I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. While most of them are speculative fiction writers, I’ll also be looking at plain, old, effective short story writers. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
Without further ado, short story observations by Jane Austen – with a few from myself…
Most of you reading this have no idea who Jane Austen was or what (or more correctly, WHO) she created. Who was this woman who only wrote SIX novels, that have been made into countless movies, plays, and over a hundred adaptations of her novels (all written between 1811 and 1817 – they have only rarely been out of print in the last 218 years…). WHY are they so popular and why do they have such staying power? I did some digging, and thought I’d share what I’ve read! Finally, what can I apply to my own writing?
“I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on until I am.”
This one played to my personal strength as a stubborn dork! I can’t even count the number of times or manuscripts that have been rejected. I CAN tell you that I was rejected twenty-one times in the last year…yet in that same year, my novel EMERALD OF EARTH was released and has sold some copies. Even when I’m not “feeling like it”, I write. And like Austen says, “I write on until I AM in a humor for writing.”
1) Avoid stereotypical heroes (especially when unrealistic)
BTW: A woman driver in NASCAR would have been unthinkable a 100 years ago...
I will say that that is a difficult thing to avoid – another word writers use for “stereotypical” is “tropes”. A trope is best described that you use a character who is OBVIOUSLY going to behave in a particular way. The “absent-minded professor”; “action”; “the annoying/nosy neighbor”; “AIs as a menace to all Humanity”; “bimbo/bad boy”; “blind mystical seer”; “the chosen one” (you want to see some more? Go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_characters). So, I HAVE used one or two of these stereotypes, but then played them OPPOSITE (it’s also called “playing against type”. THAT’S fun; like taking the computer geek who is ALSO the best basketball player in the city who leads an unlikely team to a city championship!
2) Avoid clichés"
This is related to using stereotypes in your story; but clichés are situations that are inhabited by stereotypes. A “good” example of a cliché and a trope turned on its head would be: “‘Girls with guns’ is both a trope and stereotype, especially when it comes to blockbuster movies. Whilst some people may feel it’s a cliché as well, the fact is this trope-crossed-stereotype does well with audiences year on year.”
BUT, if you assign your female character the role of “babysitter” or “home-economics teacher”, then you’re perpetuating a cliché AND a trope. What if you created an interpol agent who had a horrible experience, went back to college, and got an education degree in home economics – and because a criminal he brought to justice was an international spy and assassin, so the agent became a “home-ec” teacher to protect his life and the life of his family. He is ALSO incredibly popular because (during his time as an international agent), he learned that he was a FABULOUS cook! Huh, that sounds interesting – forget you ever read this
3) Avoid superfluous details
"You describe a sweet place, but your descriptions are often more minute than will be liked. You give too many particulars to hold a readers interest." DON’T describe something in minute detail if those minute details aren’t incredibly important to the whole story! As a writing, everything you write needs to be VITAL to the story – if a reader gets to the end of the story in which you had your main character get kidnapped by aliens – and it DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING, then you’ll have one angry reader (and thus, an angry EDITOR), and you’ll probably never make a sale to them again!
4) Revision requires cutting
"I hope when you have written a great deal more, you will be equal to scratching out some of the past." I have a rule-of-thumb for myself: If I start doing a revision and it’s only about 50 words shorter than when I started – then the revision isn’t DONE! (Unless the story was 100 words to start with. Then I have to go back and figure out if I cut something important!
Your words are just lights on your laptop or words on a sheet of paper – they should NOT BE CONSIDERED PERFECT OR WONDERS OF LITERATURE!
5) If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
The first book Jane Austen sold for publication was NORTHANGER ABBEY in 1803, the publisher promised to bring it out soon and went so far as to advertise the book. It was 1809 before Jane Austen’s brother wrote to suggest to the publishers that they bring it out already, or at least give it back. The publisher said they’d bought and paid for it, they’d publish it whenever they darn-well felt like it.
This is the point when a lot of people would get discouraged. I’d probably have given up. Two years later, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY was published in 1811 by a different publisher; then PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (the one she’s best known for) in 1813, MANDFIELD PARK in 1814; EMMA in 1815 (of which JK Rowling said, “I love a good 'who-done-it', and my passion is plot construction. Readers love to be conned. The best twist ever in literature is in Jane Austen's EMMA. To me, she is the target of perfection at which we shoot in vain.", NORTHANGER ABBEY (finally!) in 1818 (sadly, Jane Austen had passed away), and finally, PERSUASION that year as well.
