The Writing and Marketing Show

Writing Fan Fiction

April 05, 2023 Wendy H. Jones Episode 168
The Writing and Marketing Show
Writing Fan Fiction
Show Notes Transcript

In today's episode I talk to author Ruth Leigh about writing fan fiction based on the novels of Jane Austen. We talk about how fan fiction can be commercial and the ways it can be written to engage the modern reader. 


Wendy Jones:

Hi, and welcome to the writing and marketing show brought to you by author Wendy H. Jones. This show does exactly what it says on the tin. it's jam packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news to help you with the business of writing. It's all wrapped up in one lively podcast, so it's time to get on with the show. And welcome to episode 168 of the writing and Marketing Show with author entrepreneur Wendy H. Jones. As always a pleasure to have you with me. Today I'm going to be talking about writing fanfiction commercially, with author roughly and I'm very much looking forward to that before then what has been happening in my life. While since I got back from Israel, it has been absolutely crazy busy. I hope you enjoyed the interviews I did while I was out in Israel. I certainly enjoyed doing them. And I hope they helped you. But since I got back, I've been at the I've been at the Scottish association of Writers Conference, which I organised as the president. And on the last day, I handed over my presidency to a new president I had done five years and that five years just flew past I can tell you, I had a great time, but it was time to hand it on because the organisation needs fresh blood. And I was fortunate when I was there. And I was absolutely blown away. Because I won three awards, I got a first I won the Ginetta Bowie challenge, Charles for a nonfiction book. And that was for the first 15,000 words of a nonfiction book, which was called so you want to write nonfiction but it's actually going to come out as my fourth book in my writing Master series. So will be called eventually, non fiction matters. And a lot of people said to me that they're very much looking forward to reading the book and learning more. So I'm excited about that. I also got 2/3 places, one for my nonfiction book, which was in the writing matter series as well. And that was called Motivation matters. And the other was for my for a book review. So it was exciting time really, I had a great time. And I've now got the charlas up on my beautiful, which writing bureau so it's lovely to see it there. And what else is happening while I'm busy setting up a brand new organisation called Auscot Publishing and Retreats. And we're going to, there's three of us myself, Shoma Mittra, and Susan McVeigh are setting up the business. And we're going to be running high end international retreats and courses for writers. So that's a very exciting change in direction for me, although I will still be writing when I say changing direction. I don't mean I'm giving up writing. It's in addition to what I'm doing already, because of course I don't know I have enough to do. I'm also looking at a trip to the states for three months, I've booked my flight. So I'll be off to the states for three months from August. And I'm also looking at the trip to Mexico as you do so hey, you never know what's going to happen in life. It's great. So more of all that later. So what have the lovely Ruth Lee. I've had Ruth in on the show before. But this time we're talking about something totally different because she's got a change in direction as she will tell you. So Ruth is a novelist and freelance writer who lives in beautiful East Sussex along with three children one husband a kitten to budgie six chickens and two quail sounds busy in her household. She has been writing content and blogs for charities and small Suffolk businesses for the last 13 years and loves adding value with words. She published her first novel The Diary of Isabella and smoosh in February 2021. The second novel The trials of Isabella M SMERSH, followed in October 2021. The third in the series, the continued times of Isabella M smoosh will be available for pre orders in September 2022 and be in the shops in October. Ruth learn to read age four and hasn't stopped since her first piece of fiction was produced on sugar paper and written with crayons back in class three at primary school. She was surprised and pleased to be given a gold star for it and has hoped for more of the same ever since. And I can absolutely assure you she is a fabulous writer. And I'm very much looking forward to her new series of fan fiction books. And without further ado, let's invite Ruth onto the show say hello to her and get to hear about this new series welcome Ruth.

Ruth Leigh:

Hi Wendy Good to be here.

Wendy Jones:

Hey, it's absolutely lovely to have you here. Now we've got a bit of a lag tonight and there's a good reason for That why is that? Where are you at the moment?

