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#40: Use Distractions, Interruptions, and Red Herrings

August 25, 2021/0 Comments/in Jane Austen Writing Lessons /by Katherine Cowley

If a character is seeking to discover something and she immediately discovers it fully and completely, then there is no story. For a story is about the journey, it is about the process, it is about the striving.

In the novel Persuasion, Anne Elliot has various questions that she seeks answers for, various things that she seeks to discover.

The initial question presented in the first few chapters of the book is:

How can her family financially survive?

As this question is established, so are larger questions:

What is Anne’s place in the world and her family?
What will Anne’s future look like?

These two questions are big questions, which require large discoveries: they are asking fundamental questions about her identity, who she is, and who she wants to become.

In fiction, discovery is often about answering the fundamental questions of self. Yet it is difficult to “know thyself” and it is difficult to change and progress and become. As such, the discovery of answers to these fundamental questions should be difficult for characters.

Related to these fundamental questions in Persuasion are questions about relationships:

Does Anne still have feelings for Captain Wentworth?
Does Captain Wentworth have feelings for Anne?
Can Anne and Wentworth reconcile?

While questions 2 and 3 relate largely to Anne’s internal journey, questions 4-6 related to Anne’s external journey. These questions are related to the larger plot arc of the story, and, once again, must be challenging to answer, or they would not be strong enough questions to sustain an entire novel.

Yet as a writer, how do you make discovery difficult for your characters? Jane Austen makes discovery difficult through three primary methods:

Requiring a progression of knowledge discovery—knowledge that requires multiples steps to gain, or multiple types of knowledge.
Using antagonists who interfere with the discovery process.
Creating distractions, interruptions, and red herrings, all which make discovering the true answers more difficult.

We’ve discussed discovery progression and antagonists in other posts, so in this post we’ll discuss how to use distractions, interruptions, and red herrings.

Distractions

A distraction draws the attention of the main character elsewhere, away from the core questions they are pursuing.

Two of the distractions in Persuasion come in the form of two other gentlemen who are interested in Anne Elliot: Captain Benwick and her cousin, Mr. Elliot.

The first time that Anne sees her cousin, Mr. Elliot, she does not know who he is:

When they came to the steps, leading upwards from the beach, a gentleman at the same moment preparing to come down, politely drew back, and stopped to give them way. They ascended and passed him; and as they passed, Anne’s face caught his eye, and he looked at her with a degree of earnest admiration, which she could not be insensible of….It was evident that the gentleman, (completely a gentleman in manner) admired her exceedingly.

The interest of Captain Benwick and Mr. Elliot help her in her quest of answering the second and third questions: What is her place in the world and her family? What will her future look like? With them, she can visualize different possible futures and different possible roles.

On the surface, the time and attention she pays to Captain Benwick and Mr. Elliot is a distraction from asking the three key questions regarding the plot—whether Anne still likes Captain Wentworth, whether Captain Wentworth likes Anne, and whether or not they can reconcile.

Yet in the hands of a master like Austen, distractions do not simply draw away the character’s attention from their process of discovery.

These distractions ultimately help Anne consider what it that she wants. Her interactions with these men help her choose the path of taking more initiative. Her interactions with Benwick and Elliot make her realize how much she still loves Wentworth. And finally, her interactions with Benwick and Elliot create jealousy within Wentworth, and help him realize that he has the risk of losing Anne.

Good distractions help the character learn and act in ways that will ultimately help them in the discovery process.

Interruptions

An interruption halts possible discovery or disrupts forward movement toward the discovery.

After Anne sees her cousin Mr. Elliot for the first time, and Mr. Elliot admires her, there is a key moment between Anne and Captain Wentworth:

Captain Wentworth looked round at her instantly in a way which shewed his noticing of it. He gave her a momentary glance—a glance of brightness, which seemed to say, ‘That man is struck with you,–and even I, at this moment, see something like Anne Elliot again.’

These two sentences open the possibility of future discovery about and between Anne and Captain Wentworth. Both Anne and Wentworth are more aware of each other, and Captain Wentworth seems to remember his interest in Anne. If an interruption had not occurred, they might have resolved their past and their future much more quickly.

But an interruption does occur:

Louisa falls and experiences a head injury. As a result, Anne returns to her family, and it also places Captain Wentworth in a position of obligation with Louisa. He has been pursuing her, and now that she is injured, he cannot simply begin pursuing Anne: his duty as a gentleman demands that he continue to assist Louisa, and even potentially become engaged to her.

When Anne returns to live with her father and older sister, she goes from being in a group that appreciates and understands her to being largely unappreciated and misunderstood. Yet she does not wallow in inactivity, for instance, spending time with her friend Mrs. Smith even though her family disapproves of it.

