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hobgoblinn) wrote2007-10-27 02:15 pm
hobgoblinn) wrote2007-10-27 02:15 pm
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Fic Postmortem: Lost Boys
What’s a fic postmortem? It’s a rambling commentary on how a writer went about writing a particular story, identifying and solving problems, what the story was supposed to be about, what the writer learned, or would do differently. I learned to do them from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
antennapedia and find them tremendously helpful. Sometimes also an insomnia aid. Here then, is my postmortem for Lost Boys.
I got flashes of a scene-- of a first-year lost in the dungeons of Hogwarts, and meeting the ghost of a certain Potions Master, almost from the moment I put down Deathly Hallows. The ghost would not know who he was (losing all those memories left him a fragmented soul at death, unable to go on even if he’d wanted to), the boy would help him find out, and everyone would live happily ever after, except the ghost who would still be, technically, dead. Simple enough.
How it got to almost Nano Novel proportions still mystifies me a bit. But this story is one I have learned a great deal from, and I feel I consciously executed things that had previously been lucky shots if I managed them at all. On the whole I’m pleased with how the conscious planning led to some neat writing and a much better story.
Initially the dungeon scenes were written in a much abbreviated form, and the boy was Albus Severus Potter. I’ve said elsewhere I think JKR named these kids to try to discourage fanfic; at any rate, I was close to chucking the whole idea when it occurred to me it could be another kid. Someone I could name myself. Someone who wouldn’t have all the baggage a name like Albus Severus would surely carry with it.
And then I got a flash of an image-- two dads watching a soccer game with more going on for them than was at first apparent. A kid on the field subtly influencing the path of the ball with unconscious magic. Dudley Dursley’s son. Working out that backstory dynamic became “Two Dads.”
David Dursley had a nice ring, but I chose it more because the name means “beloved”. Of course, we know that someone as damaged as Dudley would not be able to raise a healthy child who really was beloved, especially after the grotesque caricature of love his parents modeled for him. But “The good ended happily, the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” Maybe the Dementors really did get through to Dudley, or enable him to live up to the awesome responsibility all parents, no matter how bad they turn out to be, feel the first time they hold their infant in their arms. In any event, the idea explains how David would be able to recognize the ghost-- he’d have seen him in a book. A Potter would have instantly known who the ghost was-- Harry would have seen to it that Albus knew the story of both his namesakes. But Davey would have had more limited contact with the Magical world. And his memory problems, a tiny echo of Severus’ own problem (and Neville’s), would have made it so he’d recognize, but not be able to immediately place the ghost-- giving them time to work out a friendship without the past in the way.
What’s important in this story? Obviously memory-- how it makes us what we are, how we share memories and experiences with each other, how they draw us into patterns of action and thought, and what happens when those patterns are interrupted. A Snape in complete command of his memories would never have formed a friendship with David, though he might have helped the boy find his way. It was fun to jettison some inconvenient aspects of memory like that but use others-- to have Snape falling into the familiar pattern of aiding a boy who needed him, and of befriending a Muggle-born child without knowing both are patterns from his old life. One of my betas early on commented on how it’s believable Snape would retain sense memories that guide him to the potions classroom. I think it speaks to a more basic truth, that so often our actions are guided on some level by unconscious memories and experiences. We play out again and again old relationships, often dysfunctional ones, because no matter what we consciously think we want, we gravitate to them as familiar, though painful.
The idea that David had Second Sight came late in the game. I had put in a joke about David being a Seer, but I kept coming back to the idea because it was a satisfying explanation for how Snape could go for over 20 years undetected in the bowels of the castle, and how the Mirror only affects him and David and Harry now. Why didn’t an earlier child, or someone with more connection to him like Draco, or one of the Potter children, come across him? For that matter, why didn’t Harry? He’s been back to Hogarts a number of times in the intervening years. But Davey is special in a lot of ways, not just as a stand in for Harry and Lily in Snape’s working out his own issues. He has a quiet courage I came to admire, and he has been a beloved child who passes on the gift of love easily and unselfconsciously. Once triggered by seeing a child’s murder, he starts seeing Snape’s memories, and later, other scenes of battle on Hogwart’s grounds. The final working out of the plot is not just to make things right for the dead, but to give the living something they need to carry on. Given that Snape has been fulfilling the needs of others all his life in a kind of enforced way, it’s nice that he now chooses to do so freely, for someone he cares about. I like that shape running through the story. And I like how David, like Harry before him, chooses to work out and try to do the right thing on his own.
