Darling Exiles

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Shannon Winslow

In her present exile from good society, and distance from everything that had been wont to interest her, a letter from one belonging to the set where her heart lived, written with affection, and some degree of elegance, was thoroughly acceptable.     

Earlier today, I was reading another writer’s blog post about proven rules for writing fiction, which she had compiled from various successful authors.  She ended by inviting comments from other writers on the topic.  So I added one of my own.  Decided it was worth posting on my own blog.  

“Here’s another rule I live by: Never throw anything away.  I wrote a delightful scene, intending to use it to open my first novel, only to discover in rewrites that it had no business being there.  I had to sacrifice it for the greater good, for the sake of the book as a whole.  I loved that scene, and it would have been too painful to delete it.  Instead, I cut it out and set it aside for 5 years.  Just recently, that scene became the basis for a very successful short story.  I was thrilled to resurrect it from the archives and give it new life.  So, you don’t really have to “kill your darlings,” as the saying goes.  You just may have to exile them to some distant land until you can think of a good reason to bring them home again.”

What was to be the opening chapter of The Darcys of Pemberley became Mr. Collins’s Last Supper instead, and it’s currently a finalist in the “Jane Austen Made Me Do It” short story contest.

In the quote leading off this post, Fanny Price had been banished from her beloved Mansfield Park to languish in Portsmouth.  For the sake of the story it had to be done, but, even so, it must have pained Jane Austen to send poor little Fanny into exile.  And, I imagine, it must have pleased her as much as it did me to summon her darling home again.

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The Villains We Love to Hate

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Shannon Winslow

When I decided to write a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, what I most looked forward to was reveling in the happiness of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.  That was before it dawned on me that I couldn’t make a novel out of 300 pages of happily-ever-aftering (no conflict = no story, remember?).  And, as it turned out, I had the best fun writing the parts of the original novel’s “bad guys”: Mr. Collins, Lady Catherine De Bourgh, Miss Bingley, and Mr. Wickham.

Mr. Collins I dealt with straight away, as you may know from  the opening to The Darcys of Pemberley , or from reading my related short story, Mr. Collins’s Last Supper (finalist in the Jane Austen Made Me Do It short story contest, and now available for Kindle).  I will have to leave you in suspense about Miss Bingley and Mr. Wickham (Hmm, Miss Bingley and Mr. Wickham – they would make an interesting couple).  As for Lady Catherine, I started with what Jane Austen provided in her epilogue:

Lady Catherine was extremely indignant on the marriage of her nephew; and as she gave way to all the genuine frankness of her character, in her reply to the letter which announced its arrangement, she sent him language so very abusive, especially of Elizabeth, that for some time all intercourse was at an end.  But at length by Elizabeth’s persuasion, he was prevailed on to overlook the offence, and seek a reconciliation; and, after a little farther resistance on the part of his aunt, her resentment gave way … and she condescended to wait on them at Pemberley, in spite of that pollution which its woods had received…

Since I had committed to contradicting nothing of significance from the original novel, this was the framework I had to work within.  So, there would have to be a reconciliation … eventually.  But I was at liberty to lead Lady Catherine a merry dance first, wasn’t I?  

I’d hardly begun writing when I found Lady Catherine was up to her old tricks again – trying to run everybody’s lives (including her poor daughter Anne’s) according to her snooty ideas and selfish agenda. I couldn’t let her get away with that.  I had to take her down a peg or two.  Surely you would agree.  I don’t want to give too much away, but here’s a tidbit:

When the dining room summit concluded, Lady Catherine was in no humor for idle conversation or to otherwise linger in the company of persons who had witnessed her mortification at the hands of her own daughter.  Giving the plausible excuse of a headache, she went directly to bed. 

This scene is fresh on my mind today because I just sent off a story based on it to the Chawton House Library Short Story Contest (Yes, another contest!).  I enjoyed revisiting that chapter as much as having a cup of coffee with a dear friend after a long separation.  And I remembered how much fun it was to write it in the first place.  I really put Lady Catherine through the wringer that day.

