Not a Story! This is an essay on writing Fan Fiction, so if that doesn't interest you wait a bit and I'll have a new story for your reading pleasure.

A few people have asked me for some tips on how to become a writer. I won't claim to have any great knowledge to impart, but I have had some modest success so maybe you can learn something from me, or at the very least find some amusement in the ridiculousness of my suggestions. Keep in mind this is what works for me, but you have to find what works for you; and yours may be entirely different.

I started about six months ago, and I have two full length novels and several short stories, mostly well received so take that for what it's worth.

This little essay is my version of Talk to the Frog (see The Cliffs of Hertfordshire chapter 11). I wrote it mostly to help clarify my own process for myself, but you may find it useful. Feel free to comment in the reviews, PM me, or start a forum thread, and of course if you're not interested in writing, just move on.

So here goes – Wade's rules for writing. Enjoy, Ms. (or maybe Mr.) Frog.

1. Writers Must Write

Here's my first piece of advice, which I cribbed from one of the old Science Fiction masters, back in the day (probably Asimov, Heinlein or Silverberg – it's been a while). I don't feel too bad since they probably cribbed it from earlier masters, all the way back to the first dude that said "Writers do not have sharp chisels".

If you want to be a writer, you have to write. It seems like a simple tautology, but you would be surprised how many people say they want to write, but they never actually write anything. No idea is good enough. Their language isn't good enough. They don't have the hook. Every idea has been done a hundred times. They had bad teachers in school. They had perfectly good teachers but they were bad students. People will hate you if you mess with their favorite characters. English is not my first language. My dog ate my homework. My previous writing was [insert lots of irrelevant whingeing and self-flagellation here].

There are a million excuses, so if that's your problem, you have to get over it. Write something. Even if it's complete crap, write it. Rework it until it's not terrible, or throw it away and start over, then repeat until it's not terrible. Get someone to read it… but not a friend or family member unless they're willing to be brutal and they are familiar with your chosen genre. You can't get over the hump if you don't start, so sit down and write something. If nothing else, write down a list of excuses for why you can't write, and make it the best list of whiney excuses ever.

Here are a few words from unambiguously successful writers:
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above
all others: read a lot and write a lot."
Stephen King

I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.
Jane Austen, letter to Cassandra Austen, Oct. 26, 1813

The reading part is I think quite important. You should have read enough of your chosen genre to know the conventions and what's been done so you're not doing it again. How many people have basically rewritten bad copies of P&P canon? Turn it on its head and do it from Darcy's POV and that's new and interesting… the first time. The second and third attempts, not so much. Same goes for lots of modern versions… they're just canon in a different setting. If it's just retelling the story with a different setting, maybe it's better or more accessible, but it has been done before so what makes yours different? Tell the same story with nothing but a different take on internal dialog, or in Klingon, or with all the characters replaced with My Little Ponies, and you get a snooze-fest.

If you're into clichés, google for, "Have something to say and say it well", but don't take the bazillion hits too seriously.

In the end, if you want to be a writer, get on with it and write something.

2. Start Somewhere

You obviously have to have something to write about, and you have to figure out for yourself how to find your own muse. All of my stories start with some hook. About 80% of the time it starts with a single bit of dialog that appears in my head. For me, it's usually just a single sentence, and I work around it until it's a phrase and then add more until it's a dialogue. My first FF Men and Boys started with the phrase, "I want a man, Mr. Bingley; I've had quite enough of boys". It was always Jane saying it right from the beginning. She's a bit of a doormat in canon, and from that I made a one-shot that wasn't bad.

By far my most popular work to date, The Cliffs of Hertfordshire, started with Mary saying "It's no wonder Lizzy can hardly stand the sight of you!" Everything else in that story of 150,000 words started with that phrase, and I built it up organically from there. The hook in that case was having poor quiet little Mary deliver the public tongue lashing that Darcy so richly deserved, right in the middle of the Netherfield Ball, instead of waiting for Lizzy to do it months later. I didn't actually decide to turn Mary and Jane into bad asses until very much later.

In my case, what works for me (but might not for you) is I have to build up at least a bit of the dialog in my head before I write a word. I usually work it out when I'm lying in bed trying to get to sleep, or out in the forest walking the dogs. I basically had Mary's set-down about half worked out in my head before I sat down to write. I almost never manage to get more than half a dozen sentences though, and almost never the entire dialogue

My second (and still favorite) story Circles actually started with the phrase "Your aunt and my mother could be sisters, Mr. Darcy." Surprisingly few FFs tackle Lady Catherine's atrocious manners and the fact that Darcy looks down on the Bennets for behavior that's no worse than his own family. Seven Brandies started with the line "I've had seven proposals of marriage since the Netherfield Ball". It was obviously a takeoff on Mr. Collins saying "you may never receive another offer of marriage". The brandy didn't come until much later, and then I eventually relented on the ridiculously short timeline.

