For more information about this project, check out the earlier posts in the category “Sense and Sensibility and Placage.” Claude didn’t do great on the first draft of this scene, with a serious overuse of the word “particular,” and no inclusion of Marianne to speak of. For draft 2 I prompted it to address those issues along with some more minor stuff (Morin’s backstory and height, Edward joining the party later in the scene. Draft 3 was basically me wanting it to reposition a certain paragraph about Morin’s reactions to Marianne chatting up his ward, and being too lazy to do it myself.

Meeting Colonel Morin and Élise

For more information about this project, check out the earlier posts in the category “Sense and Sensibility and Placage.” Claude did very well on its first draft, but then I realized Edward needed to be present, so I asked for a redraft. I deleted a sentence and a half about Marianne that were not justified by her behavior in the story so far, and I deleted a sentence about Henry Dashwood’s judgment of people late in the scene. “He was a better man etc” is something I wrote to replace it.

The New Cottage

For more information about this project, check out the earlier posts in the category “Sense and Sensibility and Placage.” Claude did very well on its first draft. For the redraft, I asked it to rework an incoherent description of what the Dashwoods’ mother was doing with her hands during the cart ride, and have Marianne show more emotion. My instinct is that free women of color in this time and place would not have survived long, if they showed the overwrought behavior that Marianne and her mother do in the Austen novel. But Marianne isn’t Marianne if she isn’t the most emo person in any given room. Then I realized this was the right time to introduce Edward, and that led to two more drafts. I manually removed an em-dash rather than ask for another draft.

Journey to Faubourg Marigny