I’ve heard it said that actors often like playing villains more than nice, ordinary folks.  Based on my own experience, at least, it’s the same with writing.  Maybe it’s the freedom to do and say things we would never do and say in real life, and all without real-life consequences.  But I think it’s also because we know we need the “bad guys.”  They bring in the conflict, and therein lies the story.

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Writing Right

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Shannon Winslow
She told the story however with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous.  (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 3)
 
Story telling is an art, but it is also a science. Just as there are immutable laws of physics that cannot be ignored, creative writing has rules which must be obeyed, a formula that must be followed. The protagonist must be sympathetic, or the reader will never care what happens to him/her. The plot must have conflict, or there is no story. The manuscript/screenplay must hit certain plot points, and the story must be brought to a satisfying conclusion. If the writer violates one of these dictates, the reader will instinctively know something went wrong and be let down by the result.

Jane Austen was a master story-teller.  Presumably without any conscious design, she managed to follow a pattern that has since become tried and true.

Using a proven framework is enormously helpful to a writer. It is a fool-proof safety net. Stay within the guidelines, and your story will work. The problem is we creative types like to think we’re producing something original. We cry out in protest, “I refuse to prostitute myself by pandering to the masses, to sacrifice my art for the sake of a set of arbitrary rules.” Okay, so that’s a little overly dramatic, and the rules aren’t at all arbitrary.

The fact is, there are no new stories, only new ways of retelling the old ones. Something in our human psyche longs to experience, again and again, the hero triumphing against all odds, love finding a way, and the bad guys getting what’s coming to them in the end. These themes don’t always win out in real life, but we insist they be true in our entertainment. Otherwise we, as consumers, feel cheated and betrayed. That’s why departing too far from the well-trodden path rarely pays off. There’s a standing joke in the industry that typifies this concept. What do publishers/film producers want? They want a proven commodity presented in a fresh way. In other words, “Give me the same thing, only different.” Sure, no problem.

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Town or Country?

Posted on March 13, 2011 by Shannon Winslow

It’s still officially winter, but our clocks did “spring” ahead this morning.  That’s close enough for me.  Knowing that we’ve probably seen the last of snow for the year (except in the mountains, where it belongs), and that each day is a few minutes longer than the one before, gives me a real lift.

I’m fortunate to live in a beautiful part of the world (Washington State), and in a semi-rural area where tall evergreen trees and tangled undergrowth still dominate the landscape, maybe not unlike the lush greenery of Mansfield Park.

It was sad to Fanny to lose all the pleasures of spring.  She had not known before what pleasures she had to lose in passing March and April in a town.  She had not known before how much the beginnings and progress of vegetation had delighted her – what animation both of body and mind she had derived from watching the advance of that season which cannot, in spite of its capriciousness, be unlovely, and seeing its increasing beauties, from the earliest flowers in the warmest divisions of her aunt’s garden, to the opening of leaves of her uncle’s plantations, and the glory of his woods.     (Mansfield Park, chapter 45)

She’d been sent back to Portsmouth where confinement, bad air, bad smells, substituted for liberty, freshness, fragrance, and verdure.  The contrast made her appreciate the glories of her adopted home all the more. Fanny Price’s preference for country life over town probably reflects her author’s own bias.  Jane Austen spent five unhappy years in Bath, where the family moved after her father retired and was obliged to give up the Steventon rectory in Hampshire. 

Austen’s description above of the unpleasantness of town reminds me of a passage in my book The Darcys of Pemberley:

The weather turned uncommonly warm for June, which might have been pleasant in the country with the amendment of fresh air and cooling breezes.  Yet there were no such friendly modifying influences in town.  The simmering heat only served to intensify the more unpleasant aspects of living in close quarters with so much humanity and horseflesh.  If one dared open the windows in hopes of some relief from the stifling air indoors, one quickly closed them again against the noise and odors emanating from the streets.  For those who had the option of somewhere else to go, the advent of such conditions began turning thoughts toward getting out of town. 

Hmm.  I guess Jane Austen isn’t the only author with a solid, underlying preference for country over town.  That’s something else we have in common.