Another important aspect of the story is choices. I wrote a response to DH in which I said if Snape had no choices, he couldn’t possibly be said to be brave. I try to work that out here very explicitly. I think it’s beyond sad that as fragmented as Snape’s memories are, he retains the unshakeable belief that whatever good or brave things he did in life, he had “no choice.” The water’s murky there in canon, but this Harry proves to him he does indeed have a choice-- by giving him another one, when all that history has been stripped away. I can’t say if JKR’s Snape would react similarly, but as I was puzzling over Snape’s character, and why he does what he does, I eventually realized I had to choose what kind of character I wanted to spend time with. I came down on the side of one flawed and bitter, but essentially humane, whose struggles and actions could mirror any of our own.
Reflections and mirrors are a something I didn’t do as much consciously with as I’d have liked. The mirror’s offstage for most of the story, as it should be. But I did use a similar image to tie a number of scenes together-- David’s lamp, and the building of something that casts light from scattered and broken pieces of glass and wire. The initial lamp was absolutely a throw away line, but it kept creeping back in, and then I used it to give Snape’s hands something to do in the climactic scene with Harry. I was consciously thinking of my son there--how early on in his treatment for childhood trauma, we played with legos and talked about things my then 6 year old needed to talk about. We still do things like that-- it makes communication easier, sometimes.
Initially, I had planned for Snape to regain his fragmented soul and pass on to the next world. But I still had someone here who needed him, and I was starting to realize a cool way this story could bring the reconciliation in “Two Dads” full circle. It ties in to the choices idea, but it makes use of some “ghost rules” I realized as I was starting to work with the ghost in this story. I talked about this a bit in one of my responses to a comment. Here’s what I said:
Funny, the locking up a ghost thing was a throw-away line, but when I thought more about it, I realized what we know from canon:
Moaning Myrtle haunted Olive Hornby until the Ministry intervened and sent her back to Hogwarts. If I'm remembering it right. Then in the last book, the Baron and the Grey Lady die away from Hogwarts but end up returning to haunt the castle. Some interesting rules for ghosts laid out, there.
Most ghosts I know about in folklore tend to haunt the place of death-- they don't have this kind of flexibility. Since all three of these examples are Hogwarts ghosts (by virtue of being intimately connected enough with the place that they can go there after death), I decided maybe Hogwarts Ghosts could be special-- they could have more leeway to go where they wished (unless they're abusing their privilege, in which case the Ministry gets involved).
I wanted Harry and Snape to have a final scene dealing with each other as adults, and giving Harry the opportunity to make something else right. He gives Snape a new set of choices. (It also gave me another shot at writing Auror!Harry, which was way more fun than I was expecting.) It should come as no surprise that Harry bends the rules to do what he believes is right. But mostly, having a ghost who could go anywhere meant having a ghost who could be invited over for dinner, much as Harry invites Dudley over at the end of “Two Dads.” An affirmation of acceptance, of relationship, of Family.
And what about Snape’s ghostly ability to be solid? It was kind of an outgrowth of his ability early on to be able to move physical objects. Potions brewing requires some dexterity in handling and preparing ingredients, after all. As I got to the later sections, I realized it would be a nice reversal from the typical ghosts as disembodied spirits, because in a lot of ways, Snape was always so physically cut off from everyone before. It’s indicative of his growth that he reaches out to hold David’s hand, and I wanted him to be able to shake Harry’s hand at the end in echo of the handshake between Dudley and Harry in the prologue. I wasn’t as happy with the embrace as a method of giving Snape back his memories, but I liked some of the physical grounding it allowed-- the feel of the phantom robes against Harry’s cheek, and the realization for him that he’s almost as tall now as Snape-- that he is no longer a little boy facing his hated professor, but a man facing an equal. Someone he can respect. The physicality brings that home better than any other way I could think of.