Ruth Leigh:

I'm in a little wooden chalet in Switzerland at the moment

Wendy Jones:

in Switzerland. How fabulous? What are you doing there?

Ruth Leigh:

We've come on a family holiday. Everybody else is skiing, but I'm not I'm doing writing and walking and swimming and things like that. I'm not going to endanger myself by hurtling down the slopes anymore.

Wendy Jones:

Fabulous. Hey, I'm very excited for you. But I'm not anywhere except Bonnie Scotland. So hey, but you never know. I might be somewhere later in the year. That's pretty exciting. It is it is. So

Ruth Leigh:

yeah, that's the question. You're always travelling all over the world.

Wendy Jones:

I'm always travelling. I've got I've got a little trip coming up in August. I say a little trip. I'm going away for three months. So that's a trip.

Ruth Leigh:

That doesn't surprise me at all. It's quite a trip.

Wendy Jones:

So I've got some questions for you. So are you sitting comfortably?

Ruth Leigh:

Yes, I am.

Wendy Jones:

Excellent. Well, I'm glad to hear it. So we're going to talk today about fanfiction. So let's pin our cover colours to the mast. And please excuse a cliche. I know I'm a writer, we shouldn't be using them. But tell us what fanfiction is.

Ruth Leigh:

Okay, so it's a literary work, which is based on a pre existing novel or a work of fiction. And it's usually a very well known work of fiction. So Jane Austen is a classic example. Some people are going to write a prequel or a sequel to other novels or a reimagining of the novel where they completely rewrite it. Other people will choose a character like Charlotte Collins, or Mary or Katie Bennett, and write a novel just about them. And I found out recently, the first ever example that we know of a fanfiction on Austen was 1913. So it's very long standing tradition. And you probably know this, in 2014. The Jane Austen project asked famous writers to rewrite the novels in the present day. And my favourite by a long old joke was Val McDermott doing Northanger Abbey, where she sent the harrow into the Edinburgh Festival. So that is a brief answer to your question, I hope.

Wendy Jones:

Yeah, I must say the Northanger Abbey rewriting was brilliant. Val MacDermid was outstanding at it. Yeah. So that was perfect. That was it sounds a perfect answer to my question. So thank you. So say, you have got such an intriguing idea about to write fanfiction around Pride and Prejudice. So can you tell us about it?

Ruth Leigh:

Yeah, I can remember the exact moment when I had the idea. It was right at the start of lockdown. I was sitting up in bed with a cup of tea in the morning. And I was halfway through Pride and Prejudice for the umpteenth time. And I suddenly had a realisation that once upon a time in a small town in Hartfordshire, there would have been a very pretty lively teenage girl who were starting to think about marriage called Miss Gardiner. And Miss Gardner is one of the main characters in Pride and Prejudice. I'm not gonna say who she becomes obviously, she does get married, not spoil it. But I thought I know I'll just have some fun and write a short story about her in the voice of her new husband. And once I've done that, it kind of started something in my mind. And I thought, well, there's all these other characters in the novel, who only appear a few times or don't even have any lines or just refer to once or twice by name. So I went through and I found eight other characters. So there's Sally, the maid, who's employed by Colonel and Mrs. Forrester and Lydia writes to the colonel's wife asking if Sally will mend her dress up, she's eloped. Then there's the Harrington sisters, and they're part of his gang of teenage girls who go rampaging around meriton. There's Mrs. Forster herself. Mrs. Anna's Lee, who's georgiana's Darcy's companion. Nichols. The cook never failed. Mrs. Phillips, who's Mrs. Bennet sister, Mrs. Long and Mrs. Jenkinson who works Lady Catherine Berg. And I just had so much fun finding their voices, researching their backgrounds and looking up social and historical information to underpin the story.

