De’Shawn Charles Winslow: On the Importance of Rereading Your Own Work, Writing Dialogue, Characters Behaving Badly, and His New Novel ‘Decent People’
De’Shawn Charles Winslow’s second novel, Decent People (Bloomsbury, 2023), is that rare breed of book that somehow manages to be both a thought-provoking literary novel and also a thrilling page-turner full of juicy reveals and cliffhangers at nearly every chapters’ end. Set in the same fictional town of West Mills, North Carolina as Winslow’s debut novel (In West Mills), Decent People follows four characters impacted (and who may have contributed to) the murders of a prominent Black family in a still-segregated North Carolina. The pursuit for justice leads to uncovering many long-kept secrets that reveal the lengths people will go to protect their reputations. As the characters grapple with life after the murders, they must confront the impacts of racism, homophobia, classism, and addiction on their own community. Harder yet, they must each look at the roles they’ve played in causing harm to others whether directly or indirectly. Decent People is a novel full of double lives and people trying to be decent but falling short. It is as smart as it is entertaining.
I spoke with De’Shawn Charles Winslow via Zoom about his new novel, writing multidimensional characters, and letting questions guide the work. He also very generously walked me through his writing and revision process.
Shelby Hinte: I was so happy to read your book Decent People. It hit a perfect sweet spot for me. I tend to read mostly what gets classified as literary fiction, but my go-to “guilty pleasure” is always a thriller, which I normally consume via audiobooks or television. So I was so excited to read your book which straddles both literary fiction and genre fiction. I was curious if you could start there. How did you go about blending literary fiction with other genre elements?
De’Shawn Charles Winslow: The original idea was not for it to be a murder mystery. That came after a couple of false starts. Basically, I was having a hard time coming up with an engine for the book. Originally the Harmons were going die in a drowning accident and not by getting murdered. Everything else in the novel was pretty much the same, but I was bored and there wasn't a question for the reader to really look for. I felt like it was going to be so literary that the book would just be characters thinking about these three dead people. So I was like, that’s not going to work for me.
It was 2020 and I was home of course, and I was watching more thrilling TV. I grew up watching Murder She Wrote and Matlock. My parents loved that kind of stuff. I was rewatching some of those shows on Prime, and I was like, you know what, I’m going to make [Decent People] a murder mystery. I'm making it a triple murder mystery. So, I got the thing that would make the reader keep reading and I just had to make sure that every chapter had plot points. I wanted to get into their psyche and find out about their histories and all that sort of stuff, but I still had to make sure that there was forward movement around the murder.
SH: How did asking a bigger question change the way you outlined the book, or your process in general?
DCW: I don't outline. I thought I was going to have to outline Decent People once I decided it would be a murder mystery, but I found that with the literary component I was still mostly allowing characters to determine what would happen next. There's a murder investigation. It does have to be wrapped up by someone. So that was kind of automatic. But I had to be conscious not to just let the story be all in character's heads. I had to have them do things that might implicate them or prove their innocence. I had to make sure that there was something to raise suspicion around them.
SH: I like this idea of like implicating all your characters, because, with the exception of Jo, it's hard for me to locate a character who hasn't caused someone else some type of harm in the book. Whether it's through racism, or prejudice, or just simply just through omissions of the truth. I think this is what makes it stand apart from a lot of other books in the thriller genre, which is so obsessed with the binary of good and evil. None of your characters feel like they can be distilled. Even the characters that I was like, “oh my gosh, this person is so awful,” a couple chapters later you would paint them in a totally different light. How did you go about writing characters that maybe even you didn’t like without moralizing them?
DCW: I think that I took that lesson from Toni Morrison's work. I think Sula is where I first noticed that. Towards the end of the character’s life her friend comes to say goodbye, but is also looking for an apology from Sula, but Sula sort of says what makes you think you’re the good one here? I did sleep with your husband, but was that automatically like a bad thing? That scene from that novel and having read an interview [with Toni Morrison] about that topic of good versus evil, and how we distinguish how it's different for everyone, kind of taught me how to make a character multidimensional. It taught me that a person can do a heinous thing, but also the very next day do something completely opposite. I think we have people in our lives who can be the same way. I know that I have family members who I know have done bad things, but as a child I would've never suspected they had done that bad thing because I knew them as the loving, caring, nurturing family member that they were to me. I try to bring that balance to all my characters.
SH: There’s also this idea of public perception. I was really drawn to this idea of the characters doing “bad things,” but with these often really sweet intentions. What drew you to writing about that impulse and that tension between how the two kind of come up against each other?
