As it turns out, "running your eye" over the contractions in a 225 page document takes a long time. We're talking hundreds and hundreds of contractions. (Obviously, I have not Jane's restraint.) It's never as simple as just hitting "replace all" even for the ones that are on her never-used list. Some of that is grammatical ("couldn't you" will usually turn into "could you not" not "could not you"), but more of it is content related. Most of these contractions existed in Jane's day, they just didn't form a part of her personal writing style. While we all hope to sound like a little bit like Jane, slavish imitation is never a good idea, in my mind, so I really felt that I needed to look at each one individually to see if it was needed or not. My primary goal was to make sure that if I used a contraction, I did it on purpose.
Here are the guidelines I worked out for deciding what contractions to use and where:
First, of all, where it's used, narration, direction speech, etc. If in speech, who's speaking? Some characters seem more likely to use contractions than others. Narration should probably contain the fewest contractions.
Secondly, what are the circumstances? Even if you take a character like Darcy, who's deliberate mode of speech is not inclined towards contractions, I figured that there might be certain times, such as under stress or strong emotion, when he would be more likely to employ them. People speaking informally to friends are more likely to use contractions than those in polite company or who are trying to impress.
And finally, readability. I asked myself "Will this line sound clunky or unnatural if I take the contraction out?" Sometimes changing it makes the line become unbalanced, or the non-contraction slows things down and calls attention to itself. I would probably have written some parts differently if I had been thinking "no contractions" at the time, but I'm not going to continuously rewrite everything just for the sake of removing a few contractions.
In the end, I still have way more contractions than Austen would have used, but I feel moderately satisfied that all my contractions have a valid reason for being there. It does make me somewhat nervous, making this many changes this close to publication, when I don't have the time to read it all through to make sure it still flows like I want, but over all I'm pleased. It became obvious to me that I had used most of the contractions without thinking about them (didn't was the one I used the most, even in narration), and in many cases I felt it to be an immediate improvement when I changed them out.
Here are the guidelines I worked out for deciding what contractions to use and where:
First, of all, where it's used, narration, direction speech, etc. If in speech, who's speaking? Some characters seem more likely to use contractions than others. Narration should probably contain the fewest contractions.
Secondly, what are the circumstances? Even if you take a character like Darcy, who's deliberate mode of speech is not inclined towards contractions, I figured that there might be certain times, such as under stress or strong emotion, when he would be more likely to employ them. People speaking informally to friends are more likely to use contractions than those in polite company or who are trying to impress.
And finally, readability. I asked myself "Will this line sound clunky or unnatural if I take the contraction out?" Sometimes changing it makes the line become unbalanced, or the non-contraction slows things down and calls attention to itself. I would probably have written some parts differently if I had been thinking "no contractions" at the time, but I'm not going to continuously rewrite everything just for the sake of removing a few contractions.
In the end, I still have way more contractions than Austen would have used, but I feel moderately satisfied that all my contractions have a valid reason for being there. It does make me somewhat nervous, making this many changes this close to publication, when I don't have the time to read it all through to make sure it still flows like I want, but over all I'm pleased. It became obvious to me that I had used most of the contractions without thinking about them (didn't was the one I used the most, even in narration), and in many cases I felt it to be an immediate improvement when I changed them out.