Wentworth is able to see more fully the result of his actions. When Louisa becomes engaged to someone else, he is free to choose anew what he wants, and he begins more actively reestablishing a relationship with Anne.

Interruptions create hardships or difficulties for characters, often in ways that help them grow internally.

Red Herrings

A red herring is a conclusion or path which seems to be the truth, but ultimately is a false conclusion or a false path.

Earlier in the novel Persuasion, Anne follows a red herring. She sees Captain Wentworth’s pursuit of Louisa and concludes that Captain Wentworth has completely moved on from their relationship. She believes that he feels nothing for her, and that there is no possibility of a future between them.

Anne did not wish for more of such looks and speeches. His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than any thing.

In this first half of the novel, Anne is quiet and unassertive, and she does not pursue her interests, in part because of her belief in this red herring.

Jane Austen’s novel Emma arguably uses more red herrings than any of her other novels. Emma consistently notices the wrong things about people, which leads her to great trouble in relationships. She takes clues and carries them to false conclusions, and then she pursues these red herrings relentlessly, which blinds her to the truths and the real clues around her.

For instance, when she paints a portrait of her friend Harriet, Mr. Elton excitedly offers to have the portrait framed in London. Emma takes this as a clue for Mr. Elton’s interest in Harriet, and does everything to set up a relationship between Elton and Harriet. Yet this is a red herring. Mr. Elton is interested in Emma, and it was for this reason that he was enthusiastic about the portrait.

Red herrings make it more difficult to find the truth, creating internal and external obstacles that the character must overcome in order to continue the path of discovery.

Conclusion

Distractions, interruptions, and red herrings are essential elements of storytelling. They don’t exist simply to make the story take longer. They exist because struggle is essential for refining character, and because the things that characters most want and need should be initially outside of their grasp if they are truly worth seeking.

Writing Exercises - Jane Austen Writing Lessons

Exercise 1:

Write out answers to these questions about your personal life:

What everyday things distract you from your goals? Is there a time when you have had a larger distraction from your goals?
What sort of everyday interruptions do you experience? What is a large interruption you have experienced which has halted for a time or changed the progression of your life?
Are there any times in your life when you have come to false conclusions, or headed down a path that seemed like the right path but turned out to be the wrong one?
What can you learn about distractions, interruptions, and red herrings from your own personal life that you can apply to writing fiction?

Exercise 2:

Take a scene that you have written and add a distraction, interruption, or red herring to it. (Or, if you’d like, you can add more than one!) This distraction, interruption, or red herring can be small and localized (and could potentially be overcome by the end of the scene), or it could be larger, with implications for later in the story.

Exercise 3:

Picture the classic character of Little Red Riding Hood, who desires to visit her grandmother in the woods. Set a timer for 5 to 10 minutes, and create a list of as many possible distractions, interruptions, and red herrings that she could encounter on her journey. This list can include those in the original tale, but should not be limited to them. Circle the three ideas that seem the most interesting to you.

Bonus: Write a new version of the Little Red Riding Hood story using your chosen distractions/interruptions/red herrings.

#38: Establish an Information Gap

June 23, 2021/0 Comments/in Jane Austen Writing Lessons /by Katherine Cowley

In the last lesson, I talked about the importance of giving your character something to discover—this creates curiosity in the reader and a desire to continue reading the narrative. In order to establish this curiosity about discovery, writers create an information gap for both the characters and the readers. As George Loewenstein explained, an information gap is a gap “between what we know and what we want to know.”

But how, as writers, do we create this information gap? How do we make readers aware of the gap between what they know and what they want to know?

1. Establish an Information Gap by Using Character Anticipation

One of the simplest ways to establish an information gap is to show the characters anticipating something, in their thoughts and words and actions. If the characters desire to know something, then not only do readers learn about this desire, but they begin to develop this desire also.

In Emma, almost all the characters anticipate meeting Frank Churchill and learning what he is like, which creates an awareness of him for the reader, as well as a knowledge that we do not know his character. Coming to know him is established as something intrinsically interesting:

Mr. Frank Churchill was one of the boasts of Highbury, and a lively curiosity to see him prevailed, though the compliment was so little returned that he had never been there in his life. His coming to visit his father had been often talked of but never achieved.

2. Establish an Information Gap by Breaking a Pattern

The human brain relies on patterns to make sense of the world. The book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Dies explains that our attention is drawn when a pattern is broken.

There are many “patterns” in Emma, and many of these are related to societal expectations. First, we expect that someone will meet there verbal and written commitments. Mr. Churchill commits to come to Highbury to visit his father, but then he does not. This breaks a pattern:

“Where is the young man?” said John Knightley. “Has he been here on this occasion—or has he not?”

“He has not been here yet,” replied Emma. “There was a strong expectation of his coming soon after the marriage, but it ended in nothing; and I have not heard him mentioned lately.”

