The Charm of Cranford

Cranford is one of the better-known novels of the 19th century English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. It was first published in 1851 as a serial in the magazine Household Words, which was edited by Charles Dickens. The fictional town of Cranford is closely modelled on Knutsford in Cheshire, which Mrs. Gaskell knew well. The book has little in the way of plot and is more a series of episodes in the lives of Mary Smith and her friends, Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two spinster sisters.

But what is it about Cranford and its deceptively simple tales of country life that makes the work so appealing? It has been aptly described as ‘a piece of exquisite social painting’ … ‘tender’ and ‘delicate.’ Narrated by Mary Smith, a friend of Miss Matty and frequent visitor to Cranford, the lives, loves, tragedies, and triumphs of the inhabitants of Cranford are woven together seamlessly to create a tapestry portraying timeless emotions and choices.

The petty social bickering, cold shouldering and jockeying for importance in the village’s pecking order are outlined in a humorous yet pointed way—the author loves her characters, with all their faults, and is tolerant of their foibles while holding them up to gentle ridicule. In every community there is an arbiter of good taste, a setter of trends, a leader of public opinion, a foolish gossip, and all the other social whimsies that make up this colourful collection of characters. It is not easy to keep secrets in this closed environment, and as Mary Smith remarks, “It was impossible to live a month at Cranford, and not know the daily habits of each resident ….” Yet, despite the squabbles and occasional ‘no speaks,’ the ladies of Cranford would rather die than see one of their own fall by the wayside. It is this community spirit that inspires Miss Matty’s friends to decide to donate a portion of their annual income to sustain their beloved friend when an investment goes sour.

As a different kind of history book and one that very possibly the author did not set out to write as such, Cranford is actually an analysis of an early Victorian country town. The inhabitants are shaken and disturbed by inevitable changes such as industrialization, the advent of the railway, and other events that force an inescapable transition into an increasingly modern world.

The appeal of Cranford cannot be better described than in the popularity of the BBC drama series. The teleplay by Heidi Thomas was adapted from three novellas by Elizabeth Gaskell published between 1849 and 1858: Cranford, My Lady Ludlow, and Mr. Harrison's Confessions. (The Last Generation in England was also used as a source.)

A gentle, charming read, Cranford has much more to offer the discerning reader than a unassuming look at country life.

How to Write Really Bad Fiction and Enjoy the Benefits of Rapid Rejection

As a writer I am always looking for articles to help me improve my writing. I happened upon an absolutely hilarious article by Hank Quense. His advice is given the other way around… but it works!

Hank: "I'm an author of five books and over forty short stories along with a number of fiction writing articles. From my experience, I've learned a number important lessons and I want to pass them onto others. One important lesson involves getting a book published; it changes your life. No longer can you sit in your office and spend your time writing more fiction. Once you become a published author, you also become the book's marketing manager and its sales manager, a terrifying situation if you're not prepared for it."

To protect others from the trauma of this situation, I've put together a list of fiction writing techniques that will guarantee non-publication. Following them will ensure a rapid reply from editors who will use a preprinted form or a terse email. This rapid reply will allow you to maximize the rejections you receive in a given period of time.

Here is the list in no particular order:

• Always use adverbs! Lots and lots of adverbs. One of your writing objectives should be to use an adverb to modify at least fifty percent of your verbs. And don't forget about using them in dialog tags. Why show the reader a woman shredding a paper tissue? Make it easy on the poor readers. Tell them the woman is nervous. Thus, "He's making me so fidgety," she said nervously.

• A naked noun is evil! Adjectives exist to be used. Their primary purpose is to modify a noun, so make use of this most excellent writing technique. Load up your nouns with modifiers so the reader will have no doubts about the noun. “The skinny, ugly guy wore a hideous, ripped t-shirt, dirty, baggy pants and shredded sneakers.” Here's an even better example of clever adjective usage: “The scrawny boy used his undersized biceps to try to pick up the clumsy weight and place it in the old-fashioned truck before the foul-mouthed old man became aware of his clever trickery.” Get the idea? Remember, a naked noun is e-v-i-l!

• Use conversation. Don't limit yourself to dialog. Conversation is the stuff of life. Don't allow your characters to be stuck inside the story by restricting them to dialog that moves the story forward. Make your characters more life-like by letting them engage in idle conversation just like real people do.

“ How you doing?”
‘I'm cool. What’s up?”
“I'm good. Couldn’t be better. Watching the Yankees tonight?”
“Who they playing? . . . Yada, yada, yada.”
This stuff doesn't move the story along like dialog does, but it shows the characters are just as boring as real folk.

•Motivation is overdone. To properly show motivation requires a lot of creativity, time and words. It is much better to skip over that part and get right into the action. So what if the guy disarming the ticking bomb is only doing it because his shift doesn't end for two hours and he doesn't have anything better to do. The character doesn't have any motivation, but who cares; it keeps the story moving and doesn't slow it down with a lot of words explaining the motivation.

• Don't worry about Point of View rules. POV is perhaps the most technical of all aspects of writing and handling it correctly is time consuming and requires advanced planning. Who needs all that extra work when there is another scene to write or another crisis to defuse? Most of the readers will figure it out and sort of follow the story.