So for me, I usually start with a line and see where it goes. I have hundreds of lines I've thought of that never went anywhere, either because better ideas came along, or I couldn't figure out a way to make more than a five minute story out of it, or maybe I just forgot or got distracted by a new shiny.

Sometimes it's not dialogue though. My short story Netherfield Math actually started with the idea of having Lizzy being so bored she was doing arithmetic in her head while she was dancing. Dawn At Netherfield started with a line Dawn peeking through the windows, which is a cliché in the making. That made me think of the Darce looking down at a woman laying curled up against him, and the "oh shit" moment that would necessarily follow. I liked the vision so much I reused it in The Cliffs.

So for me it has to be a sound, an image, a setting, something concrete that I can build around. It's never a complete story arc in the beginning, and most of the time I don't have the vaguest idea where it will go. I just want to have something that's different enough that I can build a story around it that will stand out. It doesn't have to be a unique take, just a good starting place.

Now to meet the test of at least enough difference to be notable, I try to do something that's not done every five minutes. Bad-ass Mary or Jane is fairly rare – probably a male writer thing. Same with Mary, Kitty or Lydia HEA. Super Lizzy is more common, but not quite cliché. Lady Catherine = Mrs. Bennet seems obvious to me, but that angle is not done all that much. Very few writers try to redeem Lady Catherine or Caroline or Lydia. Bad Darcy is done relatively often, and sometimes Really Bad Darcy. Be aware though, that all flavors of Bad Darcy are not likely to be as popular. You can plug almost any attribute you like into Charlotte. Kitty is a completely blank slate, although I usually leave her as such. I've only seen one story where she was a main character. I think there's lots of potential in Anne and I have used her somewhat, but I have nowhere near pushed the boundaries. I think there's a lot that could be done with an older or younger or better or worse Lady Catherine. Col Fitzwilliam is a soldier, so maybe you could work with that. Have Kitty and Anne kidnapped by pirates together. Have Lydia figure out Wickham is an asshole before Darcy finds her. There are tons of angles to work with.

I usually start in the middle of chapter 1, write something and see where it goes. I rarely have the very start of the chapter when I sit down, and I rarely have any idea where it will go. I didn't have the Cliffs Analogy that became The Cliffs of Hertfordshire until I actually started writing. It was originally going to be a one-shot of Mary's set down, in and out, done.

So what idea do you have that's new and different? It doesn't have to be unique, just something not done to death. I'm neither the first nor the last to give Darcy a setdown from one of the quieter sisters (see Friends and Enemies for example), or to do so earlier in the story. A more assertive Jane is uncommon but not unheard of. Bennet sisters going off for big adventures is not an idea I invented. They're all at least concepts or themes that have been done before, but I put my own brand on it, and I think my ideas are at least distinct enough to stand out. Find something like that to work with, and you're well on your way.

I exploited quite a bit of relatively triva-like financial information in The Cliffs of Hertfordshire, because I asked "What if Lizzy had to go make a living?" Lizzy the governess, or nanny, or courtesan has been done lots of times (some very good and some very bad), but hardly anyone talks about what that means in real concrete terms. Most of your readers don't know that all of the Bennet girls receive 50 pounds per annum for doing essentially nothing, and they would continue to receive that even if they lost Longbourn because it's from their mothers portion.. Their pin money is about three times what their maid makes for working 12 hours a day. Can you make something of that? I managed to. If Mr. Bennet did die on them, they'd have enough to afford a modest home and 1-2 servants, which is more like in Sense and Sensibility than abject poverty, so maybe you can use that. There are a million of those floating out there. Read the Wikipedia entry on "The Bennet Family" and see if anything jumps out.

Now maybe that part of my stories is a snooze-fest for non-nerds, but remember about half to two thirds of your audience are nerds so throw them a bone.

Try throwing other characters into the mix-master, although this tends to not be as popular as you might think. Stick Emma Woodhouse with Darcy, and you'll probably be burned at the stake, but you might get away with Wentworth/Jane or maybe Mary. Maybe maybe some other pairings would make sense. On the whole though, it's not that common to mix other JA characters with P&P characters. Most writers are much more likely to introduce a NC (New Character), like my Sir. Norman Stewart, so give it a try… it'll at least be new.

In P&P, anything that does not have ODC pairing (Our Dear Couple aka Lizzy/Darcy) will be orders of magnitude less popular than anything that does. Doesn't mean don't do it… just be aware.

Remember also that England was a police state during the entire Regency era. They were at war almost every year of Jane Austen's life, so make something of that. I stuck Mary and the colonel in the war of 1812 just because I could, although it was a minor plot point. Ship the girls off to war, or Darcy, or both. Darcy off to war has been done badly several times, and well a few times (usually modern variants). The sky's the limit.

