Choose Your Own Jane Austen Adventure
Plot Your Own Regency Story Using Some Unconventional Methods (Free Plotting Worksheet Included!)
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Virtual JaneCon is back! Kim Kalish (@KimKalish) and I are teaming up again to bring you some Jane Austen writing advice. We’re both screenwriters who love Jane Austen, so we wanted to share some of our plotting methods with you. Instead of doing a regular brainstorming session, we decided to try something a little more fun. Remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books you read as a kid? “If you want to slay the dragon turn to page 8, if you want to invite the dragon to a tea party turn to page 11.” Well, we thought, why not try that with a Jane Austen twist? Should our heroine accept the rake’s proposal? That’s not up to us. Let the fates decide. We’re just along for the ride!
Using random chance, Austen tropes, and yes, excellent boiled potatoes, we plotted a full Jane Austen-style screenplay in one sitting. You could say we made a Jane Austen first draft. (Yes, we thought of this joke weeks after titling our presentation). Follow along if you want to get some brainstorming fuel, or just watch as the chaos unfolds.
If you would like to try our plotting method, the worksheet is available for free here!
Make sure to check out all of the Virtual JaneCon panels on the playlist! It’s FREE!
Our video premieres on Saturday, July 13th at 11pm UTC. So if you live in New York that’s 7pm, in Los Angeles it’s 4pm, in London it’s a midnight showing on Sunday, you’ll have to wake up at 4:30am in Mumbai, and in Sydney it’s a breakfast viewing at 9am. You can check your own timezone here. Once the video goes live, you can watch it whenever you’d like, but the livechat is only available during the premiere.
In the meantime, you can watch our video from Virtual JaneCon 2023 while you wait!
Loved this! I'm linking to it in my post tomorrow. So much fun!
I'm OBSESSED with this DND style approach to Choose Your Own Jane Austen Adventure storytelling. I really miss playing Good Society :( Cannot wait to watch Kim and Andrea's video for Virtual JaneCon!!!