This is the time when my family and I put together our holiday wish lists. We always put extra items on the list, so that what is finally chosen can be a little bit of a surprise. We also tend to keep it simple. Books and chocolate figure heavily.
I usually ask for something Austen or Regency-related. The Republic of Pemberley’s Cafe Press store has a lot of fun and affordable goodies. Some past gifts I still enjoy are my “I blame Jane” T-shirt and the “Intolerably Stupid” magnet.
The Jane Austen Gift Shop has some cool items this year. I’m drawn to the “Cooking with Jane Austen” because I love cookbooks. There’s also a set of perfumes themed according to the different novels–fun!
While looking for something else, I stumbled across a number of CDs of English country dance music. I already have some good Regency-related music. My favorite is “Jane’s Hand”: music from Jane Austen’s own songbooks performed by Julianne Baird. But these country dance CDs might be just the thing for writing ballroom scenes.
Have you started shopping? Run across anything interesting? Have anything special on your own list?
It’s Veterans’ Day, and is also 11/11/11, which is mystifyingly wonderful for people who believe the Julian calendar means something other than a random way to mark time (I don’t mean to be dismissive, or maybe I do, but in either case I think it’s silly).
Veterans’ Day, though, is important. Like all of us, I’m sure, I have relatives who served in the military, and I honor those people who fought so that we wouldn’t have to. I wish there was a more meaningful and helpful thing to do other than say “Thank you,” but that’s all I’ve got.
I’m disgracefully late with my blog post today but we still have time to wish William Hogarth a happy birthday. I’m going to give you a few interesting facts about Hogarth who I find such a wonderful, sympathetic sort of person, well ahead of his time in some respects, an artist with a social conscience and sympathy for the underdog–for instance, he was an early proponent of the humane treatment of animals, possibly because he was brought up in Smithfield, London, which was the area where livestock were slaughtered.
Things I love about Hogarth:
His house in Chiswick has just been restored and opened to the public yesterday. Another place to go to!
He included his pug in his self portrait.
He eloped to marry Jane Thornhill, daughter of the artist Sir James Thornhill (I found this online somewhere yesterday and now I can’t find it again. Possibly I made it up because I found it romantic).
He was a party animal: cofounder of The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks, a gentlemen’s club dedicated to the celebration of British beef and liberty, and the Rose and Crown Club, “a bawdy assembly of younger artists and cognoscenti,” who met to discuss art in a pub.
When visiting France shortly after the tenuous Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle he was arrested and proved he was an artist and not an English spy by drawing some very rude cartoons of Frenchmen. Surprisingly he was released.
He was a founder of the Foundling Hospital which I blogged about here along with some other interesting online sites, but do check out the heartbreaking Threads of Feeling exhibit, an online collection of scraps of fabric left with abandoned infants.
Here are a couple of Hogarth’s paintings I really like–his study of his servants and the amazing oil sketch The Shrimp Girl. Which of his paintings/engravings do you like? Any more fun facts about him?
This weekend I attended a Michael Hauge Workshop. Michael Hauge is the story and script consultant who wrote the acclaimed Writing Screenplays That Sell (now on sale at Amazon), but his ideas about plot and character are equally applicable to writing Romance, which is why he’s become a sought-after speaker to romance writers.
Hauge conceptualizes Story as encompassing a transformation in the main character. I’m greatly simplifying this, but the hero (or heroine/or protagonist/or main character) of the story has suffered some kind of wound in his early life and has developed a defense to protect him from ever experiencing the pain of that wound again. This defense against pain works well, but it does keep the hero from satisfying some important need and becoming the person he really is inside. Hauge uses the term identity to define the hero’s defended self and essence to define the hero’s true self. A story is typically (not always) a character’s journey from identity (living in fear) to essence (living authentically). Plot comprises the steps the hero takes on that journey.
Are you following me?
Take a look at Mr. Darcy’s transformation in Pride and Prejudice, the Colin Firth version, specifically. I would argue that Elizabeth is really the protagonist of P&P, but it is more fun to look at Darcy.