Wendy Jones:

Sounds amazing, I have to say, and I really am intrigued by the premise. It's just genius. It really is. So I'd like to ask, what is the starting point of such an undertaking? I wouldn't even know where to start?

Ruth Leigh:

That's a great question. I think Miss Gordon started it. So I think the starting point for me was that I didn't have very much to do because Loksatta taken all my work away. So I had a bit of space in my creative brain. And once Miss Gardner had come into that space, immediately other characters and questions came into my mind. So for example, how come Mrs. Long, and if you read the novel, she's the third person mentioned by name of the novel after Mr. Mrs. Bennett. How come she knows about Mr. Bingley, coming to never feel before either Mrs. Bennett or her sister because Mrs. Bennett is a news hound, you know, she's got her nose to the ground sniffing out young men, all those daughters. And we're told that Mrs. Phillips who is on the high street in meriton is equally as keen on you. So how come these ladies don't know about it? But Mrs. Long Does that intrigued me? Then I thought, Well, why is there a piano in Mrs. Jenkins room at Rosings Park, when we don't ever see and Ebert play the piano. And Lady Catherine says she's never learned. Why is that? Mrs. Forster, the colonel's wife, who's described only as a very young woman lately married. So a very young woman would mean in Regency terms 16 or 17? Is she really as silly and giggly as her intimate friend Lydia? And how does Sally the maid feel about being forced to mend the dress for birdies lost her character? In a no one seemed to ever have asked these questions before. And it just opened a door in my mind and outpoured stories.

Wendy Jones:

Wow, that is great. And it leads me nicely into my next question, because I'm curious, what level of knowledge do you have to have of the original manuscript in order to write fan fiction?

Ruth Leigh:

Well, I'd say you have to have a pretty high level, if you want to do a good job of it. You need to be able to write in the voice the authentic voice is somebody living in the late 18th century. And you have to use the correct sentence structure the right spelling and adjectives, because they did speak quite differently to us, you know, it's recognisable English, that the intonation to sentence structure is quite different. So the younger characters, the unmarried girl, this gang of teenagers would tend to speak in a kind of rushed telegraphic style with lots of exclamation points. You know, nowadays, Lydia and Kitty would be on Tik Tok all the time. So, such as Sally and Mrs. Nichols would talk in a much more basic way, with less elegant vocabulary. So I looked into that I did huge amounts of research. And I think you do have to immerse yourself very fully in the original manuscripts do a good job of this kind of thing.

Wendy Jones:

Now, that seagues quite nicely into my next question, really, because I would like you to talk us through the pros and cons of writing it in the original style, versus writing it in a more contemporary style.

Ruth Leigh:

Hmm, that's a really good question, too. I think I'd say that the main Pro for me with that it's really good for your writing Mojo. When you're immersing yourself in a different historical period with different customers, and you're trying to create believable, readable dialogue and description without just parroting parroting Austrians words, is quite difficult at first, but it's very rewarding. I sent it over to my first readers. And at first, they found it quite difficult, because of the rhythm, because it's a different kind of language. Once they warmed up to it, they really enjoyed it, because it makes it authentic. So that's, I think the Pro, it's more authentic, and it's good for your writing style. And as far as poor writing in a contemporary style, you know, I really admire those authors from the Jane Austen project, who were able to take four of the six major novels and rewrite them for the 21st century, that never felt like something I could do myself, although if it's done well, it's very readable. So I think that's the answer, I think, for me immersing myself in that language. And that custom was easier than starting all over again and rewriting it for our times in that sort of language.

Wendy Jones:

Yeah, I have to say, I think I would struggle to write it in a more contemporary version, although I have seen, you know, like a contemporary version of Little Women. It's not Little Women. It's just a movie. But it is Little Women. You know, but it doesn't say it's little women, but you know what it is? Yeah, you know, exactly, yeah. So it's really clever. The people that do that, I have to say. I think people that write it in the original style are very clever as well. I don't think I would even want to attempt it to be honest.