Find something interesting, exploit it and see where it goes. If it doesn't work, try something different.

3. Don't Overanalyze

Don't feel like you have to know where the story is going before you start. I rarely have any idea where it's going at the beginning. Both The Cliffs of Hertfordshire and Seven Brandies were going to be one-shots. I even published Seven Brandies as a one-shot and came back to add more chapters, until it eventually became novel length, and the most absurd bit of farce in all of fandom, but the original story was really lighthearted romance. I could not have planned it in advance.

I personally don't even feel the need to know where it's going before I start publishing. When I added Chapter 2 of Seven Brandies, I vaguely knew the end I wanted, but had no idea of how long it would take to get there, or even if it could be done. I worked from both ends toward the middle. I also had no idea how far I would push the farce boundary when I started. Chapter 1 was light hearted romance, and the rest of it became pretty crazy. I could not have predicted that in advance, and a lot of the direction was helped along by reviews. Your readers will help you if you let them.

The Cliffs of Hertfordshire was similar, and it changed almost beyond recognition after I started writing it. Mary was originally going to be a minor story at best after her epic rant (you've probably noticed I have a thing for epic rants), but in the end she ended up with a story at least as compelling as any of her sisters. Lizzy was always going to be the strong one as per the usual custom, but I would argue Jane became the most bad-ass of the sisters. Mr. Bennet was going to be the usual hapless incompetent he is in canon, and I made him a drunk and his wife an addict. In those cases, I did it for pragmatic reasons. I didn't want either of them to have more than very minor roles, so I needed a way to explain their irrational behavior and lack of basic parenting. It was a cheap shot I know, but nobody cares that much if the rest of the story works. (Have Jane smash his brandy decanter and threaten to burn Longbourn, and you can get away with pretty much anything).

Now in this case, I made a storyline that painted me into several corners and I had to work my way out. The timeline was a mess, and the timing was nearly impossible to work out once I put a nine month timeclock on it. I had to have spreadsheets to work out the dates and times, and it was all quite difficult to pull together, but the key is that I had no idea where it would go when I started. In fact, I completely changed the HEA halfway through. I was originally going to have Darcy not meet Lizzy until she had Lydia's baby and it was walking around. Was going to have Lydia steal Lizzy's money and disappear. Had the whole meeting scene all planned in my head in a bookstore. That's why I put her in Kympton in the first place. I didn't decide to move their meeting to before the baby until I figured out that my original timeline just wouldn't work. The whole scene with their meeting together in Cornwall didn't occur to me until after about chapter 25.

Not that all of these details are important, and in fact none of them are, really. The point is that I started writing and kept writing. In my particular case, I have the courage to throw out chapters and assume I can make it all work, probably because I've been doing that in software for decades so I have a sense of what can work and what can't, and it seems to translate. Maybe you're not that brave (or foolhardy). It doesn't matter. Write the way you can, but don't hem yourself in, and don't think you have to know the end before you start. Give your characters and your story a little room to breathe, and see what happens.

I know other writers that have to have the story almost complete before they publish a line. Others need an outline of the whole story arc. Not me, but that's me. I say you should not make an outline until you've written a few chapters, but if an outline works for you then do it, But keep an axe handy at all times, and whack away at the outline at the slightest provocation.

The time to start publishing is when you feel certain what you have is good. Sometimes I'm happy to start with one good chapter. I have other stories that have 10-15 chapters done, but I'm not happy enough with them to publish the first chapter and roll the dice. I have some that I've run five chapters by a beta and pulled back because of the reaction.

If you're not certain, send it to someone to read (I'm usually happy to do so, but I am in the brutal category for good or ill).

4. Swing the Axe

Here's a tip. Sooner or later you're going to get a chapter that you can't fix. You tweak it, adjust it, move things around and it just doesn't work. Here's the spot where you need some discipline. Kill it. Delete it. Save it to another file where you cannot see it easily, delete it and start over. Do Not look at the original. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200. Just start over.

In the software business (similar to writing in many ways), I see lots of code that should have been abandoned and rewritten years ago. Sometimes it wasn't any good to begin with. Sometime it was OK for its intended purpose, but its intended purpose has changed. More often though, it originally got the job done, and still more or less gets the job done, but poorly. You will find the same thing with your writing. I've had to do that myself any number of times to my own babies (software and stories). It takes courage to do that, but sooner or later you will have to suck it up and get on with it. I pulled two full chapters, about 6,000 words, from The Cliffs 10 minutes after I posted them, and abandoned them entirely (they were uber-dark). They were actually very good, but just didn't fit the current state of the story. Once I saw that they wouldn't work, I killed them and never worried about them again. You need to be able to do that. I recently burned the first 6 chapters of my oldest unfinished story to the ground and started over from scratch. It happens.

