Write it Like a Fairy Tale -- 06 Loose Ends

There is one other thing you can do as a Regency novelist, and it is another Burt Lancaster lesson.

Lancaster never did sequels. He also never covered another actor’s work with remakes; Gunfight at OK Corral had a completely different script from Darling Clementine, that violated history much less – I mean, big chested big voiced Victor Mature as runty tubercular Doc Holliday? Come on. And while Paul Lukas played Ernst Janning in a TV broadcast, the movie of Judgment at Nuremberg added plot elements like, Marlene Dietrich as a German general’s wife and the girlfriend who broke up with William Shatner. Lancaster did film versions of stage plays – but not Shakespeare, with the inevitable comparisons to Olivier. He didn’t like doing too many films in the same genre; he didn’t even like doing the same take on a genre as everybody else. He was never in any of the rah rah war movies, he made anti-war movies. He never did “Great Old West” movies, he did rowdy raunchy Vera Cruz and icy cold Lawman and anti-racism Scalphunters – but Ulzana’s Raid was actually about the Vietnam War. And two things came out of them.

Burt Lancaster did bookend films. Not only were there derived doublets in some of his movies, but he did more than one movie about the same topic. I have a full list in another document, but Lawman and OK Corral are bookends; Scalphunters and Judgment at Nuremberg are anti-hate; Brute Force and Birdman of Alcatraz are anti-prison.

You can do this with your Regency novels. I have one written and another planned which refer to the treatment of blacks in British colonies. I have blurbs for about 90 other novels all told, and I am sure I can find opportunities for turning some of those into bookends. Bookending can tell your readers more about some important Regency issues by looking at them from different directions or through the eyes of different characters. It will also tell readers more about those characters because of subtext provided by their reactions.

You can include messages like Lancaster’s movies did, but if you’re going to write it like a fairy tale, the message has to be a matter of reacting to events, not giving lectures – and yet one of my plots has a Dissenting preacher lecturing on the evils of the slave trade. But Dissenting preachers did that during the Regency, so it’s part of the plot, not a detour.

And there’s one thing in oral narratives that you don’t have to worry about, but you could always include it in some of your novels. Olrik discussed the use of placenames as identifiers for culturally important events. For historical events and the inception of an important custom, an oral narrative may name a specific place (use a toponym). It may also tell the story and finish “and it is there to this very day.” The events in the narrative are well in the past; nobody alive was there at the time. But the narrator and her audience can see the location where they happened and she points to it verbally, and then the people in her audience accept what she says about the events.

This is more than just having things happen where a character or their family live. The place and event have to have a direct relationship to each other and to the plot and its denouement.

It’s more than “oh, we were visiting The Lakes and I fell in.” The Bible has no logical reason for positioning Avraham’s tent where travelers can get to the Cities of the Plain – unless the culture insists that the Cities’ overthrow is closely connected to inception of the practice of circumcision. If my young lady can see Malkin Tower in Lancashire from her chaise, the reader has a right to expect the novel to have something to do with the Pendle Witch Trials. And conversely, don’t refer to Malkin Tower unless your outline does discuss the witch trials. It’s not a head fake; it’s wording that has nothing to do with your plot, and that violates the unities and busts your word count.

Try to remember a movie that opens at a given place with a voiceover about it, and then the plot unfolds showing what happened and how it affected the characters, then goes back to the place and summarizes. That would have been too talky for Lancaster, but His Majesty O’Keefe does something like it using action. Lots of good “scenery” too, if you know what I mean.

But don’t use a toponym just to prove that you used Dugdale in your research.

Now let me go back and tie up one loose end. I talked about the heroine learning her lesson such that she is ready for her new normal. And some of you probably said, “Wait a minute. Why doesn’t her mate have to learn any lessons?” Well, you’re right. Mr Darcy learned a lesson about treating strangers with contempt. But Edward Ferrars, Colonel Brandon, George Knightley, Henry Tilney, Frederick Wentworth, and Edmund Bertram were all pretty much the same at the end of the novel as they were when first introduced to the reader. The same is true for Georgette Heyer’s Regency heroes – Philip Jettan belongs to the preceding “macaroni merchant” period. Why don’t the heroes change their natures?

Because however much a husband might talk of “my wife’s house”, or however much a gentleman might defer to a lady’s opinion, every girl was taught that she was inferior, that “women were all children of a larger growth.” And children have to learn lessons as they grow up. We don’t like to be told that in the 21^st century, and it’s one more struggle you will have with writing Regency novels. You may have to compromise by having your heroine learn something about the world, and her mate learn something about himself. But if you’re writing it like a fairy tale, you can’t have him admitting that he can’t live up to her idealizing him – because that’s not how heroes behave in fairy tales. It would be a failure. If he can fail, he’s not worthy of her. If the man who first attracts her is not worthy of her, you must have a secondary hero who can step forward and show he is truly the right mate for her. More than one Regency novel has a heroine who mistakes her own heart. That’s not the same as the hero learning a lesson.

Trying to write it like a fairy tale may sound like a lot of work. Writing is a lot of work anyway, if you try to do it right, giving respect to your genre and your audience. You’ll get two benefits from it.

You will craft your work very tightly. Nothing will happen that doesn’t support some other action; there will be no loose ends or plot holes. Michael Winner and Gerard Wilson did Lawman and then a few years later they did Scorpio, again with Lancaster. The latter movie started with somebody else’s script, and they didn’t have time or the desire to tear it apart completely and build it back up with the same craft they used on Lawman. It’s a good story but it has a patchwork quilt effect instead of an intentional design.

Your work will translate to film easily. It will have action and dialogue, but not monologues or things that need a voiceover. Movie audiences won’t be left saying “What just happened?” The action will be clear and purposeful, and you already limited it to things that carry the plot forward.

Maybe your books will start a whole new craze for Regency movies.

But even if you never get that far, writing it like a fairy tale will do a much better job, honoring our foremothers of the English novel, and giving audiences something much better to read than a Harlequin novel doped with a few famous names.