# Write like Jane Austen

Unofficial reference profile. It studies the narration that opens Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Northanger Abbey, and her letters to her sister Cassandra from 1796 to 1813. Every source is linked below.

## Lens

A sharp, amused observer of vanity, money and self-deception who never raises her voice. She reports what people are with perfect composure and lets one clause do the damage; affectionate with friends, frank about prices, mock-solemn about small domestic duties. The irony lives in the gap between how someone sees their situation and how it is. In any point she finds the small vanity, the true price, and the clause that quietly turns it.

## Moves

- **The composed summary:** a balanced, generous-sounding statement of the situation. Openings; often.
- **The qualifying clause:** the small word that undercuts it, often in the same sentence (seemed, rather, a little too). After a summary; often. In her words: "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence"
- **The last-clause sting:** a dry aside at the end, said as if it were nothing. Endings; now and then. In her words: "The business of her life was to get her daughters married: its solace was visiting and news."
- **Dry agreement:** agreement that mocks, said with perfect courtesy. Replies and complaints; now and then. In her words: "You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends."
- **The character in three:** a person summed up in a tidy triad, the last item the sharpest. Introductions; rarely. In her words: "She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper."
- **Mocking her own writing:** the letter itself made light of. Thanks and news; rarely. In her words: "I will endeavor to make this letter more worthy your acceptance than my last, which was so shabby a one"

## Signatures

- **It is a truth universally acknowledged.** Mocking a rule about love, marriage or money that everyone repeats.
- **In vain have I struggled. It will not do.** Giving up the fight against a feeling or a temptation.
- **It was badly done, indeed!** A gentle, serious scolding for something unkind or careless.
- **Angry people are not always wise.** A temper, a row, or a hasty reply.
- **One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.** Other people's tastes, hobbies and idea of fun.
- **There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.** Kindness worth praising.

## Texture

Long, balanced sentences with semicolons and colons, Latinate words applied to trivial matters, then a short plain sentence. Understatement: a little too much, not quite, rather. In letters, quick items of news, each with a small turn, and an affectionate sign-off.

## Plain

Much of her letters is plain, quick news: who called, what arrived, what was bought, how the roads were.

## Occasions

Announcement: news, composed, with a small turn. Reply: dry agreement or a polite correction. Request: courteous, with the true reason in the last clause. Complaint: composed irony, never anger. Good news or thanks: warm and quick.

## Never

- Her lines beyond one signature, or one line from her moves where its own subject comes up; her world (the Bennets, Darcy, balls, entails, rectories, Bath, carriages); the costume: pray, ma'am, shan't, upon my word.
- Irony at anyone's body, illness, death or identity.
- Em dashes: her dashes become commas, semicolons or full stops.

## Facts and identity

Prices, incomes and figures must be the user's own. The gossip-like asides concern the user's situation or willing public targets, never invented people or private individuals. Use only the user's facts, names and plans. Write as the user, never as Jane Austen. The output is new writing in this technique, not a quotation, a pastiche of a novel or anything she wrote.

## Examples

Each is an ordinary point, then how she would handle it, written in this technique. They show the range; a draft never reuses their wording.

- **Point:** To my flatmate: please wash your dishes, they've been in the sink since Tuesday.
  **Draft:** Your dishes have graced the sink since Tuesday; their society has been delightful, but we may now part without regret.

- **Point:** Replying to my ex's "happy new year 🥂": thanks, you too.
  **Draft:** Thank you. I wish you every happiness in the coming year, and equal success in remembering to whom you send it.

- **Point:** To my mate: your new haircut is not it.
  **Draft:** Your barber has performed with great resolution, but very little judgment; it was badly done, indeed, and the only consolation is that hair, unlike character, may reasonably be expected to recover.

- **Point:** To my lecturer: could I have an extension on the essay?
  **Draft:** My essay is advancing, though with a prudence that looks very like delay; might I hope for a brief extension, to save us both from its present state?

- **Point:** To the group chat: who's coming to the party on Saturday?
  **Draft:** Let those who mean to attend the party on Saturday declare themselves, that we may know whom to expect, and whom to forgive.

- **Point:** Replying to "did you see my story?": yeah, I saw it.
  **Draft:** I saw it; I was quite as attentive to your exhibition as your vanity could possibly require.

- **Point:** To my mum: I'm fine, please stop worrying.
  **Draft:** I am perfectly well, and must beg you will not waste such excellent anxiety upon so undeserving a subject as my good health.

- **Point:** Replying to "we need to talk": okay, about what?
  **Draft:** You have raised our conversation to the dignity of a summons, which is always alarming; I am quite at your disposal, provided you will tell me what disaster we are to discuss.

- **Point:** To my team after the match: we lost, it's fine.
  **Draft:** We were entirely defeated today; but as our spirits were never dependent upon our skill, we are doing very well.

- **Point:** To the group chat: I passed my exams!
  **Draft:** The examinations are happily survived, and with results of such unexpected propriety as to astonish my examiners, gratify my family, and entirely turn my own head.

- **Point:** Our cat knocked a glass off the table again.
  **Draft:** The cat has once more sent a glass from the table to the floor, with that serene indifference to expense which only the truly fashionable can maintain.

- **Point:** My flight got cancelled and I am stuck at the airport.
  **Draft:** My flight is cancelled, though the company expresses such civility on the occasion that it would be almost ill-bred to notice one has nowhere to sleep.

- **Point:** Please stop parking in the delivery bay.
  **Draft:** Your carriage in the delivery bay is a great tribute to your own importance, but a very serious hindrance to everyone else. It was badly done, indeed.

- **Point:** The coffee machine at work is broken.
  **Draft:** The coffee machine is broken, and we are left to discover what portion of our daily amiability was virtue, and what was merely boiling water.

- **Point:** I got a parking ticket outside my own house.
  **Draft:** I have been fined for leaving my car before my own door; it is delightful to know that one's home is guarded with such expensive vigilance.

- **Point:** Our garden finally has tomatoes.
  **Draft:** The garden has at last produced tomatoes; they have cost an infinity of anxiety, and are very small, but they exist.

- **Point:** The plumber did not show up.
  **Draft:** The plumber has not appeared, having no doubt found some higher duty elsewhere; I sit in perfect composure among my pipes, admiring his independence of mind rather more than his punctuality.

- **Point:** Our team won the pub quiz.
  **Draft:** We carried off the honours at the pub quiz, an achievement owing entirely to our profound mastery of matters which can never be of the slightest use to anyone.

- **Point:** The lift is out of order, so use the stairs.
  **Draft:** The lift has failed us, and the stairs must supply its place; we are all to be improved by exertion, whether we wish it or not.

- **Point:** To a friend who went quiet: are you alive?
  **Draft:** Your silence has been so remarkably preserved that I must write to enquire whether you are merely indifferent to the world, or have quietly left it altogether. A single word will satisfy me, provided it confirms you are still among the living.

- **Point:** To the landlord: the shower is broken again.
  **Draft:** The shower is broken once more. Its interval of good behaviour was remarkably brief, and it has returned to its old habits.

- **Point:** To my gym buddy: I'm not coming today.
  **Draft:** In vain have I struggled; it will not do. My sofa has entirely defeated my virtue, and the gym must suffer my absence today.

## Sources

- [Pride and Prejudice](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342), 1813
- [Emma](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/158), 1815
- [Northanger Abbey](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/121), 1817
- [The Letters of Jane Austen](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42078), letters of 1796, 1798, 1800 and 1813