I should say something about the unexpectedly dark turn Ch 13 took. Part of it was dictated by logic-- when I started examining what David was likely to have seen, well. We all know Snape’s years as a Death Eater and spy would have been terrible. But at a crucial juncture in the composition of that chapter, a seemingly trivial event kicked up some old stuff for me. I lost a page and a half of the scene where Hermione confronts Snape about dosing David, and they discuss what should be done for him. I still think the scene I lost was better, though the scene as it now stands has new things I never would have added had it not been for the necessity of the rewrite. But the crushing despair, the not being able to turn back time to fix a mistake-- it really triggered some older and much more significant tragedies, when I spent sleepless nights almost unable to breathe with the desire to turn back time and make right what could not ever be so. It bled into the process, and made me go some places emotionally I might not have otherwise.
Add to this another event that happened while I was writing the original lost scene-- A child predator confessed his crimes and was being sentenced. The prosecutor noted that one of the victims had talked his abductor out of killing him by promising to “do anything” to stay alive. The prosecutor put it well when he referred to this as a “deal with the devil.” It struck me then, that’s what survivors do. It’s what I did. Things you can’t imagine doing normally, things you can’t even understand looking back. I think sometimes survivors guilt is not just about being the one who lived while another died. It’s about the things one had to do, in order to survive. As Vicktor Frankel noted in his memoir about his time in Nazi Death Camps, “We who were there, we know. The best of us did not survive.”
My last story (“Through a Glass Darkly”) was an exercise in Point of View, and I built on my awareness that different narrators or dominant points of view see different things in a scene. This time around, I think my main improvement was dialogue, though most of that was feverishly scribbling down inspirations that struck at odd times. I like the disjointed nature of the “Conversations” but all but one of those were written without any idea where they would go. Only the “What’s a Mudblood” conversation was planned. That said, I’m glad I chose to string them together as I did, and not try instead to write 4-5 years of events in there. I like the feel of this, that the ghost is only dimly aware of David’s life outside his lab, and that David is having a fairly normal such life, even with this unusual and secret friend.
But the accidental conversations aside, once I had those in place, it got easier for me to let the characters talk and try to get out of their way. I often found they conveyed things much better than the treatises I would have written, and it was shorter and more interesting. Also, once I let the characters go, they started telling me what was important and giving me ways to do things I wanted-- like including an expanded role for Neville and Rose, for instance.
There are a lot of little touches in here I really like-- how Snape is not at all “charmed” to meet Rose at first, but says he is later, when he tells her his real name in the hospital wing. The lamps. Subtle little echoes run through the piece, and most are intentional.
I also learned that the best way to get overemotional treatise writing out of your system is to write it that way, then nuke most of it, and distill it down to a sentence. Another important lesson: Backups are Not Optional.
I’d probably retitle it now, if I could go back. I suck at coming up with titles, unless I steal them from others/ employ literary allusions. At the time, I had 1-3 pretty much done as you read them, and little idea where it was going. But David and Snape were both lost, in their own ways. I did end up having a wonderful extended conversation withsniggs on the Peter Pan books and how they might apply here. I did use a bit of that in Snape as no longer quite human/ able to understand human concerns early on, trying to match the tone more than the content of the early part of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. I think I made a good decision not to do more research to make my as yet unformed plot fit into a more overt parallel, though. This story ended up not being about choosing, or not choosing, to be human again, but about the other issues I’ve mentioned above: how memory shapes us. Friendships. Choices. Loyalty. Things that make us all human, and things that Snape possesses, even when he doesn’t recognize it.