There is also a societal expectation that someone will behave in a “proper manner” to family members. This respect and consideration would include visiting them, but Mr. Churchill does not visit.

Any time that a pattern is broken in a story, especially if it is a behavioral pattern, then it creates an information gap: we want to know why this pattern has been broken. Another famous example of breaking a pattern in Emma is when Jane Fairfax receives an unexpected gift from an undisclosed person of a pianoforte. People do not simply receive pianofortes from mysterious benefactors, then or today, and this breaking of a pattern immediately creates an information gap, a mystery that Emma is compelled to unravel.

Gif of Jane Fairfax playing the pianoforte in the 2020 film Emma.

3. Establish an Information Gap by Giving Consequence to Not Finding Out

There are endless things that a character might not know, but we only care about them as readers—they only become actual information gaps for readers—if there is a consequence to not finding out. There must be a reason the characters need to discover something. If there are not consequences to not discovering something, in other words, if the information gap has no stakes, then the character has no reason to fill the information gap, and the reader will not care whether or not they do.

In Emma, we like the character of Mr. Weston and we like his new wife, Mrs. Weston. They are good people, who mean a lot to Emma and to others in the community. And so we care that Mr. Weston’s son, Frank Churchill, refuses to visit.

Yet the stakes are not just for the Westons. Emma’s desire to come to know Mr. Churchill and his character relates to her own personal wants and desires. She is a matchmaker, and she has envisioned a match for herself:

Now, it so happened that in spite of Emma’s resolution of never marrying, there was something in the name, in the idea of Mr. Frank Churchill, which always interested her. She had frequently thought—especially since his father’s marriage with Miss Taylor—that if she were to marry, he was the very person to suit her in age, character and condition. He seemed by this connexion between the families, quite to belong to her. She could not but suppose it to be a match that every body who knew them must think of. That Mr. and Mrs. Weston did think of it, she was very strongly persuaded; and though not meaning to be induced by him, or by any body else, to give up a situation which she believed more replete with good than any she could change it for, she had a great curiosity to see him, a decided intention of finding him pleasant, of being liked by him to a certain degree, and a sort of pleasure in the idea of their being coupled in their friends’ imaginations.

Filling this information gap—coming to know Mr. Churchill and his character—has personal consequences for Emma and her future happiness.

4. Establish an Information Gap by Raising New Questions When Questions are Answered

There is a risk in creating something for your characters to discover: once they have discovered it, why should we keep reading? For big questions, when a question is answered, then a new question is often raised.

In Emma, Frank Churchill does ultimately come to Highbury. We meet him, we see him in front of us. Yet a new question is brought to the fore: what is Frank Churhill’s character? Yes, he has come, but is he the sort of man Emma has expected? Will he meet Emma’s matchmaking expectations and fall in love with her? How will he behavior to various parties now that he is in Highbury? Will there be a ball, and who will he dance with at the ball?

New questions about Frank Churchill are raised with every question that is answered, and in a sense, the larger question that was established before his arrival—what is Frank Churchill’s character?—is never clearly answered. It requires the full novel to answer that question, and each little detail is just one piece of the puzzle.

5. Establish an Information Gap by Revealing Key Information

While it is common to conceal information in order to create an information gap, the reverse can also be done. Revealing key information can actually create an information gap as we become curious about the consequences of this information. This is especially true when what is revealed has the potential to disrupt the forward path of the protagonist.

Austen’s novel Emma relies on concealing information, but her novel Mansfield Park reveals information in order to create a need for discovery.

In Mansfield Park, the main character, Fanny Price, has watched with disapproval as a new neighbor, Henry Crawford, flirts shamelessly with her cousins Maria and Julia, despite the fact that Maria is engaged. Then Maria weds and both her and Julia leave Mansfield Park, and Henry Crawford decides to turn his attentions to Fanny.

At this point, Austen could have created the information gap by simply continuing to show Fanny’s viewpoint. Through Fanny’s eyes, we would begin to see Henry’s attentions to Fanny, and we would wonder at the cause of them. We would wonder if he had changed on a fundamental level, and we would desire to know what both he and Fanny will choose to do as a result of these intentions.

Yet Austen does not follow this storytelling path. Instead, Austen reveals a huge piece of information before Henry begins to pay his attentions to Fanny. Austen provides the following scene between Henry Crawford and his sister Mary:

“And how do you think I mean to amuse myself, Mary, on the days that I do not hunt? I am grown too old to go out more than three times a week; but I have a plan for the intermediate days, and what do you think it is?”

“To walk and ride with me, to be sure.”

“Not exactly, though I shall be happy to do both, but that would be exercise only to my body, and I must take care of my mind. Besides, that would be all recreation and indulgence, without the wholesome alloy of labour, and I do not like to eat the bread of idleness. No, my plan is to make Fanny Price in love with me.”

