From the Notebook: Victorian Courting Customs

First thing’s first: someone has randomly thanked me for posting in this journal, and encouraged me to keep up the good work. I don’t know who wrote the comment, but let me thank you for leaving it. Writing is a lonely adventure sometimes. Random, anonymous comments, while frustrating because the commenter remains mysterious, are greatly appreciated. Not to gush or anything, because the comment is a little sparse, but I’ve been having a semi-bad week thanks to school stresses and residual back/leg pain from an injury, and this random comment completely made my day.

All right. Now that I’ve managed to contain my pleasure, I thought I’d treat you all with a little bit of something something from my notes about courtships. I missed Valentine’s Day, but February is the month of love and hey, I am a romance writer, so here’s an excerpt from my research journal:

Courtship at most formal:

• Man wants to marry?
  1. Consider future prospects, financial position –> justify his trying to attract women?
  2. See if chosen women return his affection “with delicacy and caution to avoid compromising her” (can happen even before meeting the girl)
     -Might see her in church, at a ball, be family friend
  3. If haven’t met her before, arrange for mutual friend to introduce him to family
     -If no mutual friend, good sign the idea should be dropped cuz families don’t run in same social circle
• Girl and Guy meet in family circles with at least one married member present…allows girl to “assess his worth”
  -Does he diss women? Does he attend church? Are his hobbies “low and vulgar?”
  -He also can’t be lazy, eccentric, frivolous or foppish
  -He better have enough biz interest to ensure they’ll have future $$ 

  -Also allows him to see if she is attentive to her duties, respectful/affectionate to parents, kind to siblings, mellow…

• If she turns out to be a flirt or he a jerk, they can remove themselves from the courtship at this process and not feel guilty
• Now he can speak to her father. If dad’s agreeable, speak to daughter

Parent’s involvement along gender lines: dad takes care of financial concerns, mom looks at social compatability.

If all looks good, invitations set so couple can meet, give talking opportunities…

Information gleaned from Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England by Judith Flanders

In other words, courtship was a business back then. I’m not sure how many happy couples were created out of such a courtship system, but given the number of romantic fiction authors, I hope there were a lot. Or at least a few. But then, given the divorce rate these days, and, knowing that for many couples, the divisive topic was money, maybe we should consider marriage more of a business than we do?

Anyway, Happy belated Valentine’s Day! May your muse bless you with beautiful prose that befits the month of love.

Research: Text and Games

Getting stuck on finding the texts you need for your research? Believe me, I’ve been there. After reading one book, liking some of the information but wishing I could read the book that a certain chapter referenced, I then start the hunt. I look at my local library, I look in my university library. Given that my university is huge, when the book isn’t here, I begin to despair. I look at the bookstores, but all the chain stores around here have no imaginative texts at all. I look online, only to find the book is completely out of print, or, I could use my soul and some change as payment to get a mint condition version of the book from Amazon or eBay. If I’m lucky.

And then came Project Gutenberg. Oh, it’s wonderful. Maybe your book is completely out of print, and you don’t want to buy it off of eBay or Amazon for the $1506483-gajillion dollars the used merchant is asking for. Project Gutenberg is a group of people working to bring copyright-free (aka really old) texts online. There’s a book here that was published three different times, and I needed the 1886 version, specifically. Guess what? Project Gutenberg has all three versions. I think they even take requests for new titles. And they’re always looking for helpers! Wink wink nudge nudge, you know what I mean.

And something else to tickle your history bone: Rules to Period Games. I think the ones listed here are mainly card games, but nonetheless, if you’re writing a period piece, or a fantasy and want something to spark your gaming imagination, check this place out.

All right, it’s back to Finals Week for me. I just finished writing my second paper and I need to print it, then I get to cram for my evening exam AND my 8am tomorrow morning exam. Continue writing, everyone!

From the Notebook: British Peerage

I took these notes for my High Victorian era novel on December 19, 2004. Thought I’d post a few of my notes every once in a while, either as a way to help my fellow fiction/historical fiction writers, and also as a fun way to remind me of all the information I’ve gathered.

The British Peerage
The following list is in order of importance, most to least. All of the following should be addressed as Lord and Lady BlankWhatever, in which BlankWhatever is the name of the title/name of the estate, and not the family name aka last name. Every once in a while the family name and title are the same.

1. Duke, Duchess
2. Marquis (Marquess), Marchioness
3. Earl, Countess
4. Viscount, Viscountess
5. Baron, Baroness

- The eldest son of a duke, marquis, and earl take the lesser title.
- The younger son of a duke/marquis is called “Lord FirstName LastName” or simply “Lord FirstName.”
- The younger son of an earl is called “the Honourable FirstName LastName.”
- All children of viscounts/barons are called “the Honourable FirstName LastName.”
- Daughters of dukes, marquises, earls are called “Lady Given Name.”

Servants
It should be understood that the upper servants ate in the housekeeper’s room, and the lower servants ate in the servants’ hall and cleaned the upper servants’ rooms.

• Upper Servants (not all households had full set): butler, housekeeper, parlor maid, cook, children’s nurse, valet, ladies’ maid.
• Lower Servants: footmen, housemaids, under housemaids, kitchen and scullery maids, still-room maids, charwomen, nursery maids, pages.
• Outside Servants: coachman, gardener, young boys.

* Manservants are much more expensive, so if a family owns even one, it’s a definite indication of their wealth.