And David is a Hufflepuff through and through, isn’t he? I just chose the House as the likely one of a child of not-quite-bright parents. An average joe. But the loyalty really plays a role here, as Davey refuses to accept his visions about his friend at face value. I like how that works out.
And overall, I like how the story worked out. I can see a few future scenes-- a Christmas fic where Severus meets Petunia and Minerva again would be great fun. A further future fic where Snape helps a much older David deal with some repercussion from his gift. Or one where David comes to his aid.
But for now, these characters have said all they’re going to say through me. Thanks to everyone who read, commented, and got this far in the explanation. If you have questions, or things strike you much differently from what I’ve laid out here, by all means comment! Unlike certain other authors, I’m aware of my limitations, and I really am interested in knowing what I said-- or what you heard. So, fire away.
antennapedia and find them tremendously helpful. Sometimes also an insomnia aid. Here then, is my postmortem for Lost Boys.I got flashes of a scene-- of a first-year lost in the dungeons of Hogwarts, and meeting the ghost of a certain Potions Master, almost from the moment I put down Deathly Hallows. The ghost would not know who he was (losing all those memories left him a fragmented soul at death, unable to go on even if he’d wanted to), the boy would help him find out, and everyone would live happily ever after, except the ghost who would still be, technically, dead. Simple enough.
How it got to almost Nano Novel proportions still mystifies me a bit. But this story is one I have learned a great deal from, and I feel I consciously executed things that had previously been lucky shots if I managed them at all. On the whole I’m pleased with how the conscious planning led to some neat writing and a much better story.
Initially the dungeon scenes were written in a much abbreviated form, and the boy was Albus Severus Potter. I’ve said elsewhere I think JKR named these kids to try to discourage fanfic; at any rate, I was close to chucking the whole idea when it occurred to me it could be another kid. Someone I could name myself. Someone who wouldn’t have all the baggage a name like Albus Severus would surely carry with it.
And then I got a flash of an image-- two dads watching a soccer game with more going on for them than was at first apparent. A kid on the field subtly influencing the path of the ball with unconscious magic. Dudley Dursley’s son. Working out that backstory dynamic became “Two Dads.”
David Dursley had a nice ring, but I chose it more because the name means “beloved”. Of course, we know that someone as damaged as Dudley would not be able to raise a healthy child who really was beloved, especially after the grotesque caricature of love his parents modeled for him. But “The good ended happily, the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” Maybe the Dementors really did get through to Dudley, or enable him to live up to the awesome responsibility all parents, no matter how bad they turn out to be, feel the first time they hold their infant in their arms. In any event, the idea explains how David would be able to recognize the ghost-- he’d have seen him in a book. A Potter would have instantly known who the ghost was-- Harry would have seen to it that Albus knew the story of both his namesakes. But Davey would have had more limited contact with the Magical world. And his memory problems, a tiny echo of Severus’ own problem (and Neville’s), would have made it so he’d recognize, but not be able to immediately place the ghost-- giving them time to work out a friendship without the past in the way.
What’s important in this story? Obviously memory-- how it makes us what we are, how we share memories and experiences with each other, how they draw us into patterns of action and thought, and what happens when those patterns are interrupted. A Snape in complete command of his memories would never have formed a friendship with David, though he might have helped the boy find his way. It was fun to jettison some inconvenient aspects of memory like that but use others-- to have Snape falling into the familiar pattern of aiding a boy who needed him, and of befriending a Muggle-born child without knowing both are patterns from his old life. One of my betas early on commented on how it’s believable Snape would retain sense memories that guide him to the potions classroom. I think it speaks to a more basic truth, that so often our actions are guided on some level by unconscious memories and experiences. We play out again and again old relationships, often dysfunctional ones, because no matter what we consciously think we want, we gravitate to them as familiar, though painful.