“Fanny Price! Nonsense! No, no. You ought to be satisfied with her two cousins.”

“But I cannot be satisfied without Fanny Price, without making a small hole in Fanny Price’s heart.”

Providing this key information to the reader actually raises the stakes and raises our curiosity: we know that Mr. Crawford intends to make Fanny fall in love with him simply because he likes playing with women’s hearts and he wants to amuse himself.

We know from the start that his attentions are not genuine, which heightens the information gap because we feel a strong need for Fanny to discover this.

The other questions are still raised: Will Henry Crawford change? Will his affections become genuine? What will Henry Crawford and Fanny decide to do?

In this particular case, the key information is revealed to the reader but not to the protagonist, yet at times the key information which creates an information gap can be revealed to both the reader and to the protagonist.

In Conclusion

The five key techniques Jane Austen uses to create information gaps and a thirst for discovery are:

Using character anticipation
Breaking a pattern
Giving consequence to not finding out
Raising new questions when questions are answered
Revealing key information

Each of these is a power tool to create a gap between what the reader and character know, and what the reader and character want to know. These five techniques can be used individually or in combination.

In the next lesson, I’ll talk about the four categories of things that a reader and a character might want to discover.

Exercise 1: Breaking a pattern

Write a brief scene which includes a number of people doing ordinary or expected things in a place (i.e. a grocery store, a sports game, or a family gathering). Quickly establish the normal pattern of behavior, and then have someone break the pattern.

Exercise 2: Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes. During this time, make a list of as many events, secrets, characteristics, etc. as possible that be something that characters must discover. Once you’re done, categorize each item on the list as one of the following:

H: Information that, at first, should be hidden or only hinted at—the process of discovery is finding out this information.

R: Information that should be revealed early on to the reader and/or to the character. The information gap and the process of discovery comes from the implications of this revelation.

H or R: This information could work equally well as hidden information or revealed information, though doing so would change the direction of the story.

Exercise 3: Find a story where a character is actively trying to discover something and analyze it: When is the information gap set up? What techniques are used to establish the information gap? Are there multiple information gaps?

#35: Establish the Character of a Setting

May 13, 2021/0 Comments/in Jane Austen Writing Lessons /by Katherine Cowley

We’ve talked a lot about characters—the people who are part of a story—but places can also have character.

One of the definitions that the Oxford English Dictionary provides for the word character is:

The aggregate of the distinctive features of something; essential peculiarity; distinctive nature, style, or quality; sort, kind, description.

The character of a setting is its essence, its overall nature which is experienced by those who interact with it (both the characters within a story and the readers of the story).

Jane Austen masterfully captures the character of a setting—its essence—regardless of whether she uses large or small amounts of description. Here are a few examples of the character of a setting from her novels:

Emma

In Emma, a shop is the setting for several key scenes, including Harriet running into Robert Martin, and a key interaction between Emma and Frank Churchill.

The essence of the shop, Ford’s, is described by the narrator:

Ford’s was the principal woollen-draper, linen-draper, and haberdasher’s shop united; the shop first in size and fashion in the place.

We see this essence again when Frank Churchill proposes that he and Emma visit it:

At this moment they were approaching Ford’s, and he hastily exclaimed, “Ha! this must be the very shop that every body attends every day of their lives, as my father informs me. He comes to Highbury himself, he says, six days out of the seven, and has always business at Ford’s. If it be not inconvenient to you, pray let us go in, that I may prove myself to belong to the place, to be a true citizen of Highbury. I must buy something at Ford’s. It will be taking out my freedom.—I dare say they sell gloves.”

Pride and Prejudice

In Pride and Prejudice, Rosings is the estate of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Its essence has less to do with its buildings and land than with the fact that it is owned by Lady Catherine. In a previous post, I described Elizabeth’s approach to Rosings and the way in which description is used, but I’d like to offer one further quote:

The palings of Rosings Park was their boundary on one side. Elizabeth smiled at the recollection of all that she had heard of its inhabitants.

Rosings itself does not actually matter; rather, it is Rosings in the imagination that is of import, it is Rosings and its various associations that impacts all the characters that come in contact with it.

Persuasion

In Persuasion, the Elliot family is in rough financial straits and as a result is forced to rent out their estate. They go to stay in Bath, a bustling community that is known for being a center of society and health (while being a little cheaper on the pocketbook).

This is its core essence, but different characters, such as Lady Russell and Anne, interact with this core essence differently:

Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity. When Lady Russell not long afterwards, was entering Bath on a wet afternoon, and driving through the long course of streets from the Old Bridge to Camden Place, amidst the dash of other carriages, the heavy rumble of carts and drays, the bawling of newspapermen, muffin-men and milkmen, and the ceaseless clink of pattens, she made no complaint. No, these were noises which belonged to the winter pleasures; her spirits rose under their influence; and like Mrs Musgrove, she was feeling, though not saying, that after being long in the country, nothing could be so good for her as a little quiet cheerfulness.

