Authors Electric

When I’m reading a book review or looking at notices of coming play performances, there’s one word that tells me I need read no further. I know at once that this novel or this performance is not for me.  The word is ‘reimagining’.  Instead of the writer’s creating his or her own original work of art in novel or play form, they have piggy-backed on a classic, taken over the well-defined characters (saves the effort of creating their own), invented new plotlines and generally ‘updated’ the story to add ‘freshness’ and ‘relevance’ for today. A particular favourite at the moment is to go for a minor character – Mary Bennett, say – and retell Jane Austen’s great novel from her point of view . The result is a kind of Cosy Classics in which readers are duped into thinking they’re being given a new, original story when much of it is simply borrowed finery from an infinitely greater creator.  The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. Told through the eyes of Maggie, NOT Tom Tulliver....

The servants' view:  Longbourn by Jo Baker Look, I don’t usually bother with this sort of thing.  Yet another rewriting of Pride and Prejudice . We’ve had it from the servants’ point of view (Jo Baker’s Longbourn ), it’s infused Bridget Jones’s Diary , and been recast as a comic horror film,  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,  starring the Undead. (This last version may be a kind of backhanded compliment to Jane Austen on the deathless status of her most loved work, I couldn’t possibly say.)  And now, heaven help us, we have Mary Bennet’s story.  Suffused with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice : Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding That’s right. The hilariously tedious, pedantic, verbose, two-dimensional middle sister whose only function is for us to laugh at her. Whether or not you find her a believable character, or feel there’s a touch of cruelty in her creation, there's no escaping the fact that this is how Jane Austen wrote her.  But guess what....

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay images. It is the 250th anniversary of the birth of one of my favourite authors, Jane Austen, later this year (16th December to be precise). I’m fortunate enough to be able to easily get to Winchester Cathedral where she is buried and they have had exhibitions celebrating her life and work.   Indeed there is an exhibition running there from 23rd May until 19th October 2025 called the Jane Austen Poetry Exhibition which looks at the friendship between her and Anne Lefoy, who was a mentor to Jane. (I find it encouraging mentors are nothing new for writers). Jane wrote a poem regarding the death of her friend and that poem is one of the objects on display here. I discovered the joy of Austen’s work, especially Pride and Prejudice, thanks to it being one of the books I had to read at secondary school. I would say its impact was to show me irony was a thing in fiction.  I’ve had good cause to appreciate that since...

I have fellow Electric Author Allison Symes to thank for my ruminations this month. Her post a couple of weeks ago on her dislike of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park unleashed a lively debate on Jane Austen’s heroines, and why we love some more than others. It struck me then that the fact we can argue about this at all is down to Austen’s genius in creating six romantic heroines, all struggling within the confines of the same social framework, and all so different from each other.    Not what Jane Austen does. Photo by Dmitrii Fursov Ah yes, that social framework. Let’s get one thing out of the way first. I have no time for anyone who holds the extremely-unoriginal-but-frequently-voiced-with-Great-Smugness-by-persons-who-think-they-are-the-first-to-do-so-opinion that Jane Austen is not worth considering because she didn’t set her novels on the battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars. That point of view simply cannot grasp that Austen’s greatness lies, not in recounting military cam...

Image Credit: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.   I loathe Fanny Price from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park -- always have done and always will. She is too insipid a character for my liking.  It has struck me she is too reliant on rotten things happening to other characters rather than trying to make her own happiness. Yes, those other characters deserve their comeuppance but come on, Miss Price, do something positive for yourself, will you?    I know I can’t judge by the standards of our time, right? Fanny Price reflects a different era, right? Okay, but by contrast, I love Elizabeth Bennet, who knows her own mind, is flawed, and holds out for what she wants. Same author, same era, two well known creations, one of whom is significantly better than the other! I guess this proves no writer gets it right all the time. I take some comfort from that. Characters for me make or break a story. I have to get behind them even if I don’t like them or want them t...

Joy Margetts’s post on 23 July, A Tale Most Tragical , set me thinking. Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read Anne of Green Gables ; but I’ve listened to the audiobook, which I hope counts, and watched a delightful BBC dramatisation about 30 years ago, and loved both. Even if I hadn’t, I’d back Joy to the hilt about interfering with another writer’s work; but loving the story as I do, I was aghast at what Joy revealed the makers of Anne with an E on Netflix have done with it. Not happy with the storyline as written by L M Montgomery in 1908, which lacked the modern required exploration of racism, colonialism and homophobia, the creators of Anne with an E have cheerfully added several new characters and storylines to make up for this. Joy kindly gives the screen writers the widest possible benefit of the doubt, judging that perhaps only this way could the series attract a modern audience.  Really? Anne of Green Gables is a timeless classic...

  Words. Gosh I love them. I expect you do too. We writers relish finding new ones, playing with established ones and looking back at the way our predecessors used language. I was on the school run yesterday morning when the inspiration for this blog hit me, due to the following conversation:   Son: It was so lame in English the other day. Someone told the teacher his hero was Rick Astley. When she asked why, he said he would never give him up, let him down, tell him a lie or desert him. She wasn’t impressed. Daughter: That’s funny.   Son: In lockdown, one of my Maths group nearly got chucked out of the class by the teacher.   Daughter: Why?   Son: He Rickrolled her.   Me: Rickrolled? What on earth does that mean?   Daughter (with patient sigh): You know, like when someone sends a link and it looks normal but when you click on it, you get Rick Astley singing “Never Going to Give You Up.”   Me: Oh. I didn’t know that was a thing. Hmm....

Bruce Nauman, Double Poke in the Eye II, Tate Modern. Photo credit: Karen Kao A while ago, a student asked me to talk about writing dialogue. She felt that her own dialogue was stilted, created solely for the purpose of completing her writing exercise for the week. I said something vague and probably wholly unsatisfactory, although this student was too polite to say so. I think I mumbled something like: use dialogue when it’s the most efficient way to convey your information. When the reader needs to hear the words coming out of the mouth of one of your characters. After class, I went home and started looking at my writing books. As I had hoped, there were plenty of better answers than my flubbed attempt. So here’s what I learned about writing dialogue. Impossible Dialogue Image source: HarperCollins Legend has it that Truman Capote could eavesdrop on a conversation on the street, rush back to his hotel room, and transcribe that conversation verbatim....