some thoughts on writing harry potter
Aug. 12th, 2004 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321I realised a few days ago that my writing of my current HP fic is converging in a strange way with the Karl/Dom epic that I was writing for most of last year and then abandoned in despair. Well, I lie -- I did not entirely abandon it; I, in fact, resolved to rewrite it completely and got quite a few pages down in longhand, and it is this rewritten version (that starts with an extended flashback into Karl's teenage past) that is now converging with the HP fic.
I am not unpleased about that. I can now rework my old obsessions and maybe make them work better. One thing that I am finding myself enjoying a lot about HP (and that was perhaps missing in Karl/Dom which gave events there a strangely unmotivated quality) is the scope for writing extensive backstory, especially about people's families. I remember![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
badgermonkey once compiling an absolutely hilarious post on slash men vs real men; it included a point about slash men having no families at all. This, I now realise, pertains to slash men in lotrips mainly (perhaps all rps, I don't know) but it certainly does not apply to slash men in HP. They have families all right, and it's very enjoyable and very satisfying weaving those families into the plot.
I also like the variety. Lotrips has a cast of thousands, and that is what I loved about lotrips. But even with that cast of thousands, ultimately, it is a fandom about actors and about film people. But because HP has the delightful fanonic habit of ageing people up, it means that you can have literally any profession you like. It is wonderfully liberating! At first, I couldn't think: what are they all going to be when they grow up? But I've thought and thought and it's all come to me, and it's nice.
I also like the wizard/Muggle interaction world premise. Well, in canon there is precious little of it but there is enough for fanon to make something of. This gives HP a very nice quality of half-AU (wizards, magic) and half-reality (just like rps!). Endless potential -- for me, anyway.
I'm also an absurdly close-fisted writer and like to hide everything up my sleeve, I know, but my fic involves a triangle story (back to the good old days of the Billy/Dom/Orli saga, eh?) and it features Draco, Harry, Dudley and also every single one of these three people's relatives, alive and dead. So yes, it also features Narcissa Black, Lucius Malfoy, Vernon Dursley, Petunia Dursley née Evans, Lily Potter née Evans, James Potter, Nymphadora Tonks and various other Tonkses and Blacks. Also some minor characters with wonderful potential (how I love the rare ones!) plus some actual origchars (partly adapted in unscrupulous fashion from other works of published fiction by Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis and the films of Lindsay Anderson). Plus Hermione. Somehow Hermione is inevitable.
And I'm doing a 'you' pov which I've never done and which is not wholly loved, I know, but which I'm determined to make work because it feels right and fits in with what I believe about second-person pov (I've ranted about this extensively elsewhere, as you know). But it's also got a third-person and there I'm not quite happy yet with how I'm going to let this one play: quite detached or totally identified, and I'm also not yet sure how 'lyrical' to make this voice -- part of me wants a plethora of metaphors, another part wants deadpan observation. I feel quite uncertain about the third-person voice, still, actually. I know the third person person very well but the tone and voice and the vocab to adopt -- I feel so rusty! And I'm not sure whether the third factor in the triangle will even get a pov of his own -- we shall see. I'm also moving between past and present tense (again, echoes of the Billy/Dom/Orli!).
It feels strange beavering away on my own as if the days when I posted some form of fic on a weekly basis had never been. Because that's another thing HP did to my writing: it made it looong. This is not new; I keep remembering my A4-folder full of that first Karl/Dom draft but in HP, novel-length fics are almost de rigueur. It doesn't seem so weird and out-of-place to be writing something looong.
I find that my attitude to canon has survived more or less intact from lotrips, though. Heh. Irreverence, moving towards origchar, but still sticking with snippets and clues scattered about in the canon source material. And there is just as much marvellous scope in HP fanon for unfanoning as there was in lotrips, possibly even more! I was very intimidated by all the canon-mongers at first and found them quite tinhatty but now I am participating in ridiculous tinhattish musings myself while at the same time seeing the liberating and enabling power of a strong extensive fanon. A bigger fanon just means that there is so much more to work yourself up against! Because the canon is, alas, so very boring (I skimread one of the books yesterday -- what a chore!) but luckily, canon is entirely secondary in HP because there is simply so much more of fanon out there.
As to plot: this fic I'm writing now has the most plot I've ever, ever written. It has even more than Desert Prince although DP may end up with as much by the time I finally get around to finishing it (it has to wait its turn now, until HP is complete). It is melodramatic in its plot twistiness. And it is full of angst (because I'm working over similar territory as in Karl/Dom, and that was one long angst fest) and troubledness but also, because I'm a mooshball of the first order, dripping in fluff and moosh and luvvy-duvviness. (ETA: On second thoughts, DP has quite as much plot as this HP fic. It just perhaps seems less complex because the writing is more archaic and there is less psychology, more myth than real backstory. But I think my moving into a plotty AU was already a symptom of my chafing at the limitations of lotrips.)
