In this interactive conference workshop, Finola Austin—author of Bronte’s Mistress and creator of The Secret Victorianist—explores two enduring craft tools historical fiction writers can borrow from Victorian fiction: first-person voice and intentional repetition.

Drawing on close readings of Charles Dickens and examples from her own work, Finola shows how nineteenth-century fiction can sharpen a writer’s understanding of voice, metaphor, dialogue, and thematic patterning—without requiring anyone to imitate Victorian prose wholesale. The result is a fresh, practical look at how classic literature can strengthen modern storytelling.

You’ll learn how to:

• Study Dickens’s first-person narrators to understand what makes a voice memorable

• Use voice to reveal personality, background, and worldview on every page

• Understand how first-person narration changes description and shapes reader experience

• Let characters contradict themselves, digress, or misunderstand events in revealing ways

• Choose metaphors and similes that feel authentic to a character’s era, education, and perspective

• Distinguish accidental repetition from intentional repetition

• Use repeated words, phrases, and sentence patterns to build theme, mood, suspense, and characterization

With examples from A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, and other Dickens works, this session offers practical, craft-focused insight for writers who want to make their prose more deliberate, character-driven, and alive.

Perfect for writers of historical fiction—whether you work in first person, third person, or dual timelines—this replay offers valuable tools for strengthening voice, language, and narrative texture.