Ruth Leigh:

Once you get into the swing of it, it's it's all right. Once you run through in the swing of things it's quite easy. It's just getting yourself into that place, I think.

Wendy Jones:

Yeah, yeah. So how did you go about the process of choosing which characters you wanted in the book?

Ruth Leigh:

Well, I found a fantastic resource called Austin Oh pedia. Now I've looked to try and find out who created it, and I don't know, but whoever it is, thank you very much. It's something that obviously a lot of work was done on it. And unfortunately, I think she's she or he has only done information for two or three out of the novels. But fortunately, one's Pride and Prejudice. So you have a complete list, or alphabetically of every single character in the novel. I know so handy, honestly. So I skim through the entry for Pride and Prejudice. And I chose the ones I liked the look of and the way I did it. I didn't want to make it a kind of one note book. So it'd be very easy to pick locks of young marriageable lady He's all telling their story, but that will be quite boring. So we had a few of those. But I particularly loved longboard by Joe Barker, which I'm sure you've read, which tells the story through this size. And I knew I wanted at least two servants in a book. So I chose two of them. Plus, I chose Mrs. Jenkins and Mrs. Honestly, because they're middle class women, so respectable, but they're forced to earn a living one because she's a widow with no children, and the other one because she hasn't married and has no other means of support. So I wanted to mix it up, you know, it had to be lots of different voices, it would be dull. So that's how I chose them.

Wendy Jones:

I'm quite curious as to why you chose short stories, rather than doing a full novel about each of the characters you've chosen?

Ruth Leigh:

Hmm, it's a very thought provoking novel, thought, actually. I mean, I wrote, I wrote the basics of this before I even started writing my Isabella M, smooth book. So so it wasn't that I didn't have a novel in me. I think, really, it was just that the characters seem to lend themselves to a short story. You know, I wanted the stories to be engaging and easy to read. And I really liked the idea that readers can just flick through the book and choose a story at random, there's no need to read them in order, which I think is quite freeing. In a while, I love a novel. And I know you do too. And we both write them, you have to commit to a novel, whereas with a book of short stories, even if they're linked, you can just pick it up and have a bit of a flick, which I think is quite freeing.

Wendy Jones:

I think also, I mean, this is just my thoughts, that in this day and age people like when they read Pride and Prejudice in books like that, it's usually people that love that style of writing. And you're only reaching a certain strata of the world, really a certain niche market. But I think if it's short stories that would lend itself more to a bigger readership because they can read a short piece like that, and then pick it up another time. You know, this has just been, I put no thought, yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah, because because I am sure it will be great. I'm looking forward to reading it. I have to say, I really am. So do the stories tie in closely what's right and prejudice? Are they completely stand alone?

Ruth Leigh:

Yeah, they do tie in. The first one is God was written before Pride and Prejudice begins. Most of them are written during the action. And I think one or two refer to it, but then are sort of in the year after the two older girls who got married, so they do tie in a lot. And what I loved about it was it gave me the freedom to have these characters speaking about the benefits and the being leaves and the tubers and all the major events but through their own eyes. So how can excuse me, Harriet Harrington makes friends with Mrs. Forster. And therefore we see Lydia through her eyes. And Sally and Nichols, the cook, give us a servant's eye view of the families. Mrs. Long spends most of her story walking about to a friend's house is picking up nuggets of news. And trying to best Mrs. Bennett in the marriage steaks. And I, I just really love the idea of two ladies, with a massive squad of daughters and nieces, eyeing up all the suitable young men in the neighbourhood and trying to beat each other to it. So it gave me the chance to tie it in most certainly, but also to expand it without doing a rewrite, which I would never want to do.

Wendy Jones:

It's a good way of doing it. Yeah. I like the idea. So when you write in the stories, do you work on the assumption the reader will have a strong understanding of the original book? Or can they be read a standalone?