I'm also mostly doing real-life stuff but because my LJ isn't really for rl there's not so much to report on that front. In fact, I need to go back to my rl academic writing this very instant. Good-bye!!
I am not unpleased about that. I can now rework my old obsessions and maybe make them work better. One thing that I am finding myself enjoying a lot about HP (and that was perhaps missing in Karl/Dom which gave events there a strangely unmotivated quality) is the scope for writing extensive backstory, especially about people's families. I remember
badgermonkey once compiling an absolutely hilarious post on slash men vs real men; it included a point about slash men having no families at all. This, I now realise, pertains to slash men in lotrips mainly (perhaps all rps, I don't know) but it certainly does not apply to slash men in HP. They have families all right, and it's very enjoyable and very satisfying weaving those families into the plot.I also like the variety. Lotrips has a cast of thousands, and that is what I loved about lotrips. But even with that cast of thousands, ultimately, it is a fandom about actors and about film people. But because HP has the delightful fanonic habit of ageing people up, it means that you can have literally any profession you like. It is wonderfully liberating! At first, I couldn't think: what are they all going to be when they grow up? But I've thought and thought and it's all come to me, and it's nice.
I also like the wizard/Muggle interaction world premise. Well, in canon there is precious little of it but there is enough for fanon to make something of. This gives HP a very nice quality of half-AU (wizards, magic) and half-reality (just like rps!). Endless potential -- for me, anyway.
I'm also an absurdly close-fisted writer and like to hide everything up my sleeve, I know, but my fic involves a triangle story (back to the good old days of the Billy/Dom/Orli saga, eh?) and it features Draco, Harry, Dudley and also every single one of these three people's relatives, alive and dead. So yes, it also features Narcissa Black, Lucius Malfoy, Vernon Dursley, Petunia Dursley née Evans, Lily Potter née Evans, James Potter, Nymphadora Tonks and various other Tonkses and Blacks. Also some minor characters with wonderful potential (how I love the rare ones!) plus some actual origchars (partly adapted in unscrupulous fashion from other works of published fiction by Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis and the films of Lindsay Anderson). Plus Hermione. Somehow Hermione is inevitable.
And I'm doing a 'you' pov which I've never done and which is not wholly loved, I know, but which I'm determined to make work because it feels right and fits in with what I believe about second-person pov (I've ranted about this extensively elsewhere, as you know). But it's also got a third-person and there I'm not quite happy yet with how I'm going to let this one play: quite detached or totally identified, and I'm also not yet sure how 'lyrical' to make this voice -- part of me wants a plethora of metaphors, another part wants deadpan observation. I feel quite uncertain about the third-person voice, still, actually. I know the third person person very well but the tone and voice and the vocab to adopt -- I feel so rusty! And I'm not sure whether the third factor in the triangle will even get a pov of his own -- we shall see. I'm also moving between past and present tense (again, echoes of the Billy/Dom/Orli!).
It feels strange beavering away on my own as if the days when I posted some form of fic on a weekly basis had never been. Because that's another thing HP did to my writing: it made it looong. This is not new; I keep remembering my A4-folder full of that first Karl/Dom draft but in HP, novel-length fics are almost de rigueur. It doesn't seem so weird and out-of-place to be writing something looong.
I find that my attitude to canon has survived more or less intact from lotrips, though. Heh. Irreverence, moving towards origchar, but still sticking with snippets and clues scattered about in the canon source material. And there is just as much marvellous scope in HP fanon for unfanoning as there was in lotrips, possibly even more! I was very intimidated by all the canon-mongers at first and found them quite tinhatty but now I am participating in ridiculous tinhattish musings myself while at the same time seeing the liberating and enabling power of a strong extensive fanon. A bigger fanon just means that there is so much more to work yourself up against! Because the canon is, alas, so very boring (I skimread one of the books yesterday -- what a chore!) but luckily, canon is entirely secondary in HP because there is simply so much more of fanon out there.
As to plot: this fic I'm writing now has the most plot I've ever, ever written. It has even more than Desert Prince although DP may end up with as much by the time I finally get around to finishing it (it has to wait its turn now, until HP is complete). It is melodramatic in its plot twistiness. And it is full of angst (because I'm working over similar territory as in Karl/Dom, and that was one long angst fest) and troubledness but also, because I'm a mooshball of the first order, dripping in fluff and moosh and luvvy-duvviness. (ETA: On second thoughts, DP has quite as much plot as this HP fic. It just perhaps seems less complex because the writing is more archaic and there is less psychology, more myth than real backstory. But I think my moving into a plotty AU was already a symptom of my chafing at the limitations of lotrips.)
I'm also mostly doing real-life stuff but because my LJ isn't really for rl there's not so much to report on that front. In fact, I need to go back to my rl academic writing this very instant. Good-bye!!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-12 02:31 pm (UTC)NO MUGLS
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-12 02:36 pm (UTC)Thanks for even being interested! Mostly I feel as if I'm mulling these things over in the private chamber of my brain only.
But honestly, what dolt pays money for a licence plate like that??