Anne did not share these feelings. She persisted in a very determined, though very silent disinclination for Bath; caught the first dim view of the extensive buildings, smoking in rain, without any wish of seeing them better; felt their progress through the streets to be, however disagreeable, yet too rapid; for who would be glad to see her when she arrived? And looked back, with fond regret, to the bustles of Uppercross and the seclusion of Kellynch.

As an interesting note, to me personally, the character of Bath feels different in Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey. In Northanger Abbey, Bath’s essence or defining characteristic seems to be as a place of possibility and discovery, both good and bad. The character of a particular setting can be represented differently depending on the needs of the story.

Establishing the Character of a Setting

While Jane Austen does not directly address the character of every single one of her settings, most of the time it is still implied. For important settings, it is especially useful to consider the overall character of the setting.

As seen in the above examples, the character could relate to its physical characteristics and mood, the people that reside in a setting, how the setting is used, a person who owns or is associated with a space. This is not an exhaustive list: a multitude of things could be contribute to the essence of a place.

Exercise 1: Choose five settings from your life. These can be very specific/focused settings (a particular room) or much larger/broader (a city or a region) or anything in between. For each of the settings, write a single sentence in which you capture the essence or character of the setting.

Exercise 2: As you watch a film, make a list of every single setting in the film. Afterwards, in a word or a phrase, describe the character of each setting, as represented in the film. What sorts of things determine the character of each setting? Is it the physical characteristics? How people use the setting? What the setting represents? The people in the setting and their behavior? Etc.

Exercise 3: Revise a scene you have written to better capture the essence or character of the setting. As you do so, consider how different characters might feel differently about the setting and its character.

#31: Use a Distinctive Setting for Major Plot Turns

March 17, 2021/0 Comments/in Jane Austen Writing Lessons /by Katherine Cowley

Many of the scenes in Jane Austen’s novels occur in what, for her characters, would be ordinary settings—drawing rooms and walks where they had been many times before. We’ll talk, in a few weeks, about how to use familiar settings.

But sometimes Austen uses very distinctive settings for her scenes, and this often happens when there is a major plot turn in the story.

A major plot turn is when both the story and the characters undergo a large shift. Something happens which irrevocably changes the future direction of the plot, and has a profound impact on character and relationship arcs.

In her novel Persuasion, Jane Austen gives her characters a distinctive setting, unlike the rest in the book, when a number of the characters take a trip to the town of Lyme Regis.

Lyme Regis by Alison Day -- a city with a rocky shore and a hint of the ocean.

A modern view of Lyme Regis by Alison Day (limited Creative Commons license)

Three of the characters who travel to Lyme Regis are our main character, Anne Elliot, the man she turned down years before, Captain Wentworth, and his current love interest, Louisa Musgrove.

I previously talked about the Anne-Wentworth-Louisa trio in a post about making things hard for your character. In sum, when Anne and Captain Wentworth became engaged, Anne was persuaded by family members and friends to break off the engagement. Wentworth still has not forgiven her for this. One of the things Wentworth values about Louisa is that she is not easily persuadable—she will go her own way.

Fast forward to Lyme Regis. Bringing the characters to this new, distinctive setting first allows them to meet or encounter new characters who will be key to the story, including Captain Benwick and Anne’s cousin, Mr. Elliot.

Distinctive settings are unfamiliar to characters, which heightens the awareness of the setting for both the characters and the reader. When in a distinctive setting, the characters have a whole additional layer of things to navigate: new physical objects, new or unfamiliar expectations, and as a result…

Distinctive settings often draw out peoples strengths and weaknesses, demonstrate who they really are, and provide opportunities for characters to transform in either a positive or a negative direction.

At Lyme Regis, a number of the characters take a walk along the Cobb, which is a wall near the harbor. There is a heightened awareness of the setting, which is distinctive enough to bring to Anne’s mind the poetry of Byron as she walks with Captain Benwick:

Lord Byron’s ‘dark blue seas’ could not fail of being brought forward by their present view, and she gladly gave him all her attention as long as attention was possible.

In the following paragraph, which is one of the biggest, most dramatic events in Persuasion, we see how the setting draws out Louisa’s firmness of character and the way she is unyielding to persuasion. While Captain Wentworth has always seen this characteristic as a virtue, the negative side of it is made clear.

