What We Can Learn From Jane Austen by Melanie Dickerson

My thanks to Tina for inviting me to write about Jane Austen. I’m excited to be here, discussing what we as writers can learn from my favorite now-deceased author.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock or doing mission work in Patagonia for the last six or seven years, you’ve noticed that Jane Austen is all the rage these days. Books about Jane Austen, movie and miniseries adaptations of her books, books about her characters interacting with modern characters, and fan fiction---books featuring her characters in ways Jane never intended---have abounded. Have you heard about the fan-fic book featuring Mr. Darcy as vampire? Or a zombie-slayer? So weird it’s almost funny.

I stumbled upon my first Jane Austen book, Emma, when I was probably fifteen or sixteen and immediately had to read the rest of her books. I will never forget the first time I read Pride and Prejudice. From then on it was my favorite novel. But Jane Austen wasn’t exactly a household name at the time. Sure, she was respected as a great novelist of her day, but she never enjoyed the popularity she does now.

So why ARE Jane Austen’s stories and characters so popular? They aren’t exactly written in the same style as modern best-sellers. For instance, modern writers are encouraged to begin with action, tension, blow something up, murder someone. Show don’t tell. We’re also told that the first line should be a “hook,” something that will grab the reader’s interest right away. But Jane’s books don’t really begin that way. The first line of Emma reads, “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence.”

Not exactly a “hook” by today’s standards.

No, Jane Austen takes the time to tell you about her characters, to properly introduce them, including their foibles and faults. This is a definite no-no for modern writers. We aren’t supposed to TELL, we’re supposed to SHOW through action and dialogue, and avoid “author intrusion” at all cost.

I won’t try to analyze Jane Austen’s books and why they’re so good. There are lots of other people more qualified to do that than I am. I do know that the romance industry has preyed on the popularity of Regencies by publishing tons of them. There’s a certain set of rules that apply to that society, and definite consequences for breaking those rules—remember the probable consequences to Lizzie and Jane when their sister, Lydia, ran off with Wickham? I think part of the reason I love Regencies is because they show the strictures of that society. The cool, deliberate decorum heightens the romance when you see the passion of characters in love.

Two of my favorite authors write Christian Regencies, Ruth Axtell Morren and Linore Rose Burkard.



Harvest House author Linore Rose Burkard, in her Regencies, seems to mimic Jane’s style by breaking some of the same rules. Besides not beginning her books with an exciting hook, Jane Austen broke other rules of writing, such as “Never use omniscient point of view,” and “No switching point-of-view characters within a scene.” Mrs. Burkard’s Regency romance, Before the Season Ends, was actually plucked out of the ranks of self-publishing by Harvest House senior editor Nick Harrison. They have already published the sequel, with a third book to release soon. Her Darcy-esque hero, Mr. Mornay, has captured many a

reader’s fancy, if the 91 reviews on Amazon.com are any indication.

Will this sort of rule-breaking, a la Jane Austen, be a future trend? Who knows, but I think the important thing is that writers write with passion and in their own style, carefully hashing out their stories with extreme attention to fashioning memorable characters—like Jane did.

I had always assumed that the first publisher to read Jane Austen’s work must have recognized her genius immediately. But I found out differently when I read Nancy Moser's fictional but well-researched book about Jane Austen’s life, Just Jane.

Did you know that Jane Austen met with much rejection? That she waited many years before finally seeing her work in print? And even then she didn’t meet with much financial success. She became discouraged, even seemed to experience writers block for a period, but she persevered. She kept writing book after book even when she had no certainty they would ever be published. Perhaps this is the most important lesson we as writers can learn from Jane Austen, and the one I can identify with most!



More About Melanie

When she’s not lost in Austen, Melanie Dickerson lives with her husband and two daughters in Huntsville, Alabama. Though she loves reading Regencies, she writes historical romances set in medieval Europe and 1880’s Alabama and Tennessee.

Like Tina Russo and many others, Melanie has joined the Everything Austen Challenge. If you’d like to become one of Melanie’s Austen Buddies, comment on her blog, Melanie Writes.