If you take a crap chapter, and tweak it, and adjust it, you will end up with a tweaked and adjusted crap chapter. Just Start over! [Insert a few more overused analogies here, preferably involving fire or axes].

If you've done that once and it's still crap, ask yourself whether the story even needs the chapter in the first place. I knew an SF writer once who spent two weeks studying the physics of baseballs in a generation ship, just to write an interesting page about it, and then axed the whole thing. Did he regret the two weeks… not at all, but he would have regretted leaving the noise in the chapter. He spent similar time researching things equally obscure that were important to the story, and the important point is when he saw something that did not advance the story, he killed it.

Maybe the whole story should be abandoned as a bad idea, although I caution you be more reluctant to do that than you would be for deleting a chapter. The reason is that you are 100% guaranteed sometime in the next 20 or so chapters you write to make one that has to be staked and burned. Just do it, without a second thought. You will also find yourself in the middle of a story wondering WTF to go. You've painted yourself into a corner, dug yourself a hole, hung your own rope; but you will not see a way to make this creation of yours work. It's all completely hopeless. This happens to everybody, and if you abandon the whole story, I suspect you'll abandon the next and the next and the next. This does not mean you should never abandon a story. I have at least 3 that may as well be dead, but if you do that at the first sign of difficulty; or even at the twentieth, you will never finish one. So swing the axe at the sentence, paragraph and chapter level without a second thought. At the story level, ask yourself honestly if you've written something not worth salvaging, or if you've just run out of courage.

If I went back through my stories I'm sure I'd find at least four or five chapters I could kill and nobody would notice (think the Gretnas maybe), and if I ever publish my stuff, I will be swinging the axe pretty regularly and with great vigor (OK, I grew up in a sawmill so I may overuse axe analogies – I may be the only actual lumberjack P&P writer in all of fandom). Say… Paul Bunyan and Lizzy… that could work!

5. Know Your Genre

FanFiction is both easier and harder to write than plain fiction. Overall, I think it's easier because our Jane did most of the heavy lifting. You have characters, setting, timeline, tension, personalities all handed to you on a plate and all you have to do is exploit a difference. You also have a pre-selected list of readers, who know the story and are predisposed to liking your work. I am just about to start writing my first non‑FF bit of fiction, and it's a lot harder to get started. I have tons of scenes in my head, and sooner or later I'll have to take my own advice and start writing, but it's hard to build the foundation.

If you're going to do FF though, know the genre. I've read well over 1,000 P&P variations (I didn't count but I am a geek and made an estimate), so I know what's out there. I can feel pretty confident that my stuff is distinct, but even with that I had to get some advice from experts. For example, do anything other than HEA for ODC (Happily Ever After for Our Dear Couple) and your popularity will plummet. Doesn't mean don't do it, but just be aware of what happens (thanks for that bit of advice from Joy King). I had a story all worked out in my head where Darcy was dead-dead in the first chapter, and was convinced it was a good idea until she made me see that it was pretty much suicidal. Make Darcy mean and you're probably ok. Make Lizzy mean, and probably not. Make Jane act like Caroline Bingley and you may be burned at the stake. Pair Lizzy with anybody but Darcy or maybe the Colonel and you'll get five readers and three bad reviews. Doesn't mean it can't be done. I've read one Lizzy Bingley pairing that worked, and one Darcy Katherine, but even when well done they may not be well received. Doesn't mean don't do it… it just means be aware of what you're about. None of those things are inherently bad, but you should know how things might be taken, and if you're just starting you should probably stay in your lane for a story or two.

Once you know your genre, you will know what you can push. All of my stories feature OOC (Out of Character) actors. My women are usually bad-asses, or overly silly, or both. Men are either hapless bums or superman, or both. Darcy is actually a bit of an asshole in canon, so work with that – make him better – or worse – or both. Put them in different situations. There will be people who don't like this, and that's fine. I get people whining in anonymous reviews about OOCness. I say, use the Back Button.

Know what you're writing, and write it. See what happens.

If you're going to do something out of band, add an Author's Note (A/N) to the beginning of the story to scare off the meek.

6. Mix It Up

Be aware of the primary styles of prose, and mix up different ones. There are a bazillion rules about them (mostly contradictory), they go by different names, and different "experts" suggest different things. Go to Wikipedia right now, and search for "Fiction-writing mode".

Mostly, you will have Dialog, Exposition, Narratives and Descriptions. Search Wikipedia for "Show, Don't Tell" which is the most clichéd term in writing, but useful. My biggest weakness as a writer is I frequently end up with too much exposition/narration and too little dialog. There are no hard and fast rules, but a chapter with one or two quote marks is probably short on dialog. A chapter with quotes on every line is probably too heavy. Too much of one and the story drags. Too much of the other and readers don't connect to it.

