Writing Lows and Highs in Austen-Inspired Stories, a Guest Post from Susan Kaye

The blog mistress of Always Austen has asked me to write a post in the stead of Barbara Cornthwaite. Barbara is my editor, and she will be familiar with what I have to write here as she has seen my raw writing firsthand. Poor thing.

Jane Austen wrote in an unfinished book, Catherine or the Bower, “But for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.”

I have had the privilege of reaching my mid-sixties so I can say that I disagree. Even well-written books sometimes get my hasty scan treatment. Maybe my attention span is succumbing to age as well as to my cheeky opinions.

Maybe I have this opinion because I started writing serialized fan fiction eons ago when I could get away with writing by the-seat-of-my-pants. Everything was so simple: post a few thousand words, gather comments, and then start on the next thousand. When I was posting weekly and only asking for ten to twenty minutes of readers’ time, I had the freedom to prate on with dreams, flashbacks, and lots of scenes that didn’t really further the story. Again, when a writer is asking for only a few minutes at a time the reader is willing to overlook the inadequate attempts at humour. Novels are a different animal altogether. When I am asking a reader to read for as long as they can stand me, they want the story to move. Learning to make that happen has taken time.

This past year, I finished revising and published two previously published novels. These two novels were written in the early 2000s and published much as they appeared on Bits of Ivory, an Austen writing board. They both had huge word counts. The print in the paperbacks was t-i-n-y. Thankfully my style and ability has improved, and I was able to cull 50k from the two manuscripts. And these revisions weren’t merely cutting out nearly four chapters of Wentworth going to Portsmouth to tell Benwick that his dear Fanny Harville was dead and staying with them through three agonizing days that followed. I also wrote a new ending for the second novel, so I think I made good trade-offs and created better books for my readers.

Saying all of that, I want to point out Austen’s economy of words. Particularly the economy she uses in telling the deep and moving story of how Anne and Frederick came together, gloried in their new-found love, and then were each crushed by the ending of their engagement.

What took me thousands of words in flashbacks and gazing into the distance, Austen presented this way: “Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he had nothing to do, and she had hardly anybody to love; but the encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail. They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love. It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the other, or which had been the happiest: she, in receiving his declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted.”

80 words to say he was bored, and she was overlooked. While it took a while for them to properly meet, once they were, WOW! They were head-over-heels for each other, enough so that they saw a future together. The last line saying it was a toss-up as to who was more pleased by having the other’s affection is masterful. It’s a lovely view of how transforming love can be.

For a woman who never married, Austen knew love deeply, personally, and to the heart. Or she was a great magpie telling us everything she heard around the sewing circle.

Then comes heartbreak for Anne and Frederick in 124 words: “She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing: indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it. But it was not a merely selfish caution, under which she acted, in putting an end to it. Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more than her own, she could hardly have given him up. The belief of being prudent, and self-denying, principally for his advantage, was her chief consolation, under the misery of a parting, a final parting; and every consolation was required, for she had to encounter all the additional pain of opinions, on his side, totally unconvinced and unbending, and of his feeling himself ill used by so forced a relinquishment. He had left the country in consequence.”

This is of course from Anne’s point of view and since Frederick’s feelings are second-hand, I step in and play with the story as much as I can. I try to keep his pain and anger alive as he’s a young man newly rejected. I figure Anne is his first love and her being swayed to reject him is a devastation he carries through to their next meeting.

But he does make up for some of his thickheadedness with the letter, don’t you think? A lot of readers also love the line: “There could be only the most proper alacrity, a most obliging compliance for public view; and smiles reined in and spirits dancing in private rapture.” This comes after they are once again engaged, and all is right with the world. I’ll take the Captain’s line from the card party: “I must endeavour to subdue my mind to my fortune. I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve.” I like an upfront statement over the poetic.

Unfortunately, when I write, I take far more words to describe their thoughts and feelings. My greatest hope is that I can give readers and enjoyable experience and stay true to the soul of the relationship between Frederick and Anne.

Susan Kaye’s revised Frederick Wentworth, Captain novels, None But You and For You Alone are available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle Unlimited. And in a surprise move—even to herself—a new novel, Stealing the Baronet’s Daughter will be released at the end of February.