QUADRILLES – for the beginner

David, photograph above, is by no means the beginner in question – that would be me.

The regency novel often contains a ball scene and many of the people featured in Georgian and Regency novels spend a fair amount of their, admittedly plentiful, time learning to dance.

What Pride and Prejudice fan could fail to sympathise with Lizzie’s anguish when asked to dance by Mr Collins. If she accepts, she will face the mortification of having a partner who gets it all wrong. If she refuses, she can’t dance with anyone else that evening.

“Mr Collins…could not prevail with her to dance with him again, put it out of her power to dance with others.”

It was a big deal!

So, I took myself along to the French Institute on George IV Bridge where I spent six delightful evenings learning Mr Gow’s 2nd New Set of Quadrilles under the expert tuition of Talitha MacKenzie and in the company of some long-term devotees of historic dance.

Years and years of dancing Scottish Country Dances mean I struggled with the footwork but there are several great u-tube videos to help. I appreciated the ones from the Hampshire Regency Dancers.

You-tube Regency Footwork

What Olga, seen ablove on David’s arm, and I agreed on, was that we couldn’t work out how anyone had the breath for all those conversations we see in TV adaptations.

Julia in a fabulous sacque dress, 18th century style.

I hadn’t attended any of the Baroque classes but in a small company when the instructions were called, I think I managed. I did leave the party evening feeling that I could see the connections between the historic dances and the patterns of Scottish Country Dancing.

That understanding – what the patterns were and how they were danced – is going to help me understand how the characters in my novels achieved their romantic aims through dance. Maybe the carefully scripted lines beloved of historic drama ween’t a reality but the flirting through meaningful looks, squeezed hands, regretful backward glances… a term well spent.

There’s an upcoming evening at the French Institute on Parliament Square/George IV Bridge.

Baroque Dance Concert Saturday 13th April at 7pm.

Tickets on sale at https://sonas-multimedia-uk.myshopify.com
£15 / £10 (for EQS & IFE Members) + £1 booking fee

So, dear writers, what skills have you felt moved to improve or pick up in the cause of veracity?

Courting the Countess, set in Edinburgh 1819, is available on kindle or in a library. Mariah’s Marriage and Daisy’s Dilemma also from the library.

Anne

Round Robin – Research

Skye has asked us to discuss: Research for your Novel – Love it or hate it? How important is it for your writing?

How important? Of prime importance. Do I love it? Yes. Do I hate it? Yes – sometimes, maybe…

Research is the foundation of all my novel writing. There’s no difference between historical and contemporary when it comes to getting the facts right.

I can’t believe that you need me to tell you about books, online sources, libraries, oral histories, phoning folk and institutions, newspapers, museums, paintings. You know that’s what writers and researchers do.

We call it work.

LOVE IT

So, what does research mean for my novel – or serial? Writing the most recent serial for DC Thomson’s People’s Friend, I wanted to show a character’s nervousness. I had her twiddle the button on her cardigan. I thought that was unassailable. Wrong. No pictures from the 1880s of women wearing cardigans popped into my head as I typed. Why? The humble cardigan hadn’t been invented is why. Two minutes research in Google and the cardigan had to come out and be replaced by the button on her skirt. Skirts had been invented by the 1880s!

What benefit does the author get from knowing that cardigans weren’t an option? The cardigan stays on the upper body and, if the buttons are closed, keeps one’s front warm as well as one’s back. Not having the cardigan option means the character needs a shawl and that’s a different set of physical behaviours. Shawls slip off the shoulders if not fastened in front or to an undergarment by a brooch or pins. A short shawl would perhaps leave the waist area exposed and chilled but a long one might tangle with one’s skirt and affect one’s gait. It could be slackened and used to cover the head in wind or rain. It could be used to make a bundle and carry stuff.

OF PRIME IMPORTANCE

In short, knowing is an integral part of understanding how the character lived. That’s what is of prime importance – How did the character live? How did they think? How did they speak – and to whom?

Research shows us the obvious, eg it took longer to get from Britain to Australia when the Suez Canal didn’t exist. And it shows us the subtle, eg with no public transport and limited access to private vehicles, most of the early nineteenth century population didn’t leave their birth area. One of the writing foibles I know I exhibit is wanting the characters to have a surname appropriate to their birth area or the birth area of their forbears. Hence the presence on my reference shelf of George Black’s erudite tome.

HATE IT?

There are the moments when you discover that a whole paragraph or even chapter is based on a mistaken idea or belief. That’s not good. It’s also the case that research is an endless field of rabbit holes and sliding into them for an hour or so is is beyond easy…

Do visit the blogs listed below to discover what my fellow robins think.

What areas of research do you, as a reader, regard as the most important for an author to have covered?

Anne

Victoria Chatham  http://www.victoriachatham.com

Diane Bator  https://escapewithawriter.wordpress.com/

Anne Stenhouse  https://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com

Dr. Bob Rich  https://wp.me/p3Xihq-398

Connie Vines  http://mizging.blogspot.com/

Helena Fairfax  http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

Skye Taylor  http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea

International Women’s Day

COURTING THE COUNTESS

Throughout the world in 2024 there are many disenfranchised people. It’s likely that over half of them will be women.

One of the over-arching themes of my writing is women’s path into education and greater enfranchisement.

I’ve written about women struggling to get to the local primary school – Moving On, Staying Put for DC Thomson’s People’s Friend. About women struggling to avoid a being a wife should be enough existence – Mariah’s Marriage for MuseItUp. About women fighting to attend chemistry classes and thereafter qualify as doctors – A Class of their Own for DC Thomson again. About a woman struggling to recover from injury and avoid the marriage that would rob her of her inheritance – Courting the Countess – Joffe Books.

I hope much of it with humour, drama and great dialogue (cue references to te influence of Georgette Heyer) but of course that’s for the reader to decide. I was very touched by a private messagr during the publication of Moving On, Staying Put to tell me how much it was being enjoyed as a story about where we lived. It’s lovely to hear from readers.

How does your work address an issue that is relevant on International Women’s Day?

Anne

Diary of a Writer – March Prompt

TABBY ROYCE has been trained as an apothecary by her late papa. On Papa’s death, her brother and his new wife, turn her off and she has to find any work to survive. This in due course leads her to Edinburgh where she becomes embroiled in the activities of a medical household where the master and his steward, CAL MORRISON, are anatomists.

So, what greater prompt can there be than one of Ulverscroft’s fabulous covers. This is from the library edition of A Maid and a Man which is published on 1st April and I’d be hugely pleased if you were to pop into your local library and place an order.

PLR payments will be made in March and may I also thank all the lovely library borrowers who’ve made mine worth receiving. I notice that of my four books currently in the system, Courting the Countess was the most popular. Maybe I’ll get into the Edinburgh regency sitting in my files and finish it!

As some of you will know the PLR site was compromised, so I’m not able to add either Christmas at Maldington or A Maid and a Man at the moment. Even so, if you do borrow or reserve either, I hope you’ll enjoy.

Meantime I’ve sent off a summer short story, a non-seasonal short story and I’m working on a Christmas one. At least I don’t have to hire in a snow blower/maker.

Literary trivia for March: On a walking tour of Exeter many years ago, I picked up a meaning of ‘Living on a shoestring’. People incarcerated in the local debtors’ prison would tie their shoelaces together and lower them from their cell bars. Outside family or friends would tie bundles of food and other necessities to the shoestrings. The felon would haul them up.

Anne