How Jane Austen Changed Fiction Forever

Bookworms read all kinds of literature, and over time they can recognize certain authors just by the way they put words together.  But it takes a literature expert or linguist to see exactly how an author's language is different from the next talented writer, and to explain it to the rest of us. For example, Jane Austen wrote in a very different style from previous novelists in that she used what linguists call "free indirective speech." It's a technique for connecting the narrator with the character and the reader all at the same time, yet separating them all enough to allow the freedom to critique that character. Even if you're a Jane Austen fan, you might not have ever noticed this, and even if you did, you probably couldn't explain it as well as Nerdwriter1 does. It's one of the many devices that gives an author a distinct voice and a distinct feel for the way she tells a story. (via Kottke)