PLAN OF A NOVEL
1You can look at the original and see the names she wrote in the margin at http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/facsimile/pmplan/index.html. This wonderful website also allows you to see Jane Austen’s other surviving manuscripts – so interesting for the insight they give us into her methods of composition and editing.
2This is in the far east of Russia, i.e. very far away.
3Letter to Anna, 23–4 August 1814.
4Caroline Austen, My Aunt Jane Austen: A Memoir (1867), in James Edward Austen-Leigh, K. Sutherland (ed.), (2008).
5Here she must mean Anna’s little notebooks, which were probably the same as the ones she herself used.
6Letter to Anna Austen, 10 August 1814.
7Letter to Anna Austen, Chawton, 28 September 1814.
8Letter to Cassandra, 17 November 1798.
9A beautiful answer to the question ‘It is a much quoted maxim that there are only seven stories in fiction and that all others are based on them. Is it true, and what might these seven stories be?’ in the Guardian’s ‘Notes and Queries’ column (http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1553,00.xhtml) which can be read in a few minutes. Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots – Why We Tell Stories, Continuum (2004) is jolly useful and somewhat longer.
10There is an excellent section on plotting which I draw on here in Louise Jordan’s How to Write for Children and Get Published. It offers Catherine MacPhail’s plot plan for her children’s books, which could also be used for many works for adults.
11Jane Austen’s ADVERTISEMENT BY THE AUTHORESS, TO NORTHANGER ABBEY.
12How like Mrs Norris to take these pheasant eggs with the plan of having one of the Mansfield Park workers put them under a hen to hatch. She says that if they do hatch she will have the chicks moved to her own garden, but Lady Bertram will benefit too. ‘I shall get the dairymaid to set them under the first spare hen, and if they come to good I can have them moved to my own house and borrow a coop; and it will be a great delight to me in my lonely hours to attend to them. And if I have good luck, your mother shall have some.’ I can’t imagine Mrs Norris doing any of the work of looking after the pheasants, but she probably enjoyed eating them and their eggs.
13See http://www.southampton.ac.uk/music/research/projects/austen_family_music_books.page
14There are other Price children, of course, but the novel is not much concerned with them
‘INTRICATE CHARACTERS ARE THE MOST AMUSING’
1Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 13.
2Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 1.
3Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen’s ‘Outlandish Cousin’ – The Life and Letters of Eliza de Feuillide, The British Library, London (2002).
4This exercise is developed from ‘People from the Past: Characters of the Future’ in the indispensable Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter, What If?, HarperCollins, New York (2005), one of my absolute favourite creative writing books.
5Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Rules appeared in the preface to his short-story collection Bagombo Snuff Box. See also https://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/03/kurt-vonnegut-on-writing-stories/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmVcIhnvSx8
6Emma Thompson plays this beautifully in the 1995 movie. The audience experiences the huge release of tension Elinor has felt and sees the joy that follows. Of course your starting place should be the novel, but this film is my favourite of all the adaptations. It draws skilfully on Jane Austen’s letters too, and I can’t resist mentioning it.
7Persuasion, Chapter 9.
BUILDING THE VILLAGE OF YOUR STORY
1Letter to Anna Austen (later Lefroy), Chawton, 9 September 1814.
2R. I. M. Dunbar, ‘Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates’, Journal of Human Evolution 22 (1992), p. 6.
3Many of the exercises in this chapter were devised with my friends Carole Burns and Judith Heneghan for our presentation at the National Association of Writers in Education conference 2014. Please see our jointly authored article in the NAWE journal, Writing in Education – Vol. 65 – NAWE Conference Collection 2014, http://www.nawe.co.uk/DB/current-wie-edition/editions/nawe-conference-collection-2014.
4Inga Moore, Six Dinner Sid, Hodder Children’s Books (2004).
5Letter to Cassandra, Godmersham, 24 August 1805.
6Letter to Cassandra, 29 January 1813.
7Letter to Martha Lloyd, 16 February 1813.
A FINE PAIR OF EYES
1Julia Bell and Paul Magrs (eds), The Creative Writing Coursebook, Macmillan, London (2001).
2This exercise was inspired by one that Maureen Freely suggests in her chapter ‘Punto de Vista’ in The Creative Writing Coursebook.
3For further information and ideas on writing using museum objects see the Victoria and Albert Museum’s useful section on creative writing: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/c/creative-writing-looking/
LIGHT, BRIGHT AND SPARKLING
1Emma, Chapter 9.
SECRETS AND SUSPENSE
1This is a useful way of looking at plots outlined by Patricia Duncker in Bell and Magrs, The Creative Writing Coursebook.
2Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 37.
3My italics.
IN JANE AUSTEN’S POCKET
1She’s pregnant.
2From Doctor Who, ‘Blink’, writer Stephen Moffat, director Hettie Macdonald, season 3, episode 10, first broadcast 9 June 2007.
3The coach.
4For a longer example see the episode early in Howards End by E.M. Forster where the characters go to hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
‘AND WHAT IS FIFTY MILES OF GOOD ROAD?’
1There’s a useful discussion and a summary of different types of plot in Bell and Magrs, The Creative Writing Coursebook.
2For information on real and imagined places in Jane Austen’s work see http://www.pemberley.com/jasites/jasites.html and http://pemberley.com/?page_id=5599
3Booker, The Seven Basic Plots.
‘YOU KNOW HOW INTERESTING THE PURCHASE OF A SPONGE-CAKE IS TO ME’
1Letter to Cassandra, Godmersham, 15 June 1808.
2https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/apr/18/famous-five-perfect-austerity-diet
JOINTS OF MUTTON AND DOSES OF RHUBARB
1Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 11.
2For more information see http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-loiterer-periodical-written-and-edited-by-jane-austens-brothers
3After Jane’s death Cassandra destroyed some letters and portions of others. The letters were going to be passed on to her nieces and nephews. It strikes me as both right and normal for sisters to keep each other’s secrets and not allow sharp comments made about other family members to be revealed. Of course Cassandra had no idea that the letters she kept would be in print some two hundred years later. Who doesn’t end some emails with ‘Delete this’?
4This charming and sure-footed continuation utilizes ideas passed down through the Austen family of how Jane planned to finish the novel. Her Susan Price or Resolution and Margaret Dashwood or Interference are even more delightful, though I must admit to bias as Edith is my great-grandmother.
5This friend of Mrs Lefroy was the Reverend Samuel Blackall, who had expressed interest in Jane. It came to nothing. Mrs Lefroy was probably keen to promote the alliance, having seen Jane so disappointed by what happened with her nephew.
6Letter to Cassandra, Godmersham, 30 June 1808.
7http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ausprayr.html
8You can see how the ending of this prayer would lead into the Lord’s Prayer.
9Rebecca West in a review of Ethel M. Dell’s Charles Rex, in New Statesman (16 September 1922). This review was reprinted in West’s The Strange Necessity, Jonathan Cape (1928) as ‘The Tosh Horse’. Ethel Dell wrote dozens of hugely popular romantic novels.
10He suggested this as it would please the royal family.
11Bilbocatch is cup and ball. The set said to belong to Jane is on display at Jane Austen’s House Museum.
12Letter to Cassandra, Godmersham, 26 October 1813.
13Letter to Cassandra, 17 November 1798.
14Letter to Cassandra, Lyme, September 1804.
15Letter to Cassandra, London, 24 May 1813.