For more information about this project, check out the earlier posts in the category “Sense and Sensibility and Placage.” Claude’s first draft had some ai-isms that annoyed me, so I asked for a redraft. I couldn’t get it to shorten its sentences much, but decided it worked with the Romance-language background that most of the characters come from. Its long rambling sentences seemed particularly apropos, in this scene set along the Mississippi.

Ride Along the River

For more information about this project, check out the earlier posts in the category “Sense and Sensibility and Placage.” This was the original scene 10 in the outline. But a ‘happy little accident’ produced something that I thought was a nice Edward moment that came before this. Hence, the quirky numbering. In the first draft, Claude ignored the explicit statement in the outline that Elise doesn’t confide her lover’s name to her uncle or anyone else at this point in the plot. Claude also committed em-dashes, for the first time in several scenes. I ordered a redraft, and then trimmed a few bits from the first couple of paragraphs of draft 2. I am really enjoying Claude’s interpretation of Morin (the Brandon analogue). Maybe it’s because Brandon is one of my favorite characters in S&S. Maybe it’s because, at the brainstorming stage, I came up with a background for Morin that I really liked. Whatever. Morin’s a good dude.

Partial Confession

For more information about this project, check out the earlier posts in the category “Sense and Sensibility and Placage.” Claude’s initial draft was okayish, maybe melodramatic in spots but in a way I enjoyed. I had it redraft to add references to the sisters thinking about Edward and the Colonel. I then prompted for a third draft to remove emdashes and reword some awkward sentences. Manually deleted a few establishing details I didn’t care for.

The Ball

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

For the origins of this project, see previous posts in “Sense and Sensibility and Placage” category. Claude’s first draft was fairly satisfactory on this one, and draft two was me asking for em-dash removal and sentence level fixes in a few places where the AI’s lack of logic became obvious. The words “with her [Frances’s] advice” are mine. I didn’t like what Claude had there but couldn’t justify mucking around with a third draft for it.

Planning the Departure

For more information about this project, please see past posts under the “Sense and Sensibility and Placage” category. Claude, amazingly, got through draft 1 with no em-dashes! I asked for a rephrase of one sentence that felt anachronistic to me, and to break down a loooong sentence that ended this scene in draft 1. Otherwise draft 2, which you see here, is much what draft 1 was. I did realize at the last minute that this needed to come before the first Marianne POV, even though the latter was written first, and adjusted the scheduling accordingly. I haven’t had much reason to quarrel with these early setup scenes, but we will see how Claude does once the romance arcs start.

Letter from Mrs. Jennings