6) Don’t worry too much about trends.
Jules Verne was one of the very first true science fiction writers writing: Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas in 1870, and Around the World in Eighty Days in 1872. In the second one, he “invented” the military submarine; and in the third global balloon travel.
HG Wells invented alien invasions in WAR OF THE WORLDS; unheard of until then; and Arthur C. Clarke invented satellites; equally unheard of until he wrote them. Mary Shelly invented the idea of using electricity to bring a corpse back to life.
We call them defibrillators today…
7 Write About Topics You Know Well
“Jane Austen has been accused by critics of ignoring the larger world and historical events of the day in favor of every day occurrences in village life. Her reasons for these limitations were deliberate. To her way of thinking authors lost credibility if they wrote about topics that were out of their depth.”
OK – I’m going to defend using imagination to write with. I invented the idea of taking 12-years to tour the solar system with an entire, hollowed out asteroid as a spacecraft made out of an asteroid carrying a crew (and families), and all the equipment needed to do an intensive one year survey of each of the eight planets, a few trans-Neptunian objects, and a few more Mars-Jupiter asteroids…I wrote about it in EMERALD OF EARTH. I have physically experienced NO INTERPLANETARY EXPLORATION! (To be honest, neither does Emerald Marcillon…)
Jane Austen wrote much, much more advice about writing. The ones above had stuck with me; below you’ll find several other articles about her that you can use to explore her advice and see if any of it applies to your OWN writing!
References:
https://tammyletherer.com/10-jane-austen-quotes-will-make-sense-writing-life/
https://www.janeaustensummer.org/post/austen-s-advice-to-a-young-writer
https://www.janeaustensummer.org/post/austen-s-advice-to-a-young-writer#:~:text=%22I%20hope%20when%20you%20have,out%20some%20of%20the%20past.%22&text=I%20have%20made%20up%20my,%2C%20yours%2C%20and%20my%20own.
https://www.claudiagray.com/jane-austens-advice-for-writers/
https://medium.com/author-masterminds/how-jane-austens-resolve-sculpted-literary-history-73d00cec20cb#:~:text=Her%20influence%20extended%20beyond%20literature,enduring%20relevance%20of%20feminist%20perspectives.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/jane-austen-200-years-why-people-are-still-obsessed/8706510
https://exhibits.lib.lehigh.edu/exhibits/show/austen/about#:~:text=By%20the%20beginnings%20of%20the%2020th%20century%2C,universities%20added%20her%20works%20to%20their%20curriculums.&text=The%20films%2C%20modern%20literary%20reimaginings%2C%20and%20Austen%2Dthemed,such%20perspectives%2C%20which%20continue%20to%20prevail%20today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen
https://digitalausten.org/node/50#:~:text=Jane%20Austen's%20novels%20are%20still%20relevant%20today,to%20change%20in%20correlation%20to%20modern%20times.
2) Avoid clichés"
This is related to using stereotypes in your story; but clichés are situations that are inhabited by stereotypes. A “good” example of a cliché and a trope turned on its head would be: “‘Girls with guns’ is both a trope and stereotype, especially when it comes to blockbuster movies. Whilst some people may feel it’s a cliché as well, the fact is this trope-crossed-stereotype does well with audiences year on year.”
BUT, if you assign your female character the role of “babysitter” or “home-economics teacher”, then you’re perpetuating a cliché AND a trope. What if you created an interpol agent who had a horrible experience, went back to college, and got an education degree in home economics – and because a criminal he brought to justice was an international spy and assassin, so the agent became a “home-ec” teacher to protect his life and the life of his family. He is ALSO incredibly popular because (during his time as an international agent), he learned that he was a FABULOUS cook! Huh, that sounds interesting – forget you ever read this
3) Avoid superfluous details
"You describe a sweet place, but your descriptions are often more minute than will be liked. You give too many particulars to hold a readers interest." DON’T describe something in minute detail if those minute details aren’t incredibly important to the whole story! As a writing, everything you write needs to be VITAL to the story – if a reader gets to the end of the story in which you had your main character get kidnapped by aliens – and it DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING, then you’ll have one angry reader (and thus, an angry EDITOR), and you’ll probably never make a sale to them again!