There was too much wind to make the high part of the new Cobb pleasant for the ladies, and they agreed to get down the steps to the lower, and all were contented to pass quietly and carefully down the steep flight, excepting Louisa; she must be jumped down them by Captain Wentworth. In all their walks, he had had to jump her from the stiles; the sensation was delightful to her. The hardness of the pavement for her feet, made him less willing upon the present occasion; he did it, however; she was safely down, and instantly, to shew her enjoyment, ran up the steps to be jumped down again. He advised her against it, thought the jar too great; but no, he reasoned and talked in vain; she smiled and said, ‘I am determined I will:’ he put out his hands; she was too precipitate by half a second, she fell on the pavement on the Lower Cobb, and was taken up lifeless!

A picture of steps on the Cobb, which is one of the sets of steps that Austen may have been describing in the novel. Image by Chris Talbot, Creative Commons license.

Almost all of the characters completely panic and are rather useless in this sort of situation. Except for Anne. Here we see her kindness, her perceptiveness, her rationality, and her ability to act in the face of challenge.

“Go to him, go to him,” cried Anne, “for heaven’s sake go to him….Rub her hands, rub her temples; here are salts,–take them, take them.”

Captain Benwick obeyed, and Charles at the same moment, disengaging himself from his wife, they were both with him; and Louisa was raised up and supported more firmly between them, and every thing was done that Anne had prompted, but in vain; while Captain Wentworth, staggering against the wall for his support, exclaimed in the bitterest agony,

“Oh God! her father and mother!”

“A surgeon!” said Anne.

He caught the word; it seemed to rouse him at once, and saying only, “True, true, a surgeon this instant,” was darting away, when Anne eagerly suggested,

“Captain Benwick, would not I be better for Captain Benwick? He knows where a surgeon is to be found.”

Every one capable of thinking felt the advantage of the idea[.]

Jane Austen uses a number of techniques in this passage to create emotional intensity. After Louisa’s fall, descriptions of the setting and people and people’s behavior are very short and concise. Her use of punctuation changes, paragraphs not ending with full stops before leaping into the next paragraph. And short snippets of dialogue are stacked on each other with almost no interruption.

A distinctive setting, like the Cobb at Lyme Regis, seems a fitting backdrop for such a pivotal event that impacts the entire trajectory of the novel.

Making an Ordinary Setting Distinctive

Sometimes distinctive settings are big and new and grand and different. Yet at other times, Jane Austen takes an ordinary setting and makes it distinctive in some way, and then uses this ordinary yet distinctive setting for a major plot turn.

An example of this is Mr. Elton’s proposal to Emma, in the book Emma. This proposal is key, not just because it is a proposal which she rejects, but because it is the start of Emma’s awareness that her judgment can be faulty (she thought Mr. Elton was in love with her friend Harriet, but he is actually in love with her).

The proposal occurs in a carriage, a very ordinary setting for an Austen character, yet what makes it distinctive is that Emma and Mr. Elton were never meant to be in a carriage alone together, and they only are because of a mix-up caused by other characters.

It is not common for a man and a woman to be in a carriage by themselves. This suddenly distinctive setting puts these two characters alone and unsupervised, when they would not normally be so. Mr. Elton decides to seize this opportunity to propose. The setting also serves to trap the characters: they are stuck in a moving box together, which adds to the pressure. During the proposal Emma feels trapped, and then after he is denied, Mr. Elton is also trapped both literally and figuratively.

A distinctive setting—whether it is grand and full of danger like the Cobb, or a familiar setting made distinctive like Emma’s carriage—is a powerful place to set a major plot turn, as it can make the plot possible, heighten awareness and tension, and draw out characters’ strengths and weaknesses.

Exercise 1: Choose a key scene from a story you have written, and revise the scene either by:

Editing the setting to make it more distinctive (which will impact your description as well as how your character interact with and within the setting).
Rewriting the scene with a new setting that can do more to assist with this major plot point.

Exercise 2:

Choose a book or a film, and find a scene with a distinctive setting in terms of landscape, architecture, cultural/historical significance, etc.

How does the use of this setting impact the plot and the character? What strengths and weaknesses of the characters does it manifest? How does this setting fit within the context of the other settings used in the story?

Exercise 3:

Consider the following list of ordinary places. Add a description to each to show how you could make them distinctive, in a way that might open up storytelling possibilities. (This could be anything, for example, something happening within the place, who is inside, how this place differs from other places like it, etc.)

A grocery store
A school bus
A bar
A movie theater
A kitchen

#29: Use Antagonists as Character Foils

February 17, 2021/0 Comments/in Jane Austen Writing Lessons /by Katherine Cowley

There’s a rather brilliant musical adaptation of Emma that I saw performed live in Chicago (in February 2020, right before everything shut down!).

In one of the songs, “The Recital,” Emma plays the pianoforte and sings at a gathering (while also feeling a little jealous of the attention that Mr. Knightley is paying to Jane Fairfax). And then, Jane moves to the pianoforte and begins to play at about the 1 minute 15 second mark—her playing and singing are clearly superior to Emma’s.