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-12 03:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-12 04:15 pm (UTC)But they weren't office clerks. They were still actors.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-12 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-12 05:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-12 06:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-12 09:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-12 10:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 11:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 11:49 am (UTC)Sounds scary to me. :) But then, you never were like the rest of us & I'm very grateful for that!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 01:02 pm (UTC)Um. Maybe I've been Demented but I find it weird that others do *not* fantasise about Dudley and Draco because they seem so very, very obvious to me. And scary? Not at all!
It's Harry who's the scary bastard.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 05:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 09:33 pm (UTC)And the HP fic began as Harry/Draco who seemed very, very obvious to me (and still do) but then... hm, it somehow, inevitably, veered off towards Dudley. Sort of *via* Harry. God, I can't remember; I think Dudley just sort of *popped up*. In very my first version, the triangle was Harry/Draco/*Ron*!
I find your Studley Dudley with his broken nose oddly
appealing!
Oh, I'm so glad you do! Maybe once this fic is finally finished, some people might actually read it...!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-14 07:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-14 08:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-12 10:44 pm (UTC)1. hello
2. interesting post
3. muggles/wizards - you asked me to say more. sadly don't have much to offer. i'm interested in jkr's attitude to muggles - v. patronising - obviously not as interesting as wizards - always a bit stupid, always having to have their memories ereased. examples of muggles in canon: dursleys - stupid, nasty. hermione's parents - well-meaning, not comfortable with wizard world. always being a bit scared of things. are these the only muggles characters in books? apart from random people who get killed and obliviated etc. i was thinking about writing about a future in which muggles & wizards forced to interact more.
4. i like long stories
5. have you had a look at
6. i wrote a paragraph of something today.
7. i bought that ann marie macdonald book from oxfam.
8. nice to see you about
9. goodnight.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 11:43 am (UTC)2. Thank you. It was interesting to me but thought it could maybe be bore-ramble to everyone else but then, you know, my LJ, blah blah. You know the train of thought...
3. I am intensely interested in inter-racial love Muggle/wizard! I shall pair Piers Polkiss and Ron Weasley next, haha. (omg, a bunny.... I start out writing these things in jest and I swear, as I type, the bunny blossoms). And yes, I had forgotten that Hermione's parents, too, are suspicious (the tooth thing, right?). There are a few fics that are Muggle-centric - a future of co-operation or Voldemort has taken everyone's magic away so they have to survive in the Muggle world or Draco is a spy and must not do magic or the evil deatheaters will find him so he must survive in the Muggle world. Painless-j has assembled a list of links; I can dig it up, if you like, but I haven't yet read any of the stories.
4. Oh good. Because this one is long.
5. No, not yet seen shoebox thingy. Am wary of wips and collabs. Also, not so very fascinated by marauders era.
6. Yay!
7. Which Ann-Marie Macdonald? Fall to your knees or The way the crow flies? They are both brilliant. I think.
8. Same here! Was thinking of you only last night before signing off.
9. Good morning!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-16 07:04 am (UTC)3a. Yes, I've read and enjoyed quite a few fics that have various wizards 'turning Muggle' as it were, but I'd love to see one where the wizarding world kind of came out of the closet and became just another ethnic minority. Which, it occurs to me, is exactly what I did to vampires in my vampire bookshop stories.
4. Excellent.
5.Fairy nough.
7. The way the crow flies. Saw it in charity shop and thought of you!
9. Good morning! (Different morning, but anyway.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-16 09:24 am (UTC)3a. Oh yes, vampire fics! (More?) I like this ethnic minority thing, I like it a lot. And make those wizards climb off their high and mighty 'we are superior to muggles' horse.
4. Will it ever bloody finish?
5. Especially fairy.
7. Have you started reading it??? *clamps hands over mouth to prevent spoilering*
9. Good morning, too!
10. Numercial commenting: the wave of the future.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-16 06:13 pm (UTC)3a. Re: wizards on high horses - too right! Re: vampires: I did start writing another one, but so far it hasn't gone anywhere. In it, vampire-Dom invents the blood-based milkshake in order to vary his diet. Having just looked at it, my considered opinion is that it is mostly crap. But then, I am currently hating everything I have ever written, so cannot really tell.
4. It will if you keep writing it.
7. I'm on page 31.
9. Good evening!
11. I hear JKR is rather annoyed that everyone seems to be attracted to her nasty-bad-evil characters, and is trying to make them more unlikeable. Ha!
12. Very sorry to hear about your pig. :(
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 03:22 pm (UTC)4. Oh! Best advice I've heard, evah! (The obvious rarely occurs to me. But it's true!)
9. Good afternoon!
11. JKR is *so* off the mark. The more unlikeable she makes her bad characters, the more people will adore them and make them three-dimensional. But *pets JKR* -- I mean where would we be if she herself already put that third dimension in? Go on, JKR, you do your piling on off the badness in your two dimensions.
12. I know. Pig situation = sad.