Darcy emotionally guards himself against people who merely curry his favor because of his money and status. It makes sense that he would fear this sort of exploitation. His sister just suffered Wickham’s attempt to marry her for her money, and Darcy thinks Jane Bennett wants to do the same to Bingley. No one is going to fool Darcy, however. Trouble is, he is so guarded that all anyone sees of him is an arrogant, aloof, judgmental man.
This is the Darcy Lizzie sees at the beginning of the story. This is his identity, to stay aloof from people lest they exploit him. Darcy is fully in identity when he tells Bingley that Lizzie doesn’t tempt him.
Through the first half of the story, Lizzie and Darcy are thrown into each other’s company. Just as Hauge suggests, in this first half, Darcy begins to show Lizzie glimpses of his true self – when Lizzie is staying at Netherfield, for example. Or at Rosings when he confides to Lizzie that he doesn’t find conversation easy, like she does.
Hauge calls the midpoint of a story The Point of No Return. For Darcy this is his marriage proposal to Lizzie. He is making himself vulnerable to her, but, at the same time, he is retaining his identity and the proposal does not go well at all. He can never go back to being indifferent to her, though. He’s expressed his regard for her. (I was going to say he exposed himself to her, but then I realized Janet would have a field day with that one!)
When Lizzie meets Darcy again, her words to him have obviously had an effect. He increasingly gives up his identity and shows more of his essence when with her – being gentlemanly at Pemberley, inviting her and her aunt and uncle to dinner, rescuing Lydia from her scandalous liaison with Wickham (by forcing a marriage), and restoring Bingley to Jane. But it is only when Lizzie refuses to promise Lady Catherine that she will never marry Darcy that he takes the chance to propose again. But this time he is fully in essence, telling her that all he did for Lydia was done for her.
Then, VOILA! Happy ending!
I love that I can apply Hauge’s concepts to specific stories. Now the challenge for me will be to use these same concepts to assist me as I begin my next book.
Do Hauge’s concepts make sense to you?
If you are writing, do you have a favorite plot or character format that you use? If reading, do you think of any of these elements when you read?
Isn’t that the most memorable marriage proposal of all fiction? Can you think of a better one?
I recently got the rights back to the rest of my backlist books, and I’m really looking forwarding to giving them a new life as e-books. I’m currently working to get cover art and formatting done for my loosely-connected trilogy, “The Three Disgraces”.
As I’m reformatting the manuscripts, I’m reading them over and it has struck me how young the heroines seem. These were, after all, traditional Regencies and young heroines were typical, including the starry-eyed 17 year old going to London for her first Season. I have never felt comfortable writing a heroine that young, but two of these heroines are 19 and the third is 20. Somehow, those few years seem important to me.
Young heroines could be considered historically accurate. Consider Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who married at seventeen. But her marriage isn’t the stuff of romance novels, and not everyone married so young.
Part of my reluctance to write a very young heroine is an instinct backed up by recent research, that the frontal lobes of our brains (which handle things like decision making and judgment) aren’t fully developed until the early 20s. It’s why really bright teenagers can still do really stupid things. Even though 19-20 isn’t quite through the process, it is further than 17.
My heroines do some silly things, but I’m fond of them anyway. Thinking of myself at nineteen, I remember being a bit clueless, but still a pretty cool person. Like me, my “Three Disgraces” mean well and learn from their mistakes. In my imagination they continue to learn and mature in the happily ever after.
I doubt I’ll ever write a 17-year-old heroine. Perhaps, if life experiences forced her to be mature beyond her years, but probably not. My inclination now is to write heroines who are in their 20s or older, but still works-in-progress. We all are, I think.
What do you think of teenaged heroines? How young can they be and still be credible as heroines?
The Jane Austen Gift Shop has some cool items this year. I’m drawn to the “Cooking with Jane Austen” because I love cookbooks. 
There’s also a set of perfumes themed according to the different novels–fun!
While looking for something else, I stumbled across a number of CDs of English country dance music. I already have some good Regency-related music. My favorite is “Jane’s Hand”: music from Jane Austen’s own songbooks performed by Julianne Baird. But these country dance CDs might be just the thing for writing ballroom scenes.
Have you started shopping? Run across anything interesting? Have anything special on your own list?
