For more information on this fanfic project and why I outsourced the drafting of it to Claude, see the previous post in the “Sense and Sensibility and Placage” category. Claude completed this scene in five and a fraction drafts. It started out with a confused approach to the will, which draft two corrected after I set it on the right path. It also had John Dashwood offering a cottage (supposed to be the property of Mrs. Jennings) to his half-sisters. I got it to correct that and the em-dashes in draft three. The last fractional draft was to address a particular bit where John Dashwood talks around how much money he’s going to give his stepmother/half-sisters per annum. I sympathized with Claude’s desire not to specify an amount in currency, but I thought there was a better way of not committing ourselves, and asked for a redraft. Then I realized that Celeste Dashwood, the heroines’ mother really needed to be present and at least somewhat active for this scene. And then I caught a couple of other minor things I wanted to correct, so then came draft five. Eleonore’s last line in the scene is my rewording of Claude, and minor edits by me were also made for continuity with later scenes.

The Promise and Its Breaking

Up til now, the only writing projects I have let Claude draft are fanfics that I wanted to read but don’t care enough to write myself. This one is a retelling of S&S set in New Orleans in 1813-1814 with the female leads as placées. In this case, I did so partly because I felt uncomfortable with trying to recreate the often downbeat tone of the source novel. Another reason I undertook this was to get a better feel for Claude’s project feature. I will probably do a process post either at the end of this experiment or maybe the midway point. Below the cut is Claude’s third draft of the first. Its first draft elided any discussion of the heroines’ ethnicity and social status, which is pretty important to this retelling. After I had it fix that, I told it to eliminate the em-dashes (which it tried to argue with me about) and rework a labored metaphor about Henry Dashwood’s illness. The result is below the cut.

The Death of Henry Dashwood