 

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Watch out for that Intrusive Author

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Shannon Winslow

“Author intrusion” is a definite writing “don’t” nowadays.  The fiction author is not to call attention to him/herself in any way, thereby interrupting the flow of the story and the reader’s total immersion in it.  But in the 18th and 19th centuries, it wasn’t uncommon for authors to address readers directly in the narrator’s voice, sometimes even beginning these asides with the words “Dear reader.”  Here’s one of Jane Austen’s more “intrusive” statements:

Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding – joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?  I cannot approve of it.  Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure …  Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body.  Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. …there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.  (Northanger Abbey, chapter 5)

Come on, Jane.  Don’t be shy; tell us what you really think.  (And this is only about half of her diatribe.)  It must have felt great to get all that out of her system and down on paper.  Even though novels are a more respected form of literature today, those who write them can feel just as undervalued at times.  And we aren’t allowed to vent our feelings all over the pages of our books, at least not so obviously.

I love what Jane Austen says here about authors sticking together, that we should be each other’s best champions.  I have an idea.  Let’s make a pact to do as she suggests, and see to it that the heroine of one novel promotes the interests of the next.  From now on, no matter what genre you write, find an appropriate place for your hero or heroine to support the nobility of what we do by uttering these words (also quoted from Northanger Abbey):  “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”  That ought to do it.

Update: Be sure to look for the intentional incidences of author intrusion in my Northanger Abbey sequel!

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By the Sea

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Shannon Winslow

 I spent the weekend at a small writer’s conference that was held on the Washington State coast, near Longbeach.  As you can see, the weather was beautiful – something we don’t take for granted here, especially in March. 

Saturday’s schedule was packed so full that I had to content myself with the view from the conference center.  But yesterday, before breakfast, a friend and I hiked down to the water to take it all in at closer range: the sea, the sand, the waves, the flat shoreline stretching for miles in both directions.  The sun was out, and, with no wind to steal away its heat, the delicious warmth sank through my clothing and deep into my soul.  Glorious!

I felt like I was reenacting Anne and Henrietta’s walk on the beach at Lyme, quoted here from Jane Austen’s Persuasion (chapter 12).

Anne and Henrietta, finding themselves the earliest of the party the next morning, agreed to stroll down to the sea before breakfast.  They went to the sands, to watch the flowing of the tide, which a fine south-easterly breeze was bringing in with all the grandeur which so flat a shore admitted.  They praised the morning; gloried in the sea; sympathized in the delight of the fresh-feeling breeze and were silent …    (Persuasion, chapter 12)

Henrietta goes on to extol the beneficial effects of sea air, particularly for an ailing constitution.  Whether it was the ocean air or the company of my fellow writers (both, I presume) the weekend by the sea did me a world of good.

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Show and Tell

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Shannon Winslow

I’m teaching a class this weekend at a small writers’ conference.  The topic of my little one-hour workshop is “Show, Don’t Tell.”  I doubt Jane Austen ever worried about it, but most modern writers have heard this criticism enough to hate the mention of it.  For benefit of the uninitiated, it means learning to convey crucial information about character and emotion without coming right out and telling the reader in so many words.  Instead of “telling” the fact that Tom is cruel and unfeeling, for instance, we “show” him kicking a dog and stealing candy from children.  Simplistic example, but you get the idea. 

So, for my Jane Austen quote, I searched high and low for something with the words show and/or tell.  Here’s what I found:

“You will not ask me what is the point of envy.  –  You are determined, I see to have no curiosity.  –  You are wise  –  but I cannot be wise.  Emma, I must tell what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment.”    (Emma, chapter 49).

Here, Mr. Knightley is about to “tell” Emma that he’s in love with her.  If only he’d attended my class first!  Then he would have known that he’d get his point across more effectively by “showing” Emma how he feels instead.  To quote from my lecture notes: Use “showing” whenever you want to make a deep impression, when you want the reader to notice, feel, or infer something.  If you substitute “Emma” for “reader”, the advice fits pretty well.  Mr. Knightley certainly wanted to make a strong, favorable impression on Emma.  He hoped she would notice what a great catch he was,  feel something for him in return, and infer that marriage to the handsome owner of Donwell Abbey would be the most pleasant thing imaginable. 

