For historian David McCullough, the craft of narrative moves fact-based storytelling into an investigation of causality. McCullough quotes E. M. Forster’s famous articulation of this idea from Aspects of the Novel (1927): “‘The king died and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief’ is a plot.” 

In his own writing, McCullough embraces this challenge, crafting narratives that reveal how events connect without portraying history as a foregone conclusion. He rejects teleology, the idea that outcomes were predetermined, to restore a sense of lived uncertainty to the past. As he states in his Paris Review interview, “In truth, nothing ever had to happen the way it happened. Nothing was preordained” (36). This principle guides his method, which is rooted in deep archival immersion and close observation—a practice he terms “look at your fish” (27). Whether reconstructing Theodore Roosevelt’s calendar to diagnose his asthma as at least partially psychosomatic, or visiting the places where events occurred, McCullough grounds his work in tangible evidence. 

McCullough’s sees his writing process as an ethical discipline that recovers the risk, agency, and human stakes of the past, thereby offering readers a richer sense of proportion and empathy.