The best way to explain it is that exposition/narrative is like a summary. Say I tell you about a movie, and spend 10 minutes describing it. That's good if it's a movie you don't want to see, and you just want the gist of it, but you won't really connect with it. However, you can be done with the whole exercise in 10 minutes, which is sufficient if the movie isn't important, or is at least not crucial.

However, if you really want to connect with the story, or it's important for you to understand it, you have to watch it.

That's the balance. A paragraph describing a conversation between two people doesn't have as much impact as a dialogue of the actual conversation, but it's a lot shorter and if the conversation isn't important in the first place, then a narrative is faster, easier and won't bog the reader down in unnecessary details. There's a bit of an art in finding the right balance, and you have to find it.

Now imagine the movie analogy, but spend an hour describing four movies. Boooring. That's what you get with too much narrative or exposition.

The same thing goes with internal exposition. Dialoging people's internal thoughts like a conversation usually just makes them sound crazy, and also having someone tell someone else something they already know just to let the audience know is also silly. Any time you start trying to follow an arbitrary rule by moving exposition into dialogue or dialogue into exposition just to try to keep them in balance, you have a good chance of achieving the opposite of what you want.

Here are some fun facts about P&P (you nerds should love this – you know who you are):

· 122,000 Words

· 2,126 Paragraphs

· 57 Average words per paragraph

· 63% of all paragraphs contain at least one quote

· 24% of all words (but 39% of all characters) are inside of quotation marks. Since 63% of all paragraphs have quotes, this says the average quoted paragraph is smaller than the average exposition/narrative paragraph.

· 34% of all paragraphs are nothing but a quoted string (dialog where the speaker is obvious)

· 58% of all paragraphs start with a quote, so that includes the 34% above, plus the paragraphs that have the speaker in the middle or the end

· 19% of all paragraphs have two or more quotes, meaning the speaker indication is in the middle of two parts of the quote

· Most of the novel is in third person from Elizabeth's POV (Google Point of View Elizabeth Bennet for some interesting links)

My longest work, The Cliffs of Hertfordshire weighs in at about 15% more total words, with 43% of paragraphs containing quotes so about 2/3 of the master. Is this right? I don't know, but when I go back and reread it, I look for stuff like that. Why the open question? Why might I need a different balance than our Jane? My story is not P&P (you probably noticed), so it's not necessarily the same scenario. P&P is mostly a character study and social critique about the relationships between two people and the society they live in. It's told mostly but not entirely in third person from Elizabeth's POV (but not strictly third person with a bit of unreliable narrator mixed in). The Cliffs has more characters, going into more situations, with more POVs, so maybe I need more exposition or description. I wasn't analyzing these rules while I was writing, but I will go back and see if there are cases where chapters drag or zip by too fast because I struck the wrong balance.

One thing I do know is I have a couple of unfinished stories that have nearly 100% narrative/exposition in some chapters, and they're a real snooze-fest, so zero is never the right number. Take a look at your balance of the three. This is one of the things I see most commonly when people ask me to look at something, and it was one of the first things my wife took me to task over when she reviewed my early works. I still have stuff sitting on my hard drive because I haven't fixed this exact problem. I once spent a whole chapter telling how Jane acquired her serene countenance. My wife fell asleep in the middle from boredom while she was reading it. I eventually decided I have to rewrite it as a series of conversations, or flashbacks or something so that story is on hiatus until I figure out how to fix it.

Now some chapters can be almost all exposition, once in a while, but if you have a chapter with less than say 25% of the text in quotes, it's suspect. Doesn't mean wrong… just suspect. I hardly ever see anybody do too much dialog… the error is almost always the other way.

Now keep in mind, I'm broadly breaking things into narrative/exposition and dialogue, or any number of other terms. Basically it's easy to see when you have things that are dialogue and things that are not dialogue. Just look for the quotes. Do be careful that you don't accidentally slip narrative into the dialogue. If you have a dialogue with someone basically telling the story, it's probably not really going to do what you want it to do, because it's not dialogue. It's just exposition disguised as dialogue, and it probably won't work as either.

Within the broader category of non-dialogue, you have narrative and description (and lots of other subcategories). I myself tend to go fairly light on description, just because that's the way I roll; and to be truthful anybody who reads FF already knows what most things look like anyway. There's not a lot of point in describing a ball gown in excruciating detail, or a carriage, or some horses, etc., unless it's different and important to the story, at which time it deserves more attention.

If something is convention in fanon (non-canon things that are generally accepted), I just leave it alone unless I deliberately want to mess with it. Four or five words is enough to let people know that Darcy has a tall black horse with some sort of name from the classics, probably a stallion, probably bad tempered. That's all fanon, even though horses are hardly mentioned at all in the book. Unless that's an important part of the story, a few words is enough. Give him a horse named Chrysanthemum, and you're saying something. The same can be said for most descriptions of ball gowns, the layout of rooms, etc. However, just because I find them tedious does not mean you will or your readers will, so take that advice (in fact all of my advice) with a grain of salt. Keep in mind I am one of the extremely rare male JAFF writers, so my perspective may be a little bit different than yours, or most of your readers.