Despite violating this tested literary principle, Mr. Knightley did eventually succeed in communicating his affection and was then assured that Emma reciprocated.  But think of all the intervening grief (Emma paining him by refusing to listen, then calling him her “friend”) he would have been spared had he simply kissed her.  I think she would have drawn the right conclusions – no “telling” required.

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Celebrating!

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Shannon Winslow

She was looked at however, and with some admiration; for, in her own hearing, two gentlemen pronounced her to be a pretty girl.  Such words had their due effect; she immediately thought the evening pleasanter than she had found it before – her humble vanity was contented – she felt more obliged to the two young men for this simple praise than a true quality heroine would have been for fifteen sonnets in celebration of her charms, and went to her chair in good humour with every body, and perfectly satisfied with her share of public attention.  (Northanger Abbey, chapter 2)

Such were Catherine Morland’s gratified feelings after her first, and mostly unsuccessful, ball at Bath.  As you recall, she’d not been able to dance because of having no acquaintance in town (a fact Mrs. Allen bemoaned again and again).  Yet, Catherine had been admired, and that, for the moment, was enough to satisfy her.  Jane Austen understood human nature well; she knew that a simple word of praise goes a long way.  It can quench the thirst for approval and give encouragement to carry on. 

I can relate to Catherine.  I’m sometimes discouraged by how slowly my writing career is progressing.  I work hard and seem to be getting close to a breakthrough, only to be disappointed again.  But a small morsel of praise now and then goes a long way.  Suddenly, the day looks brighter and my humble vanity is contented.

Consequently, today I am in good humour with everybody and perfectly satisfied with my share of public attention.  Why?  Because my short story (Mr. Collins’s Last Supper) made it into the finals of the Jane Austen Made Me Do It short story contest!  Woo-hoo!  It may not ultimately win, but for now this small victory is enough to keep me going.  

I suppose I shouldn’t need anyone to validate my work.  And, according to Jane’s words above, being satisfied with less than fifteen sonnets celebrating my charms means I’m not a “true quality heroine.”  I’m okay with that.  I’m just grateful people took the time to read my story, appreciate it, and vote me into the finals.  Thank you one and all!  I’m very much obliged.

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Make Haste!

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Shannon Winslow

John Thorpe was soon with them, and his voice was with them yet sooner, for on the stairs he was calling out to Miss Morland to be quick.  “Make haste!  Make haste!” as he threw open the door – “Put on your hat this moment – there is no time to be lost – we are going to Bristol.”  (Northanger Abbey, chapter 11) 

The analogy is imperfect (and John Thorpe is not one of our favorite characters), but I couldn’t resist using this quote.  The image of calling you to don your bonnet and dash out the door was too charming.  In truth, this is simply a reminder that the two short story contests I’ve entered are closing at the end of the month.  So, if you wish to find out about “Mr. Collins’s Last Supper,” you must hasten  to the Republic of Pemberley ( www.pemberley.com), and thence to the place where silly stories known as Bad Austen dwell (http://badausten.com) to make the acquaintance of the “Woman of Wonder” and to hear the surprising tale of how “Miss Dashwood Gets Down and Dirty.”   But be quick; there’s not a moment to lose!

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Flight of Fancy?

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Shannon Winslow

“But now suppose as much as you chuse; give a loose to your fancy, indulge your imagination in every possible flight which the subject will afford …”  (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 60)

I’ve taken Lizzy’s advice and indulged my imagination by entering another Austen-related writing contest … of a slightly different sort.  This time it’s “Bad Austen” (http://badausten.com/) where entrants are invited to parody her style in whatever outrageous way they like, taking Austen places she’s never gone before.  Not that my submissions (“Miss Dashwood Gets Down and Dirty” and “Woman of Wonder”) are that outrageous.

Some may say it’s disrespectful to take such liberties with her canonical work.  But I think Jane would have approved.  Her own slightly irreverent sense of humor (which peeks out here and there in her novels and more so in her letters) is one reason we enjoy her writing so much.  I suspect that, if she’d thought she could get away with it, she might have been tempted to throw in the occasional zombie, super hero, or mud wrestling scene too.

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