculars. You couldn’t ask for more.
The ship was the largest in the world, and the most splendid and luxurious. She was on her maiden voyage and had been described as ‘unsinkable’. Her passengers were the rich and famous of her time: John Jacob Astor, one of the richest men in America; Mr Isidor Straus, co-founder of Macy’s; Major Archibald Butt, close friend of the President of the United States; Benjamin Guggenheim, millionaire and good friend of JP Morgan; Mr WT Stead, famous essayist and mystic; and many more.
But for me, I think the most important reason why the Titanic remains in people’s minds after all these years is the way the ship sank. The Atlantic that night was as calm as anyone had ever seen it – there was no wind, no swell, no waves, no moon – and the ship took almost three hours to sink, remaining upright for most of that time. This gave plenty of time and scope for all the individual dramas and moral dilemmas to take place which would later characterize all the movies, books and plays: the band playing to the very end; the elderly Mrs Straus refusing to leave her husband; John Jacob Astor helping his wife into a boat and then stepping back; the orchestra playing until the very end; and Mr J Bruce Ismay, the British chairman of the line, slinking into a lifeboat and becoming the world’s most famous coward.
There are, of course, many more stories from the sloping decks of that doomed liner, all of them dramatic, all of them worth telling.
And now we know too that there were men a nearby ship nearby watching it all through their binoculars. You couldn’t ask for more.
David Dyer
Stanley Lord was a fascinating character in history, but he did not yield his secrets easily. 'Try to get beneath his skin', says John Steadman's daughter in The Midnight Watch, 'get deep down into his psyche - find out what sort of man he is...' Well, that's what John Steadman tried to do, and what I tried to do too. But it was easier said than done. I trawled through Lord’s letters, notebooks, photographs, and other documents, and read carefully the many pages of inquiry transcript. More importantly, I visited the streets where he lived in Liverpool, walked along the Mersey where he would have walked, and even visited the Wallasey Golf Club, which was exactly the same building Lord had often visited, ‘for the game, not the social side.’ I saw the library where Lord, if ever he picked up a book about the Titanic, he would put it straight back down again. I visited all of these places, and more. I tried my very best to achieve what the Australian author Kristell Thornell calls ‘narrative telepathy’ with my ‘subject’. But still Lord seemed to remain distant from me and aloof, or, as he is described on the steps of the Senate Building in Washington, ‘as unbendable as granite’. When Steadman says that the captain ‘was like a pond covered with thick ice that I could not get beneath,’ he is expressing my own frustration.
So that was the challenge. But my reward, strangely, was that in the end my portrait of Lord in The Midnight Watch was just as I wanted it to be. He is aloof in the text because he was aloof in real life. In real life he would introduce himself by saying ‘I’m Lord, Lord of the Californian’, and no one quite knew what that meant. He was inscrutable. So his distance on the page is a central part of his character, and goes a long way toward explaining why things went so terribly wrong that night.
And oddly, having said all that, by the end the novel Stanley Lord is the character I feel closest too and most sorry for.
So that was the challenge. But my reward, strangely, was that in the end my portrait of Lord in The Midnight Watch was just as I wanted it to be. He is aloof in the text because he was aloof in real life. In real life he would introduce himself by saying ‘I’m Lord, Lord of the Californian’, and no one quite knew what that meant. He was inscrutable. So his distance on the page is a central part of his character, and goes a long way toward explaining why things went so terribly wrong that night.
And oddly, having said all that, by the end the novel Stanley Lord is the character I feel closest too and most sorry for.
David Dyer
I get inspired to write by...writing! Staring at a blank page or screen can be paralyzing, so my aim is always to make it un-blank as soon as possible. You can always come back later and fix things up - or even delete everything you've written! - but I find it's important just to get the process going.
David Dyer
To quote Captain Lord of The Midnight Watch, 'That is something of a state secret!'
Well, not really. What I'm currently working on is coming up with something to be currently working on.
Well, not really. What I'm currently working on is coming up with something to be currently working on.
David Dyer
At the Perth Writers Festival this year (early 2016), the focus was 'empathy'. In the keynote speech, Roman Krznaric emphasised the importance of 'walking a mile in someone else's shoes', of seeing the world as someone else would see it. In fact, he had set up, as part of the festival, a booth where you could literally put on someone else's shoes and walk for a mile in them while listening to their story through headphones.
So I guess that's what I think is one of the best things about being a writer. You get to create other worlds and other perspectives. You ask, 'What would it be like, for this person who is not me, to be in this situation, which I have never been in? What would they feel, and how can I make others feel what they would feel?'
And another best thing, of course, is that I can sleep in until 10am.
So I guess that's what I think is one of the best things about being a writer. You get to create other worlds and other perspectives. You ask, 'What would it be like, for this person who is not me, to be in this situation, which I have never been in? What would they feel, and how can I make others feel what they would feel?'
And another best thing, of course, is that I can sleep in until 10am.
David Dyer
My advice for aspiring writers is: have an interesting story to tell! Sounds simple, but I find it is often ignored by writers these days. Maybe it’s because of the proliferation of creative writing courses, but I seem to encounter a lot of Writing with a Capital W – that is, writerly writing. It’s as if writing is a substance, squeezed out of a machine, and the aim is to make it as High Quality as possible. I love Robert McKee’s book 'Story', and he says, ‘Literary talent is not enough. If you cannot tell a story, all those beautiful images and subtleties of dialogue that you spent months and months perfecting waste the paper they’re written on.’ He says 75% of a writer’s effort should go into designing story. And in Ian McEwan’s 'Atonement', his main character – an aspiring writer – receives a rejection letter from a literary magazine: ‘writing can become precious,’ the magazine says, ‘when there is no sense of forward movement…Simply put, you need the backbone of a story.’
Oh, and another piece of advice: read ‘Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing.’ I was tempted to start my own novel with ‘It was a dark and stormy night….’ until read his first rule: NEVER start with the weather.
Oh, and another piece of advice: read ‘Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing.’ I was tempted to start my own novel with ‘It was a dark and stormy night….’ until read his first rule: NEVER start with the weather.
David Dyer
If I suffer the block after midday, then I mix myself a cocktail. A Boston Sidecar will usually free the words from their prison, or, if I'm feeling nostalgic, an Iceberg (cointreau, gin, lime juice, blue curacao, sparkling wine - and lots of ice!)
Before midday? I just go back to bed and set the alarm for 12pm sharp.
Before midday? I just go back to bed and set the alarm for 12pm sharp.
David Dyer
I have been fascinated by the Titanic disaster since I was a very young child, and have always known that there was a nearby ship - the 'Californian' - that could have gone to the rescue but didn't. This ship saw the Titanic's distress rockets - so why didn't she go? It puzzled me for many years, and when I began work in London at the law firm that once represented the Titanic's owners, I decided it was time to try to find out. So began my obsession and my journey - to Liverpool, to New York, to Boston, and even to mid-Atlantic, over the wreck site itself.
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