The idea that David had Second Sight came late in the game. I had put in a joke about David being a Seer, but I kept coming back to the idea because it was a satisfying explanation for how Snape could go for over 20 years undetected in the bowels of the castle, and how the Mirror only affects him and David and Harry now. Why didn’t an earlier child, or someone with more connection to him like Draco, or one of the Potter children, come across him? For that matter, why didn’t Harry? He’s been back to Hogarts a number of times in the intervening years. But Davey is special in a lot of ways, not just as a stand in for Harry and Lily in Snape’s working out his own issues. He has a quiet courage I came to admire, and he has been a beloved child who passes on the gift of love easily and unselfconsciously. Once triggered by seeing a child’s murder, he starts seeing Snape’s memories, and later, other scenes of battle on Hogwart’s grounds. The final working out of the plot is not just to make things right for the dead, but to give the living something they need to carry on. Given that Snape has been fulfilling the needs of others all his life in a kind of enforced way, it’s nice that he now chooses to do so freely, for someone he cares about. I like that shape running through the story. And I like how David, like Harry before him, chooses to work out and try to do the right thing on his own.
Another important aspect of the story is choices. I wrote a response to DH in which I said if Snape had no choices, he couldn’t possibly be said to be brave. I try to work that out here very explicitly. I think it’s beyond sad that as fragmented as Snape’s memories are, he retains the unshakeable belief that whatever good or brave things he did in life, he had “no choice.” The water’s murky there in canon, but this Harry proves to him he does indeed have a choice-- by giving him another one, when all that history has been stripped away. I can’t say if JKR’s Snape would react similarly, but as I was puzzling over Snape’s character, and why he does what he does, I eventually realized I had to choose what kind of character I wanted to spend time with. I came down on the side of one flawed and bitter, but essentially humane, whose struggles and actions could mirror any of our own.
Reflections and mirrors are a something I didn’t do as much consciously with as I’d have liked. The mirror’s offstage for most of the story, as it should be. But I did use a similar image to tie a number of scenes together-- David’s lamp, and the building of something that casts light from scattered and broken pieces of glass and wire. The initial lamp was absolutely a throw away line, but it kept creeping back in, and then I used it to give Snape’s hands something to do in the climactic scene with Harry. I was consciously thinking of my son there--how early on in his treatment for childhood trauma, we played with legos and talked about things my then 6 year old needed to talk about. We still do things like that-- it makes communication easier, sometimes.
Initially, I had planned for Snape to regain his fragmented soul and pass on to the next world. But I still had someone here who needed him, and I was starting to realize a cool way this story could bring the reconciliation in “Two Dads” full circle. It ties in to the choices idea, but it makes use of some “ghost rules” I realized as I was starting to work with the ghost in this story. I talked about this a bit in one of my responses to a comment. Here’s what I said:
Funny, the locking up a ghost thing was a throw-away line, but when I thought more about it, I realized what we know from canon:
Moaning Myrtle haunted Olive Hornby until the Ministry intervened and sent her back to Hogwarts. If I'm remembering it right. Then in the last book, the Baron and the Grey Lady die away from Hogwarts but end up returning to haunt the castle. Some interesting rules for ghosts laid out, there.
Most ghosts I know about in folklore tend to haunt the place of death-- they don't have this kind of flexibility. Since all three of these examples are Hogwarts ghosts (by virtue of being intimately connected enough with the place that they can go there after death), I decided maybe Hogwarts Ghosts could be special-- they could have more leeway to go where they wished (unless they're abusing their privilege, in which case the Ministry gets involved).
I wanted Harry and Snape to have a final scene dealing with each other as adults, and giving Harry the opportunity to make something else right. He gives Snape a new set of choices. (It also gave me another shot at writing Auror!Harry, which was way more fun than I was expecting.) It should come as no surprise that Harry bends the rules to do what he believes is right. But mostly, having a ghost who could go anywhere meant having a ghost who could be invited over for dinner, much as Harry invites Dudley over at the end of “Two Dads.” An affirmation of acceptance, of relationship, of Family.
