This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
INTERVIEW BY DEBS CARR
Juliet, thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions for our Novelicious readers.
I’m delighted to be here! Thank you, Debs, for inviting me and ‘hi’ to everyone who’s reading this.
Do you have a typical writing day, and if so, can you tell us a little about it?
At the moment, a typical writing day is something I can only dream of! I’m working full-time in London on a contract and have to fit my writing around this and other business commitments, as well as family and – more recently – promoting Persuade Me. So I get up early – anything from 4am onwards, depending on what’s spinning round in my head – and do a bit of writing then.
My ideal writing day would be to spend eight hours on my current work-in-progress – probably split between home and a couple of local coffee shops – followed by a long leisurely family meal. Little do my family know that they’re a constant source of inspiration for my characters!
I thought Rick Wentworth was gorgeous and loved that he was a marine biologist. What inspired you to give him this as a career?
If you know the original Persuasion – and you certainly don’t need to, in order to read Persuade Me – you’ll recall that, between breaking up with Anne Elliot and meeting her again eight years later, Captain Frederick Wentworth was away in the Navy. Fighting in the Napoleonic Wars meant that he could advance his career rapidly and entirely on his own merits, as well as increase his personal wealth through capturing enemy ships. Given the poor communications infrastructure of the early 19th century, it also meant that it was completely natural him and Anne to have no contact while he was away.
Fast-forward to the 21st century and a war scenario is still topical, but a modern Wentworth would have a range of communication methods at his disposal, even in Afghanistan. And I wanted him to follow a career that would make him a media celebrity, setting him on a more natural collision course with the snobbish Sir Walter Elliot. It’s become quite common for a hunky subject expert, such as a scientist or historian, to achieve celebrity status through writing glossy ‘coffee table’ books and being on TV. So that was an obvious choice for my version of Wentworth and, to keep him doing something sea-related, I made him a marine biologist.
The next problem was where to send him so that he’d stay well away from England for several years. I then discovered that the tiny, beautiful sea dragon is only found in the wild off the south coast of Australia. Add in other factors – Rick throws himself into his work to forget the past, and Australia’s the sort of place that his family and friends would love to visit – and you have a man with no particular urge to return to England. Until his publisher wants him to go there on a book tour …
Your books are based on Jane Austen novels and I was wondering if you start with the characters or the plot when adapting the period story into a contemporary novel?
I think it’s the characters. Most romantic fiction is all about the conflict between the hero and the heroine: both external or ‘plot-driven’ conflict, and internal or ‘personality-driven’ conflict.
The starting point for me is to unpick the external conflict in the original story – which is often heavily influenced by Regency society, especially the expectations around the role of women – so that I’m left with the bare bones of the internal conflict, i.e. the hero and heroine with all their flaws. Also, Austen offered only limited insights into the hearts and minds of her irresistible heroes, whereas writing for Choc Lit means emphasising the hero’s point of view as well as the heroine’s. Great fun!
Then it’s a matter of plonking all the characters into a 21st-century setting – with jobs, sex lives, internet connections, mobile phones, etc. – and re-introducing the updated elements of Austen’s plot. If that sounds easy and well thought out – believe me, it’s not!
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given with regards to writing, and what piece of advice would you give to an unpublished writer?
The first step is to decide what you want from your writing. If you want to improve your writing with a view to getting published, the best piece of advice I’ve had is about persistence in the face of what seems like constant rejection. But, as with anything, persistence is of limited value unless you also keep learning about your strengths and weaknesses. And that’s where being open to feedback is so important.
There are different ways of encouraging feedback: for example, you can use a writing buddy in your genre – someone who’ll be honest without being totally demoralising; you can read books about writing; and you can attend workshops to hone your writing skills.
Are there any editing tips you can give us?
I can thoroughly recommend a book called Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King – it helped me a lot with things like conveying point of view through description. Writing is all about your choice of words to convey plot development, character and mood, and the editing process is an opportunity to challenge each choice. And I’m definitely an advocate of putting your first draft to one side for a while, so that you can re-assess it later with fresh eyes.
Persuade Me is the second book in your Darcy & Friends series, can you tell us if you've decided what the third book in the series will be? (Can you tell I can't wait to read it?)
(Thank you!) Choc Lit and I haven’t made the final decision yet on Book 3 – all we know is that it won’t be published next year, because of my other work commitments. It may be Northanger Nights, an update of Northanger Abbey, or it may be something completely different!
Thank you Juliet and congratulations for Persuade Me being shortlisted in the Total-E-Bound Best Romantic Read Award at the Festival of Romance in October and good luck.