“She plays well, does she not?” says Mr. Knightley.

“Only if you enjoy that polished, extremely gifted sort of talent,” replies Emma.

(You can listen to the song on YouTube—stop at about 2 minutes 39 seconds in, because then it transitions to Harriet’s musings.)

What I love about Paul Gordon’s song is that it brilliantly establishes a contrast between Emma and Jane Fairfax, which is made very directly by having them play the very same song. (To me, this works really well for the musical genre.) It’s a shorthand to establish Jane Fairfax as Emma’s foil.

What is a Character Foil?

A character foil is a character who is set up in direct contrast to another character; their opposing attributes or circumstances are featured, with the purpose of revealing things about character and story.

Having a number of different characteristics is not enough for characters to be foils: all characters should be distinctive in some way, and dozens of characters in the story will have contrasting attributes.

In order to be true foils the characters must have something substantial in common, which both invites comparison between the characters and makes their differences more apparent.

Emma and Jane Fairfax are foils to each other. Not only is Jane Fairfax “exactly Emma’s age,” but they are two of the only gentlemen’s daughters in Highbury, and they both have many accomplishments. Yet Jane Fairfax is actually more accomplished; she applies herself with dedication to things while Emma does not. And Emma is in a position of power, wealth, and security, while Jane has none of these things.

A Foil as Antagonist

Not all character foils are antagonists, but many times they are: two people with conflicting characteristics or approaches to life can make natural antagonists. Tension and conflict easily arise between these characters, and it can be a powerful storytelling technique which raises the stakes, highlights the different sorts of choices that could be made (along with resulting consequences), and sheds light on character motivations.

Whether or not a character foil also serves as an antagonist, important contrasts are demonstrated.

A character foil can serve to demonstrate contrast:

To the protagonist
To other characters in the novel
To the reader

In many novels, the foil demonstrates contrast to one or two of these groups, but in Jane Austen’s Emma, contrasts are demonstrated for all three groups.

Contrast demonstrated to the protagonist:

In the opening line of Emma, we learn that Emma is “handsome, clever, and rich,” and throughout her life she has “very little to distress or vex her.”

Yet the existence and presence of Jane Fairfax does vex Emma. When Jane returns to Highbury to stay with her relatives, this is Emma’s internal reaction:

Emma was sorry;—to have to pay civilities to a person she did not like through three long months!—to be always doing more than she wished, and less than she ought! Why she did not like Jane Fairfax might be a difficult question to answer; Mr. Knightley had once told her it was because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman, which she wanted to be thought herself; and though the accusation had been eagerly refuted at the time, there were moments of self-examination in which her conscience could not quite acquit her. But “she could never get acquainted with her: she did not know how it was, but there was such coldness and reserve—such apparent indifference whether she pleased or not—and then, her aunt was such an eternal talker!—and she was made such a fuss with by every body!—and it had been always imagined that they were to be so intimate—because their ages were the same, every body had supposed they must be so fond of each other.” These were her reasons—she had no better.

Emma knows they are the same age, she knows they should have been friends—she is aware of their similarities, and she constantly attempts to emphasize their differences:

She was, besides, which was the worst of all, so cold, so cautious! There was no getting at her real opinion. Wrapt up in a cloak of politeness, she seemed determined to hazard nothing. She was disgustingly, was suspiciously reserved.

Throughout the story, Jane Fairfax also reveals things to Emma about herself: Emma finds herself worried, and perhaps even jealous, when there seems to be a romantic interest between Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax.

Contrast demonstrated to other characters in the novel:

The first time in the novel that Jane Fairfax is referenced is actually by Harriet Smith, in conversation with Emma:

“Do you know Miss Bates’s niece? That is, I know you must have seen her a hundred times—but are you acquainted?”

“Oh! yes; we are always forced to be acquainted whenever she comes to Highbury. By the bye, that is almost enough to put one out of conceit with a niece. Heaven forbid! at least, that I should ever bore people half so much about all the Knightleys together, as she does about Jane Fairfax. One is sick of the very name of Jane Fairfax. Every letter from her is read forty times over; her compliments to all friends go round and round again; and if she does but send her aunt the pattern of a stomacher, or knit a pair of garters for her grandmother, one hears of nothing else for a month. I wish Jane Fairfax very well; but she tires me to death.”

Emma’s verbal treatment of Jane Fairfax should act as a warning to Harriet: Emma is not perfect, her vision can be skewed, her intentions not always kind or correct. But despite seeing Jane Fairfax and Emma placed side by side, Harriet does not notice or heed this warning, and it allows Emma to inflict a fair amount of emotional damage on Harriet.

