The Jane game
Imagine if Jane Austen was trying to land a publishing deal in today’s competitive climate as Sophie Beal looks for reasons she might get overlooked
Sophie Beal
I blame Jane Austen for the fact my first novel is still on my hard drive. I read her books over and over again in my teens and twenties. It showed when I tried to write. If she could get away with three chapters of uninterrupted backstory, or several coincidences to move her plot along, surely I could. But she wrote her books over two centuries ago. Nowadays they might never have made it off the slush pile.
1 Slow starts
Google ‘best opening lines’ and the first line of Pride and Prejudice invariably comes up in the results. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife. It has authority and interest. It immediately promises romance and introduces the conflict in the story. How could any agent not want to see the rest of the manuscript?
But not all Austen’s novels grab you immediately. Most modern readers expect to see the main character introduced on the first page, and preferably the love interest in the opening chapter. Persuasion opens from the point of view of the deeply unsympathetic Sir Walter Eliot, and shows his obsession with rank and image before Anne – his daughter and the main character – is even mentioned. She first moves and speaks in chapter two, while Captain Wentworth, the male protagonist, arrives in chapter seven.
But Jane Austen knew what she was doing. This slow introduction serves to show us Anne’s status in her family – a small detail in Sir Walter’s greater concerns.