It any rate, mix up your story. Make sure you have a little of this and a little of that, maybe mix your timeline or POVs up a little bit, switch your characters around, try not to get into too much of a rut. On the other hand, you probably don't have to subscribe to my usual brand of insanity, which is admittedly over-the-top sometimes. Find your own Goldilocks place.

7. Be Careful of Repetition

If you write very much, you'll start seeing yourself use the same tricks over and over again. I use too many axe analogies, paint myself into corners too much, depend on my girls being too bad-ass, repeat the same humor, etc. Know your weak spots and either accept them as part of your writing style, or work to change them.

Within a small section of the narrative, watch for the same word being used several times. I find that quite a few writers, including myself, use the same word quite a few times, and after a bit the whole thing becomes quite tedious. The same writers might spend yet another sentence, elaborating exactly the same point, as if you weren't quite astute enough to follow the first time, and the whole thing becomes quite tedious. Both forms of repetition are usually but not always bad.

Sometimes you can resolve the issue with a little judicious use of the thesaurus, but be careful there. Your readers know synonyms when they see them, and make sure you're not just using a different term to beat the point to death. If you have the same word three times in a paragraph, can you just axe one of the sentences – or two? Are you being too repetitious in the point you are making, or are you reinforcing it to make it stronger? Always pull out the thesaurus as a last resort. If the word you look up only appears once in the whole story, or it becomes your goto word for every time you're abusing the primary word, it's likely to be misplaced.

Unnecessary repetition is one of the first things you should swing the axe on. For example, this entire section could be boiled down to a single paragraph without losing anything, and this last paragraph is entirely superfluous (as is the word entirely – another word I abuse too much).

8. Consult the Master

When in doubt, you should just go back to the master. You can get all of Jane's works for free in a half-dozen formats from Project Gutenberg.

· Go to Google and enter this search Project Gutenberg Jane Austen. You can download plain text, Word documents, ePUB, Kindle, you name it. Keep it handy.

· Wondering about dates, search for Chronology of Pride and Prejudice, and you'll find the timeline for the entire book. You don't have to respect the original timeline, but don't change it without reason. Make the Hunsford Proposal in summer if you need to, but don't do it out of laziness.

· Go to Google and enter Write Like Jane Austen. You'll get a page that lets you look up a word to see if it's one she used in a published book. It also has a cool little tool at the bottom of the page, the Austen Writer which lets you paste in your text and it will highlight all the words that Jane never used. I don't actually use this because I'm a software geek and I wrote my own much better version of this as a Word macro; but you should. If you would like a list of every word she used, or another list of known good Regency words, PM me with your real email address and I'll send them to you. I usually run my text through my tool, and I look up any words she didn't use to see if they're Regency words, and if not I find a substitute.

· I have two ways to look up words. I downloaded a bunch of books from the 1810s and extracted all the words from them, and I consider those to be good to go. If a word isn't in that list, just go to Google and type Define Word , where Word is the troublesome word, and it will give you a little usage graph. If it was in use in 1800 you're golden. I find lots of words that I think are really old but didn't really start showing up until the 1850s (lots of language changes with the industrial revolution), but I also sometimes see words I thought were fairly modern and find they've been in use since the 15th century, so don't make assumptions.

For your prose, assume if Jane did it then it's fine, but don't feel like you have to copy her style. Here's a concrete example. In my early stories, I would routinely write multiple quotes without any indication of speaker.

"Mr. Darcy, do you think I am being perfectly clear with this prose."

"Miss Bennet, I think that is about as clear as a soliloquy from your mother."

"I fail to see how it might be improved."

"Your mother could not either."

"Is that praise or censure, sir?" (another phrase I overuse)

I got to thinking it was too hard to follow, so I started adding more speaker tags.

"Mr. Darcy, do you think I am approaching Lydia's level of sensitivity", asked Elizabeth coyly.

Darcy stared at her in consternation and replied, "I have no evidence that she's any less silly than your mother."

And so on… you get the idea. Then I thought, "Consult the master!"

"What is his name?"

"Bingley."

"Is he married or single?"

"Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"

"How so? How can it affect them?"

"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."

"Is that his design in settling here?"

"Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes."

So you see, I wasn't wrong in the first place. I do think I liven up the discussion with a few more emotion tags here and there, and if it goes on too long, I try to break it up or at least put a placeholder every three or four phrases (like Jane above), but you can see that's perfectly easy to follow, and if it's good enough for Jane, it's good enough for me.

So like I say, "Consult the Master". Don't slavishly copy her style because you would just be a BJC (Bad Jane Clone), but do pay attention. Maybe you can read a few other Regency books just to even things out a bit… hm?