DCW: I think it comes from real life to be honest. In parts of my childhood, and definitely in early adulthood, I saw that people, family, coworkers, can be really nice, but then do something really mean. Almost at the same time. I'm sure I'm included in that in ways that I'm not even conscious of. But it is definitely something that I notice and I think I just feel drawn to that dichotomy in human beings.
SH: You play a lot with the character's public personas being at odds with their private life. A handful of characters publicly condemn certain types of individuals — some based on race, others on sexuality— yet in their private lives they might actually be very close, secretly, to a type of person they condemn in public. That’s such a unique tension to zero in on. What drew you to that?
DCW: I think what drew me to that was probably the hypocrisy that I witnessed growing up in the church, and not really becoming aware of it until I was a teenager. I stopped attending church when I was around 27, and I think I wanted to point out religious hypocrisy, but also the way in which we have to code switch. Most of the time when I use that term I'm talking about people of color having to code switch in predominantly white environments, but I'm speaking of a code switching that I think all people have to do to maintain a respectability, to be able to keep a job, to be regarded as respectable in the community. I think it's something that just about all human beings do. I would say even very privileged people do this. I think we all have to sort of put on a mask when we leave our homes. Even if that mask is very, very thin. I wanted to capture that. Someone in another interview asked me if I could summarize the book in one sentence, what would you say? It took a minute or two to answer, but I said that everyone is a victim of patriarchy and I think that the mask that we put on —all people of all genders—a lot of that mask is to protect us from patriarchy or to protect ourselves in some way. I think it's things that we probably learn as a very small child. You know —don't talk loud when you leave the house, walk straight—all those little things that we're programmed with.
SH: I hadn't thought about this idea of masks, but it's so true to your book. A lot of these characters are hiding from their own families in different ways. Could you talk about that a little bit?
DCW: I think that was subconscious. Families can be oppressive — overbearing parents, expectant children, spouses, whatever. I think that's why they have to be one person in front of their families, but when they're alone, they get to be who they really want to be.
SH: I want to go back to something you had said when we first started talking about wanting to have a question in mind [while writing]. I feel like this book is so full of questions and there's a lot of characters trying to ask questions themselves, but you never give them clear answers. We of course get some of the murder mystery answered, but those deeper human questions are just moved forward, but they're never totally wrapped up. How much do you have to work through those questions in the writing if you're not outlining? Do you feel like there's a level of revelation that happens for you as you're writing the book?
DCW: Yes, I think so. I'll start with Eunice. She’s the child of the town's wino and she doesn't want to repeat that. She never says, “I want to be a better mother than my real mother was,” but I think that’s the question most readers might imagine she’s stuck on. I mean, who doesn't want to be a great mother, but why is this such an obsession of Eunice’s that she be a perfect mother and have the perfect family? It’s because she knows she was adopted, and her mom was a wino, and she's embarrassed.
While writing, I do have to remember what the [characters’] journeys are and make sure that that come up very lightly throughout the book. It kind of comes back to paying attention, rereading to make sure that the question remains there, even if it's really quiet. I don't think all readers need there to be a question. Some readers are fine just kind of watching characters live. But I felt like I needed to create a question for myself.
SH: Do you have one singular question that you were maybe asking yourself or that you were investigating with the book? Or do you have a series of questions that kept you feeling excited in exploring these characters in this world?
DCW: One of my instructors, Ethan Canin, he says that every short story and every novel has one emotional question. When he said that, I really disagreed. I was like, how can it just be one emotional question? I think the way I posed the question to him was, how can it be just one emotional question if you have a book of four protagonists? He said there will be a commonality in what those four people want. There'll be some kind of commonality. In this novel, I think that if I take Ethan's rule, it sounds really simple, but I think they all just want to be happy, stress free, and respected. All in their own ways. Jo wants to be respected by a man because all her other relationships have flopped. I think Eunice wants to be respected by the community and her son. Savannah wants to be respected by her kids and the community. Ted definitely wants the community's respect. I think there was subconsciously one question, but I wouldn't tell Ethan that.
SH: I really love that as an idea because I find that fiction is such a great way to kind of unpack a question that I am maybe struggling with or wanting to see deeper. And it's like, I can't necessarily go out and live many versions of myself or do all the things I want to do that are just like totally psychotic, but I can make a character do them, and then sort of see what happens when they do. I think this idea of questions is such an interesting strategy for writing and for keeping yourself engaged.
DCW: It keeps you on track too. You really have to make sure that that question keeps coming up, you know? Like, why is this thing important to this person?
SH: I've heard you say a couple times that you did a lot of rereading. I'm curious, what did your writing and revision process look like when you were sort of in the thick of it with this book?