* Middle-class families sometimes took over certain duties:
- housekeeper: domestic accounts and bills
- ladies’ maid: plain needlework for self and children
- governess: children’s education

* Jilting a fiance lowered a marriagable woman’s chances for making a “good match.”
- 1/4 middle-class women didn’t marry in late Victorian era

Information retrieved from: Jo McMurtry’s Victorian Life and Victorian Fiction: A Companion for the American Reader.

Exciting New Links!

Bloomsbury, an independent publisher whose home is the UK, has a wonderful Writer’s Area with articles about how to submit materials, approach a publisher, what you can expect an agent to do for you, and even lists agents from the US and UK/Ireland. I spent quite a bit of time here. They also have a Research Center, which I haven’t played around with yet, but they claim to have over 17,000 cross-referenced, free entries that you can utilize for your writing. I’m just itching to try it out! (And yes, this is the publisher that found J.K.Rowling.)

Book Connector is a website helping to connect authors, reviews and small press publishers together.

Small Press Center is a delightful little collection of small press publishers grouped alphabetically and by genre. Take a chance with a small press, especially if after reading their website you think you two would make a good fit. A small press publisher takes a larger chance on you because they have small print runs, but that also means they spend much more time with you, and you have a smaller risk of having to mold your work to fit what they think the industry wants (as is sometimes the case with larger publishers).

Preditors and Editors is an amazing resource of vanity, self-, and small press publishers. The great thing about this website is that many people in the industry use it and report back when links are broken or when an author had a bad experience. I can easily spend hours browsing through, trying to decide where I think my book will fit. Of course, it might help if I finish it first haha.

Fairy Tales

Stuck in a rut? Want to begin a new novel (since NaNoWriMo is coming up)? I find that I love fairy tales, and that they have the best themes to make the backbone of any good draft. Tired of the Disney versions? Don’t worry, they are by no means the only and official version of these stories.

Tales of Wonder: folk and fairy tales from around the world.
National Geographic’s Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales: 12 “unvarnished” tales based off a 1914 translation.
Encyclopedia Mythica: focused on the folklore, mythology, and religion from around the world. Split up by region and then by genre.

From the Notebook: Bringing Fiction to Life

I’ve been cleaning my place, trying to get things in order since I’ve moved back to campus, and I found some old notes about how to bring fiction to life.

I only got as far as character surface life in terms of my detailed handwritten notes, with a character that I gave up, sadly enough. There are a couple things I wanted to post from my notes, however, since they seem useful.

* Take cues from other actors (characters) to know how the main (or other) character should be treated.

* Want to build suspense? Here are twelve ways to do so:

1. Objective – begins the reader anticipation, because now the character is working toward a goal.
2. Raise Stakes – this increases the importance of the objective.
3. Danger – increases the suspense because now lives might be at stake.
4. Ticking Clock – having a time limit/deadline always raises stakes. What happens if the goal isn’t reached by the time limit?
5. Obstacles – the inability to take action can be very frustrating. This frustration ups the suspense as the reader sympathizes with the character.
6. The Unknown – allows the reader to contemplate possibilities.
7. Sexual Tension – having an attraction to someone always raises the suspense. Life is hard as it is, but throw in feelings, and the uncertainty that they are reciprocated, and we have a whole subplot in the works.
8. Dramatic irony – this isn’t necessarily suspenseful for the character, but for the readers who are privy to the new information.
9. Living in the Future – the reader anticipates the difference between reality now, and what might happen in order for that reality to take place.
10. Lack of Resolution – end your scenes and chapters with cliffhangers!
11. Secret – “Secrets, secrets are no fun. Secrets, secrets hurt someone.” Keeping secrets is a dangerous business. Keep them from the characters, not from your reader, unless you want your story to be vague and hard to understand. In other words, don’t keep the secret from your reader if you want to be published.
12. Character Type – through knowing the character, the reader anticipates what the character might and might not do. This wonder whether the character will do as expected increases the reader’s suspsense.

Notes taken from The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life by Noah Lukeman. St Martin’s Press 2002, New York, New York.

Why Historical Fiction?

In this session, Whitbread award-winning novelist Rose Tremain looks at the issues around writing and publishing historical fiction. (From BBC – Get Writing [here ]).

Why Historical Fiction?
I believe that the ultimate goal of historical fiction is to evoke the past and its characters within that past in such a way as to create a ‘universal story’, one with which the readers of today (no less than the readers of tomorrow) can identify. The prime reason for setting a novel in history is to escape the confines and dictates of a narrow contemporary realism in order to explore the big themes of existence, such as love and betrayal, poverty and riches, success and failure, youth and age, war and peace, truth and lies, honour, friendship and death. Many great writers, including Dickens, Shakespeare and Tolstoy understood that novels or dramas set in past time can be every bit as powerful and ‘relevant’ to contemporary readers as those exploring a familiar quotidian scene.

We live in an age where the diversity and absolute strangeness of human life are more accessible to us than in any previous era, through television and the internet.

Our world vision is immense. That which is ‘strange but true’ – the thing which has actually been lived or done – amazes us because we then go on to ask ourselves whether we could have lived through it or done it or been as this or that person has been. That which is invented – though it may make us understand our lives better or differently, move us, terrify us or make us angry or make us laugh – doesn’t invite or challenge us to attempt identification of this particular kind.