Also, I like to quote Jane sparsely in my stories, and I usually put direct quotes in italics. I sometimes use the trick of putting the same words in someone else's mouth. I've reversed the dialog in the dance at the Netherfield Ball a couple of times (e.g. Netherfield Math), or reversed the words in the infamous letter (I have an upcoming story where Elizabeth writes the first letter).

This is all good, but be careful you don't overdo the Jane-Speak. More than a sentence or two and it starts sounding like you're not really adding any value… plus her exact words almost certainly won't fit the rest of the story unless you're writing in the BJC style, so the quotes will be jarring if overused. I don't know how many stories I've quit reading because 1/4-1/3 of the words are directly from the book. If I want to read Jane, I'll read Jane. In fact, one of the tasks for an unfinished story I'm working on called Battle Lines is pruning down the Jane-Speak as I've overdone it.

Also, think about your use of contractions. I don't know if you really should use then or should not, so I use contractions less than I do in normal speech. Evidence indicates contractions were in common use in Jane's day, and they appeared frequently in letters (if you're going to cross a letter, a contraction is pretty light by comparison), but usage in novels seemed to be less common. There are less than 20 contractions in the entire P&P novel, so Jane obviously wasn't a fan. However, having said that, when I deliberately kill all contractions, I find the text is just too heavy. I tend to write with about maybe a quarter of the contractions I would normally use. I don't know if that's correct or I should not be so loose with language, but if it reads clunky with the expanded words I use the contraction. If it reads better with the contraction, I leave it alone. By the time I've turned my girls into the Hulk, a few contractions are a pretty small divergence from canon.

9. Find a Beta or Two

If you're new to this, and/or somewhat timid, find yourself a beta. I use a beta when I'm unsure about something, although I rarely have anybody beta chapters when I'm in the middle of a story. Usually, at the beginning when I'm not really sure about a concept is when I really like to have another set of eyes (something like Talk to the Frog). After I'm writing, I basically write it, and post it about 10 minutes later. This occasionally gets me in trouble. I've written chapters that I've pulled back 10 minutes after I posted them, but most of the time it works pretty well for me. I know other people that have a beta read every single word before it goes out, and there's nothing wrong with that.

If you're new to this, find somebody. You can always use me, in a pinch or just ask around on one of the many JAFF boards. There are tons of people who would be happy to help you, and the odds of one of them being nicer than me are pretty good, as I don't mince words when I'm reviewing.

My only advice on betas is that you need a Brutal Ruthless Dictator (BRD) for a beta. If someone's going to pat your head and tell you it's all fine, you've got no use for them. The beta needs to give you the unvarnished truth, although keep in mind you're getting their own personal unvarnished version of the truth, which may have little correlation with the actual truth. Don't take anything a beta says too awfully seriously, but at least pay attention to it.

Sometimes I will beta a chapter, write a thousand words about what's wrong with it, and then eventually decide it was actually fine in the first place. Sometimes, if I read the same thing a couple of times through revisions, it's kind of easy to lose the thread of what it would have been like on a first reading. If you are going to be a beta, you need to be aware of that and try to guard against it.

When in doubt, try two or three betas. If all of them hate your stuff, it's probably bad. If half of them love it and half of them hate it, you might have something to work with. If nobody hates it, but nobody really loves it either, I would consider starting over.

10. Don't Beat it To Death

So you have something that's pretty good, but not quite right. You may find yourself endlessly revising, polishing, rearranging and trying to make it perfect. If you find you're going over the same thing over and over without making substantial changes, leave it alone. If all you're doing is fixing a word here, moving a punctuation mark there, rewriting this or that sentence, you're probably stuck in what we call analysis paralysis in the business world. It's a symptom of lack of the courage necessary to just get on with it.

I'm not saying just sling out a story without revisions and throw it to the wolves (although some of my chapters look like I did just that), but don't fall into the trap of endlessly polishing and tweaking. Most of the time, all those little changes won't make the slightest difference, and worse yet they keep you from working on something entirely different that will make a difference.

Move onto another chapter or another story, or if you find yourself endlessly fiddling with a chapter, swing the axe as previously mentioned; but sooner or later you have to decide that good enough is good enough.

11. Post It

It ain't real until it's real. Whatever fine piece of prose you've written is not really writing until you show it to somebody. If you don't have the nerve to post it straightaway, get yourself a beta as mentioned previously. You do however, if you want to be a writer, have to post something sooner or later. The proof is in the pudding [need an axe analogy for that ;)]

(See what I mean about overused repetition).

12. Reviews

Once you post something, ideally you'll start getting some feedback. Don't expect a tremendous amount of it, because far less than 5% of the people on this or any other website ever post a single review. The vast majority of your readers will read it, have an opinion, and keep it to themselves. If they don't like it, they just quit reading – full stop, end of story. If they do like it, they move on to the next shiny. I'm a typical bad example. I almost never posted reviews before I started writing. Now I do, but a lot of writers missed a chance to hear my thoughts, which I regret. Most of your readers will be like that except without the regrets.