• The fine art of the -ing word. It's wise to develop writing habits such as peppering the page with –ing words. This technique will give your writing a pleasing sing-song effect. “Opening the door and running down the corridor while waving her hand, she tried shouting, calling attention to her life-threatening situation.” Doesn't that sentence make you want to hum along from all the –ing words?

• Use empty words. Very, really, ever, still, just and others are words with no meaning but they do fill up sentences and make them look more impressive. Fiction writing is filled with opportunities to use these words and titillate the readers. With a bit of imagination, you can also use these words to punctuate the sentence.

•Why bother with multiple-dimensional characters? Flat characters work just as well. Flat characters can fight, love and die just as well as the more complicated ones, but take considerably less work. The simple approach gives you more time to write still more stories.

• Character Voice. This attribute allows the reader to identify the characters from their dialog “voices.” What nonsense. That's what names are for. Just use the names in all the lines of dialog and the readers will be able to keep the characters straight.

Keep this list near your keyboard and refer to it frequently. Within a short time, your friends and family will be impressed by the huge stack of rejection notices you've accumulated. A side benefit is that your family will know you're really doing something in your office. Right now, they probably think you're goofing off and playing computer game. If you chose to ignore this excellent advice, there are alternatives listed in my book, Build a Better Story. Be advised that following the advice in Build a Better Story can significantly increase the response time from editors.

By Hank Quense © 2011 Originally published by Writing-World.com March 2011

Award-winning author Hank Quense lives in Bergenfield, NJ with his wife Pat. They have two daughters and five grandchildren. He writes humorous fantasy and sci-fi stories. On occasion, he also writes an article on fiction writing or book marketing but says that writing nonfiction is like work while writing fiction is fun. He refuses to write serious genre fiction saying there is enough of that on the front page of any daily newspaper and on the evening TV news.


I am looking forward to reviewing Hank’s latest work Zaftan Entrepreneurs. In it, an alien mining ship discovers a planet that holds promise to be a mining bonanza. Unfortunately, it is inhabited by humans, dwarfs, elves and other races and they object to the mining expeditions. Sounds like a whole lot of fun. Watch this space.

Find out more about Hank on his website.

Have You Lost the Plot?

Losing your way in your very own plot can happen to any writer. You're pounding along and suddenly - wham! - the plot thickens and turns into your worst nightmare. Suddenly you can't see the wood for the trees! Before you throw your computer (or typewriter or pen and paper) out the window, here's some great advice from James Scott Bell's The Ultimate Revision Checklist. I found this on the excellent Writer's Digest site courtesy of Jane Friedman.

There Are No Rules - 6 Common Plot Fixes

Some Key Questions to Ask About Your Plot
* Is there any point where the reader might want to put your book down? (Shudder! Yes, it happens to the best of writers.)
* Does your novel feel like it's about people doing things? (Maybe doing too many things?)
* Does the plot seem forced and unnatural? (Even though you know in your heart of hearts this is the best novel since ... well, since the last best novel ever.)
* Is the story out of balance? Too much action? Too much reaction? (Ha! Seriously, can there be too much action?)

Maybe even one 'yes' means you should read this good advice because there are six simple ways to doctor your plot back to (almost) perfection. In fact the six simple steps are so simple you could say to yourself, "Hey, I knew that!"

These tips are so good I'm going to print them out and stick them on the wall when I begin the monumental task of editing my second children's adventure novel. Oh yes, I'm going to ask myself, "Is there too much action here? I mean, seriously, can there ever be too much action?" Don't answer that that!

Are You a Perfectionist?

If the answer to the title question is yes, then look no further for advice than Jami Gold's excellent article A Perfectionist's Guide to Editing: 4 Stages.

Jami's words will strike a resounding chord with anyone harboring even vaguely paranoic perfectionist tendencies.

Jami says, "Perfectionists tend to be nitpicky, no surprise there. But there’s a time when that trait is very helpful, and a time when we need to ignore the compulsion to tweak. How do we tell the difference?"

That's a good question: how does one tell the difference between useful tweaking and compulsive (possibly ultimately destructive) tweaking.

Finish the Story!
As the song goes, "start at the very beginning" and that means "finish the story."

Jami: "Before we even start on the revision process, we need to finish the story. Many people give advice to not edit previous chapters before finishing the draft of the whole thing. Usually, the thinking goes like this: If we start editing before we’re finished, there’s a greater chance we’ll never finish the story and much of that editing time will be wasted further down the road."

4 Stages of Editing 
Expanding upon these four stages of editing this excellent article tackles:
*Revising - scene structure and character
*Dialogue, POV and motivation
*Polishing - grammar, sentence structure, use of words/adjectives/adverbs etc
*Tweaking - everyone's favorite! There is no finality about tweaking. One can tweak forever but that's when one has to rein in the tweaking tendencies and know when to say, "It's finished!"

Oh, but is it ever finished? Possibly not, but by then your product should be at a stage where you can submit it to the eagle-eyed agent of your choice. Good Luck!