And what about Snape’s ghostly ability to be solid? It was kind of an outgrowth of his ability early on to be able to move physical objects. Potions brewing requires some dexterity in handling and preparing ingredients, after all. As I got to the later sections, I realized it would be a nice reversal from the typical ghosts as disembodied spirits, because in a lot of ways, Snape was always so physically cut off from everyone before. It’s indicative of his growth that he reaches out to hold David’s hand, and I wanted him to be able to shake Harry’s hand at the end in echo of the handshake between Dudley and Harry in the prologue. I wasn’t as happy with the embrace as a method of giving Snape back his memories, but I liked some of the physical grounding it allowed-- the feel of the phantom robes against Harry’s cheek, and the realization for him that he’s almost as tall now as Snape-- that he is no longer a little boy facing his hated professor, but a man facing an equal. Someone he can respect. The physicality brings that home better than any other way I could think of.
I should say something about the unexpectedly dark turn Ch 13 took. Part of it was dictated by logic-- when I started examining what David was likely to have seen, well. We all know Snape’s years as a Death Eater and spy would have been terrible. But at a crucial juncture in the composition of that chapter, a seemingly trivial event kicked up some old stuff for me. I lost a page and a half of the scene where Hermione confronts Snape about dosing David, and they discuss what should be done for him. I still think the scene I lost was better, though the scene as it now stands has new things I never would have added had it not been for the necessity of the rewrite. But the crushing despair, the not being able to turn back time to fix a mistake-- it really triggered some older and much more significant tragedies, when I spent sleepless nights almost unable to breathe with the desire to turn back time and make right what could not ever be so. It bled into the process, and made me go some places emotionally I might not have otherwise.
Add to this another event that happened while I was writing the original lost scene-- A child predator confessed his crimes and was being sentenced. The prosecutor noted that one of the victims had talked his abductor out of killing him by promising to “do anything” to stay alive. The prosecutor put it well when he referred to this as a “deal with the devil.” It struck me then, that’s what survivors do. It’s what I did. Things you can’t imagine doing normally, things you can’t even understand looking back. I think sometimes survivors guilt is not just about being the one who lived while another died. It’s about the things one had to do, in order to survive. As Vicktor Frankel noted in his memoir about his time in Nazi Death Camps, “We who were there, we know. The best of us did not survive.”
My last story (“Through a Glass Darkly”) was an exercise in Point of View, and I built on my awareness that different narrators or dominant points of view see different things in a scene. This time around, I think my main improvement was dialogue, though most of that was feverishly scribbling down inspirations that struck at odd times. I like the disjointed nature of the “Conversations” but all but one of those were written without any idea where they would go. Only the “What’s a Mudblood” conversation was planned. That said, I’m glad I chose to string them together as I did, and not try instead to write 4-5 years of events in there. I like the feel of this, that the ghost is only dimly aware of David’s life outside his lab, and that David is having a fairly normal such life, even with this unusual and secret friend.
But the accidental conversations aside, once I had those in place, it got easier for me to let the characters talk and try to get out of their way. I often found they conveyed things much better than the treatises I would have written, and it was shorter and more interesting. Also, once I let the characters go, they started telling me what was important and giving me ways to do things I wanted-- like including an expanded role for Neville and Rose, for instance.
There are a lot of little touches in here I really like-- how Snape is not at all “charmed” to meet Rose at first, but says he is later, when he tells her his real name in the hospital wing. The lamps. Subtle little echoes run through the piece, and most are intentional.
I also learned that the best way to get overemotional treatise writing out of your system is to write it that way, then nuke most of it, and distill it down to a sentence. Another important lesson: Backups are Not Optional.