Ruth Leigh:

My first readers had never read the novel. But they had both watched the BBC adaptation. However, they really enjoyed the stories. And I suspect that most people who pick this book up will probably have watched one of the recent adaptations or read the book, but they don't have to have done and they don't have to be complete Austen nerds like me to enjoy it. You could just pick it up. And it will be an entertaining book of short stories. So you know, I think it works either way.

Wendy Jones:

Good. So yeah, I think you've answered my next question, which is why is this approach important?

Ruth Leigh:

Hmm, You see, this is the thing I think, as a writer, and you'll understand this, Wendy, I think it's really unwise to come over all precious and start saying things like, you simply must read the 1956 commentary on the novel and study the tradition of the 18th century epistolary novel to truly understand Austen, you know, I write to make people laugh and to entertain them. And I want my readers to read it and enjoy it laugh and maybe learn something interesting from the footnotes. And if that sends them off to read the book for the first time or read it again, that's great. If not, doesn't matter as long as they enjoy it. I don't mind.

Wendy Jones:

Excellent. I love that. So what would be your top three tips for anyone looking at writing a book such as this?

Ruth Leigh:

Easy peasy number one, do your research terribly important. I dug deep into fashion etiquette, food, customs, and all that kind of thing to make sure I really knew my stuff. Number two, I would say you must always read around your subject. So there were two books in particular, which I mentioned in the bibliography long form by Joe Barker, and Jane Austen radical by Helen Kelly, both superb and a really large my understanding of the period. And number three, I would say, Don't embark on a project like this unless you really love and respect the author's style. There is a vast amount of Austin fan fiction out there. And more some is very, very good. Some perhaps not quite. So. I've got huge respect for Austin's gifts and they flowered in a far from encouraging atmosphere. I'd say to anybody embarking on fanfiction be respectful for that.

Wendy Jones:

Excellent points that I mean, really, especially the bit about being respectful. Yeah, you have to be respectful of the original work. Yeah. So I know you've written another series, which we've spoken about. Can you tell us about that?

Ruth Leigh:

Huh? That's the Isabella M SMUGGE series, which is about a very successful influencer, who moves from London to Suffolk with her family in search of the perfect country life and discovers quite a lot about herself in the process. So very funny, easy to read. It's page turner with heart and I'm planning to write books or next year. And I also loved writing this Pride and Prejudice book so much that I'm going to do the same thing with Emma and the other four novels. So we're going to have Isabella and Austin running along concurrently. It's quite quite addictive, actually.

Wendy Jones:

Hey, I'm impressed with your work ethic work ethic. I'm only on coffee. Think I was swinging whiskey when I'm

Ruth Leigh:

We can, the sun's over the yardarm talking.

Wendy Jones:

Quick crack open the whiskey. Hey. So my final question before we get drunk is how can my listeners find out more about you and your books.

Ruth Leigh:

Couldn't be easier. Follow me on all the socials at Ruth Lee writes, and you can visit my website at RuthLeewrites.co.uk.

Wendy Jones:

Hey, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you again, Ruth. Thank you for joining me.

Ruth Leigh:

Thank you. Loads of fun.

Wendy Jones:

Okay, well, I know you're busy, busy so whiskey or a glass of wine or something.

Ruth Leigh:

So I will last one wouldn't go amiss.

Wendy Jones:

I will let you get on with your evening and Switzerland. And thank you very much, and all the best with a new book.

Ruth Leigh:

Thank you so much.

Wendy Jones:

That brings us to the end of another show. It was really good to have you on the show with me today. I'm Wendy H Jones. And you can find me at Wendy H jones.com. You can also find me on Patreon where you can support me for as little as $3 a month which is less than the price of a tea or coffee. You go to patreon.com forward slash Wendy H Jones. I'm also Wendy H Jones on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Dang. Thank you for joining me today and I hope you found it both useful and interesting. Join me next week when I will have another cracking guest for you. Until then, have a good week. And keep writing. keep reading and keep learning