4) Revision requires cutting
"I hope when you have written a great deal more, you will be equal to scratching out some of the past." I have a rule-of-thumb for myself: If I start doing a revision and it’s only about 50 words shorter than when I started – then the revision isn’t DONE! (Unless the story was 100 words to start with. Then I have to go back and figure out if I cut something important!
Your words are just lights on your laptop or words on a sheet of paper – they should NOT BE CONSIDERED PERFECT OR WONDERS OF LITERATURE!
5) If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
The first book Jane Austen sold for publication was NORTHANGER ABBEY in 1803, the publisher promised to bring it out soon and went so far as to advertise the book. It was 1809 before Jane Austen’s brother wrote to suggest to the publishers that they bring it out already, or at least give it back. The publisher said they’d bought and paid for it, they’d publish it whenever they darn-well felt like it.
This is the point when a lot of people would get discouraged. I’d probably have given up. Two years later, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY was published in 1811 by a different publisher; then PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (the one she’s best known for) in 1813, MANDFIELD PARK in 1814; EMMA in 1815 (of which JK Rowling said, “I love a good 'who-done-it', and my passion is plot construction. Readers love to be conned. The best twist ever in literature is in Jane Austen's EMMA. To me, she is the target of perfection at which we shoot in vain.", NORTHANGER ABBEY (finally!) in 1818 (sadly, Jane Austen had passed away), and finally, PERSUASION that year as well.
6) Don’t worry too much about trends.
Jules Verne was one of the very first true science fiction writers writing: Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas in 1870, and Around the World in Eighty Days in 1872. In the second one, he “invented” the military submarine; and in the third global balloon travel.
HG Wells invented alien invasions in WAR OF THE WORLDS; unheard of until then; and Arthur C. Clarke invented satellites; equally unheard of until he wrote them. Mary Shelly invented the idea of using electricity to bring a corpse back to life.
We call them defibrillators today…
7 Write About Topics You Know Well
“Jane Austen has been accused by critics of ignoring the larger world and historical events of the day in favor of every day occurrences in village life. Her reasons for these limitations were deliberate. To her way of thinking authors lost credibility if they wrote about topics that were out of their depth.”
OK – I’m going to defend using imagination to write with. I invented the idea of taking 12-years to tour the solar system with an entire, hollowed out asteroid as a spacecraft made out of an asteroid carrying a crew (and families), and all the equipment needed to do an intensive one year survey of each of the eight planets, a few trans-Neptunian objects, and a few more Mars-Jupiter asteroids…I wrote about it in EMERALD OF EARTH. I have physically experienced NO INTERPLANETARY EXPLORATION! (To be honest, neither does Emerald Marcillon…)
Jane Austen wrote much, much more advice about writing. The ones above had stuck with me; below you’ll find several other articles about her that you can use to explore her advice and see if any of it applies to your OWN writing!
References:
https://tammyletherer.com/10-jane-austen-quotes-will-make-sense-writing-life/
https://www.janeaustensummer.org/post/austen-s-advice-to-a-young-writer
https://www.janeaustensummer.org/post/austen-s-advice-to-a-young-writer#:~:text=%22I%20hope%20when%20you%20have,out%20some%20of%20the%20past.%22&text=I%20have%20made%20up%20my,%2C%20yours%2C%20and%20my%20own.
https://www.claudiagray.com/jane-austens-advice-for-writers/
https://medium.com/author-masterminds/how-jane-austens-resolve-sculpted-literary-history-73d00cec20cb#:~:text=Her%20influence%20extended%20beyond%20literature,enduring%20relevance%20of%20feminist%20perspectives.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/jane-austen-200-years-why-people-are-still-obsessed/8706510
https://exhibits.lib.lehigh.edu/exhibits/show/austen/about#:~:text=By%20the%20beginnings%20of%20the%2020th%20century%2C,universities%20added%20her%20works%20to%20their%20curriculums.&text=The%20films%2C%20modern%20literary%20reimaginings%2C%20and%20Austen%2Dthemed,such%20perspectives%2C%20which%20continue%20to%20prevail%20today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen
https://digitalausten.org/node/50#:~:text=Jane%20Austen's%20novels%20are%20still%20relevant%20today,to%20change%20in%20correlation%20to%20modern%20times.
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