DCW: I try not to revise while I write. If I do any revision, it's only like the last page I wrote before I closed the document the day before. I learned when I first started writing that trying to revise as I wrote really slowed me down. What I try to do is just get to the end of the book, and then I go to the top and I read and fill it out more. I write a lot of dialogue, even more dialogue than you see in this published version. It looks like a screenplay at first. It’s just pages and pages of dialogue. So I go back, start from the top, and I convert things from dialogue to exposition and sometimes the reverse.
With West Mills, I did this a lot of times. It must have been ten times that I did that. I didn't do it so many times with Decent People because I have an editor now. I would say I did this process maybe four times top to bottom. That’s my process. I find that it works. Every time I start from the top and read through, I add descriptions, I change a conversation a little bit to make it punch more, or I cut conversation sometimes. I try to just go from the beginning to the end.
SH: When you go back and you start filling in, do you start with a brand-new document?
DCW: Oh, no.
SH: So you're actually filling in as you go?
DCW: It's funny that you asked that question because that same instructor, Ethan Canin, one of his hard pieces of advice is start from the top. I think he goes as far as printing it out and setting it on the desk, and he retypes it. He says that when you retype it your sentences will change. I don't do that because I feel like when I reread it I do the same thing. I revise the sentences. So I personally do not do the typing the whole manuscript over thing. I treat it as a document that I am revising instead of starting over.
SH: It’s interesting to hear that you start with dialogue because your dialogue feels so true. Every character has their own voice. Where do you think you get your ear for dialogue from?
DCW: I think the reason why I lean towards dialogue, I'll just say it, I think it is my writing strength. It’s the paragraphs of exposition that I have to really tighten up in revision. But when I write dialogue it comes out naturally. I think that's because I grew up around talkers. A friend of mine, Regina Porter, the author of The Travelers, we were classmates in our MFA and she is a playwright also. She recommended to me, I don't remember why, I must have been struggling and asked her for advice on something, but she said when she writes plays, she writes what she hears from the characters, and the exchanges. She said she would think about stage directions and all that stuff later on. She recommended I try that method. I first tried it with stories, and then when I decided to write a novel, I used the same method and it works for me. It really does. I won't say that the first draft is 100% dialogue, but it's a good 80%.
SH: It's interesting to hear that you grew up with a lot of talkers. Were you a nosy kid?
DCW: Yes, I'm still nosy.
SH: I've heard a lot of professors and writers [suggest] going out in public and just writing the dialogue you overhear as sort of practice for [dialogue]. But it sounds like maybe you've just been practicing your whole life and then you found your calling as a writer to put it into practice.
DCW: Right? Like right now I can sit and think about a conversation I heard my mom and aunt have at Thanksgiving that I was kind of half eavesdropping on, and thought it could be the kickoff of some piece. I’m just always, always listening.
SH: What sort of stories or experiences give you the most excitement to put it down on paper?
DCW: Well, with Decent People before it was before the pandemic, and I don't know how it came up, but one of my aunts asked my mother if she remembered when those three ladies drowned in the canal together, and I was like, what? I had never heard about it. It happened in the mid-seventies. I wasn’t born until ‘79, but I had never even heard anyone mention it. My mom said yes, she remembered. I think she would've been 26 or so at the time. And she said, yeah, that was miss so-and-so, miss so-and-so, and miss so-and-so, they drowned in the canal. They used to carpool to church on Sundays. Apparently something happened with the car while she was backing out after picking one of the other women up. They were three elderly white women. When I heard this story my brain started going crazy. My first idea was to book a trip back home and go to the public library and look through to all the old newspapers and try to find the facts. Then I was like, you know what? I don't want to do that because if I research it too much, it'll be like a biographical novel or story. I was like, let me just play with the information they just provided. I decided to change the three characters from white to Black. I decided to change them from all women to two women and a male. And then I decided to make them siblings. So that's where [Decent People] came from. And then of course it was going to be an accidental drowning, and then it turned into a murder. But most of the time I draw inspiration from little moments like that. Something from real life gives me the idea and I like it when it's only a nugget because then I can create.
De’Shawn Charles Winslow’s first novel, In West Mills, was the winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Lambda Literary Award, Publishing Triangle Award, and Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing. He has been featured as a “Writer to Watch” in The New York Times and one of the “Black Male Writers of Our Time” in T, The New York Times Style Magazine. He was born and raised in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and now lives in Atlanta, GA.
About the interviewer
Shelby Hinte is the Associate Editor of Write or Die Magazine.