You can get story stats in your author's page, but you have to take those with a grain of salt. Quite a few of your readers will be nothing but search engine bots, quite a few will be people who just accidentally loaded the page twice, etc. You will never know exactly how many people are on there. Hopefully we'll get some amount of feedback but don't expect it to be overwhelming.

For myself, I try to answer every review of any significance. If someone writes two sentences, they get something. If someone writes something like Great Story ;) I enjoy it, but I don't always reply. It depends on my mood. But if somebody writes a full paragraph, or asks a question, or comments in any realistic way, then I always answer. I mostly answer with PMs, but occasionally answer with another review, but be aware you can only post one review per chapter.

I also find that most of my reviews come from a small set of people that comment frequently. Cultivate these people. They are your readers, but you don't have to answer every review.

13. Anonymous Reviews

Sooner or later, you will get an anonymous review that's bad. It's usually called a drive-by shooting. You also get plenty of them that are good from people who are just too lazy to log into the site, or they're on their phone and it doesn't work quite right or something like that. Some of the bad reviews will be useful information, and some of them will just be people whining. I had someone in an anonymous review grumble that I used "Thomas" as the first name for Colonel Fitzwilliam, so sometimes they're just people with too much time on their hands that don't know the difference between fanon and canon. I've never actually had a truly terrible review, so I might feel badly if I did get one, but it's likely to happen sooner or later, and I'm surprised I haven't yet, considering how far I push the boundaries of the genre.

So with anonymous reviews, here's a rule I got from one of the other JAFF writers. Don't Feed The Trolls. If someone gives you a bad review anonymously, read it critically and see if anything they are saying actually make sense. If it does, then adjust your writing accordingly. If not, just ignore it.

You have to approve all anonymous reviews on this site, so you could just delete it if you want, but I have never done that myself. I will not however engage in any kind of battle with an anonymous reviewer, or take anything they say too much to heart. If they say something that's actually useful, then I will take it into consideration. For example I was overusing the cliffs analogies in my last story, and I dialed back on it based on feedback from an anonymous reviewer. I really wish it would've been a named reviewer because I could have told her that I agreed with her, but you can't have everything. On the other hand, I had someone suggest Darcy call Jane our sister instead of your sister and I liked it so I worked it in later. I've had anonymous reviewers confused about some point of a chapter, so I went back and edited the chapter to make it clearer. Feedback that is correct should always be taken into consideration, but don't feel like you have to thank someone who can't be bothered to log in.

So don't get all upset about an anonymous reviewer. If you get a bad review from a named reviewer, answer them back politely, and move on with your life. If they have something useful to say, take it into account, otherwise it's your story so write it the way you like and anyone who doesn't like it can just move on.

14. Get On With It

So you have a good idea, and think you might want to write. Start writing, as there is really no substitute. I grew up hating English classes, and thoroughly convinced I couldn't write at all. Here's a story that may be useful.

Back in the day many moons ago, I was convinced that I couldn't write. I hated writing in school, and consequently turned out to be bad at it. I got into a position where I had to do my own technical writing, so I just had to suck it up and learn. I learned more from a 40 page manual that came with an early version of the world's first computer grammar checker called Gramatic than I had in all my years of school. Now to be fair, nothing was wrong with my teachers, or my school. Our Jane was available in the library, the teachers were dedicated, we studied Shakespeare, we had creative writing classes, we had assigned work, but my attitude was bad. Bad attitude kills creativity. I thought I was a bad writer, so I was in fact a bad writer. Here's a good quote:

Whether you think you can, or you think you can't-you're right.
Henry Ford

If you want to write but think you can't, you won't. You need to suck it up and get on with it. Maybe in the end you'll find you just don't have what it takes, but at least then you'll know.

So what's your idea? Sit down now and start writing. You are not actually required to use an axe or a hammer in your story, but they can prove useful.

15. Don't Take Advice Too Seriously

All of this is how I write, but it may have no correlation with how you write. Don't take my advice, or any advice too seriously. Use what's useful. Discard what's not, and find a path that works for you.

Let me leave you with a bit more food for thought:

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.
Ray Bradbury

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.
Isaac Asimov

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
Ray Bradbury

Well, the fun part of being a writer is that it's like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character's skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating.
Robin Hobb

There's no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.
Ray Bradbury

Last but not least, if you've tried and failed at the task before, take this advice:

You can't let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.
Barack Obama

If you want to write, sit down and write. Do it now.

Wade

P.S. If you find this useful and manage to write something, be sure to let me know. If you hated it and wish you had the last 20 minutes of your life back, leave an anonymous review ;)