Other characters see a contrast between Emma and Jane Fairfax and chose sides. It is clear, for instance, that Mrs. Elton does not particularly like Emma. She does take a liking to Jane Fairfax and attempts to take her under her wing. Yet Mrs. Elton’s attentions are not always good for Jane Fairfax, something which Emma feels (and even begins to disagree with) as she watches Mrs. Elton attempt to take away Jane’s limited autonomy.

Contrast demonstrated to the reader:

Even before Jane Fairfax is introduced, it is clear that Emma is not always the best person—she can be unlikeable, interfering, and a bit of an antihero. Setting up a foil for Emma further highlights her failings, negative qualities, and weaknesses.

The foil also helps create a beautiful redemption arc for Emma, because it takes a long time, but Emma does begin to change and improve. Despite their differences and her long-proclaimed dislike of Jane Fairfax, Emma realizes and resolves:

“I ought to have been more her friend.—She will never like me now. I have neglected her too long. But I will shew her greater attention than I have done.”

It is not long before Emma is put to the test. She almost uses her wit against Jane Fairfax, as she is wont to do:

She could have made an inquiry or two, as to the expedition and the expense of the Irish mails;—it was at her tongue’s end—but she abstained. She was quite determined not to utter a word that should hurt Jane Fairfax’s feelings; and they followed the other ladies out of the room, arm in arm, with an appearance of good-will highly becoming to the beauty and grace of each.

Later, Jane is feeling unwell and decides to leave a social event at Donwell Abbey early. At first, Emma tries to do what she thinks would be the most kind and solicitous action—to call a carriage. But ultimately, she allows Jane Fairfax to do what Jane wants, which gives her the autonomy and societal power she is often denied. The following passage begins with Jane speaking:

“I am fatigued; but it is not the sort of fatigue—quick walking will refresh me.—Miss Woodhouse, we all know at times what it is to be wearied in spirits. Mine, I confess, are exhausted. The greatest kindness you can shew me, will be to let me have my own way, and only say that I am gone when it is necessary.”

Emma had not another word to oppose. She saw it all; and entering into her feelings, promoted her quitting the house immediately, and watched her safely off with the zeal of a friend. Her parting look was grateful—and her parting words, “Oh! Miss Woodhouse, the comfort of being sometimes alone!”—seemed to burst from an overcharged heart, and to describe somewhat of the continual endurance to be practised by her, even towards some of those who loved her best.

The contrast between the characters and their evolving relationship creates a powerful story for readers. While Emma and Jane Fairfax never have a complete, total reconciliation, the transformation of their relationship is dramatic.

Wrapping up

Not all character foils need to have this sort of reconciliation. And sometimes, a character foil is used for a character other than the main protagonist. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham acts as foils to each other, and while a sort of agreement is reached between them at the end of the novel, it is more of a triumph of Darcy and his principles over Wickham.

Using character foils can be a powerful tool, especially with antagonists, which can create marked contrasts for the protagonist, for other characters, and for the reader.

Exercise 1: Think about one of your favorite character foils from a book or a movie. What do the characters have in common? What is different about these characters? Who notices this contrast, how does this foil effect the plot, and what is the impact of this foil on the reader?

Exercise 2: Take one of your characters who does not have a foil (either from a story you have already written or a character you have brainstormed). Craft a character who could be an effective foil for this character. What would be the advantages of using a foil in your story? What would be the disadvantages?

Exercise 3: Choose a classic fairy tale character, like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Now create a character foil for this character. The catch: you have to use this random number generator.

Use the random number generator 3 times to choose 3 of the following possible contrasts. Use these three types of contrasts to craft a character foil for the fairy tale character (but also make sure to give the characters enough in common that they are set up as foils).

<br /> The numbers generated by this widget come from RANDOM.ORG’s true random number generator.<br />

Bonus: do the same exercise, but this time use the generated numbers to choose the things that are similar about the characters.

Tag Archive for: emma

Posts

Distractions

Interruptions

Red Herrings

Conclusion

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1. Establish an Information Gap by Using Character Anticipation

2. Establish an Information Gap by Breaking a Pattern

3. Establish an Information Gap by Giving Consequence to Not Finding Out

4. Establish an Information Gap by Raising New Questions When Questions are Answered

5. Establish an Information Gap by Revealing Key Information

In Conclusion

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The character of a setting is its essence, its overall nature which is experienced by those who interact with it (both the characters within a story and the readers of the story).

Emma

Pride and Prejudice

Persuasion

Establishing the Character of a Setting

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Making an Ordinary Setting Distinctive

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What is a Character Foil?

A Foil as Antagonist

A character foil can serve to demonstrate contrast:

Contrast demonstrated to the protagonist:

Contrast demonstrated to other characters in the novel:

Contrast demonstrated to the reader:

General categories of possible contrasts:

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