I’d probably retitle it now, if I could go back. I suck at coming up with titles, unless I steal them from others/ employ literary allusions. At the time, I had 1-3 pretty much done as you read them, and little idea where it was going. But David and Snape were both lost, in their own ways. I did end up having a wonderful extended conversation with
sniggs on the Peter Pan books and how they might apply here. I did use a bit of that in Snape as no longer quite human/ able to understand human concerns early on, trying to match the tone more than the content of the early part of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. I think I made a good decision not to do more research to make my as yet unformed plot fit into a more overt parallel, though. This story ended up not being about choosing, or not choosing, to be human again, but about the other issues I’ve mentioned above: how memory shapes us. Friendships. Choices. Loyalty. Things that make us all human, and things that Snape possesses, even when he doesn’t recognize it.And David is a Hufflepuff through and through, isn’t he? I just chose the House as the likely one of a child of not-quite-bright parents. An average joe. But the loyalty really plays a role here, as Davey refuses to accept his visions about his friend at face value. I like how that works out.
And overall, I like how the story worked out. I can see a few future scenes-- a Christmas fic where Severus meets Petunia and Minerva again would be great fun. A further future fic where Snape helps a much older David deal with some repercussion from his gift. Or one where David comes to his aid.
But for now, these characters have said all they’re going to say through me. Thanks to everyone who read, commented, and got this far in the explanation. If you have questions, or things strike you much differently from what I’ve laid out here, by all means comment! Unlike certain other authors, I’m aware of my limitations, and I really am interested in knowing what I said-- or what you heard. So, fire away.
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I don't really know *where* to archive genfic-- fanfiction.net seems almost more trouble than it's worth, though I may go that direction. I'll have to first cut and paste the current version of the story from my journal into new files, as I keep finding errors and subtle things to change as I reread the version online. I'll probably let that settle down before I do anything else. I'm open to suggestions, and if someone wanted to put it on a particular archive, I'd be thrilled to give consent (particularly if it did not require any actual effort on my part.....)
And welcome to my journal! I was kind of shocked by the reception this story got, so it'll take me a bit to sort out about friending back. But if I see you commenting regularly or it looks like we have other mutual interests, I probably will at some point. Thanks for reading, and commenting. I am planning to participate in NaNoWriMo, probably working on serveral different ideas to see what takes off-- a couple are HP things. So you may well see more eventually.
Thanks again.
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Just friended you, btw-- your journal looks fascinating and raises a lot of questions about HP that are of interest to me right now. I look forward to getting to know you better.
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I was disappointed in DH from the first-- some lovely moments, but the shape I was led to expect-- heck, the themes I was led to expect, were obviously not there. And yeah, I admit, I was reading fast to find out what happened to Snape, and her waste of themes and characters in that regard alone was unbearable. But even so, the writing here was more uneven than the earlier books, which is hard on me as a former teacher. I always used to mark students down when I knew they could do better, and I have a similar feeling here.
But I have a bit of sympathy for someone whose vision gets away from them like this. It's such an amazing world, and it's a lot to keep control over. I had trouble keeping this one in order (and let's not even Talk about last year's Nano Novel) and it's small scale and highly derivative. Coming up with it all-- wow. Whatever else we may say, until we've done the same thing, we really have little room to criticize.
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I agree that this is exactly what happened to her. I believe she has said that she had much of DH planned at the same time as PS and if you look at the two books, they do seem to hit on many of the same themes and places. But in between those two books, she wrote 5 others and that's where themes and characters developed--and she didn't incorporate much of that into her previous plotting and planning. It's almost as if she had to find stuff to fill up an entire book, but once she finished with that book, she just jettisoned it. For example, the Order of the Phoenix just about disappeared in DH. We see more of Lee Jordan, who wasn't in the Order, than we do of many who were.
Wonderful story
(Anonymous) 2007-11-29 02:17 pm (UTC)(link)Thank you and I love the ideas you have for future stories for them.
Great job!
How I found you
It's my method of discovering stories I might like on the Pit of Voles without drowning in dreck.
Robin
Re: How I found you
My first foray into HP fanfic was recs on
I've got a couple of fics recced in here under the tag "fic recs." When I run across something truly outstanding And I have time to post about it, I generally do. Let me know if you check those out and see anything new you liked.
Thanks again for friending me and your comments.