Twisted Tuesdays, The Weekly Zym Options

[zymurgy]

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

The Importance of Being G.

J.K Rowling has long since abandoned the idea that her books are for kids. Ron Weasley has ceased merely saying things “he wouldn’t if his mother were there,” and gets his French into solid print. Draco is no longer content with a mere sneer, but gets some rather brutish action in this last book. And of course, Voldemort is no longer a vague and shadowy presence.

However, Project Ferret retains its policy of child-friendly stories and posts. We may not be by kids, but we are definitely proud of being for kids. Kids with a capital K.

Now, you might ask why this is so. “JK said that in her story! Why can’t I say it?”

Because, as much as Harry Potter may have spiraled into dark times and despair, we should hope that the kids who read it have not. The point of FanFiction, as I see it, is to expand, elaborate, and sometimes straight out change what was given to us by the author.

Canon, in other words, is seen as “raw material.” Even as it is worshiped, like a lump of gold, it simply isn’t pretty enough for a smith. We’ve got to play with it, twist it around, and make something new.

And boy does JK give us a wealth to work with! We have characters, a setting, a premise, and even a time period worked out for us in advance. Simply put, the only thing a Fanfic author has to do is mix and match, adding originals as he sees fit.

That being so, why choose to use what we have, which can be put to a million uses, to write a story inappropriate for children? JK has already done that; hundreds of Fanfic authors have already done that. Why not have a bit of fun in the other direction?

None of this, of course, is to say that we should present only the happiness of Harry’s world. Clean fic is not necessarily happy, simplistic, or easy. All of Half-Blood Prince, for instance, could have been rewritten, portraying the same events, but in a way more accessible to the young – it would still be HBP, just from a different angle.

There is a place for serious fic here, for sad fic, and even for certain situations that aren’t to be avoided as canon stands. However, I don’t think there’s a place for so-called “adult” fic.

Why, after all, do we write and read fanfiction? Simply because we don’t want the story to be over – we don’t accept ‘that’s all she wrote,’ for an answer. As much as we understand that Sirius flew backwards through a veil and died, we still want to know more, to see more, to have another view.

And why have that view be one where he swears like a sailor, drowns his sorrows in fire whiskey, or commits a bloody and brutal murder of Peter Pettigrew?

Of all the angles available, the least chosen seems to be that of the first floor window we started from. And it simply isn’t fair to those of us (loosely termed ‘kids,’) who are still there, to have all the fic over our heads and beyond our reach. The stories, dangled just out of our reach, with teasing summaries or teasers, make us understandably upset.

Why couldn’t that author write the really cool story, (where Ron gets kidnapped by Death Eaters and has to escape on his own, without magic, but turns out he’s really Remus in Pollyjuice, while Harry believes he’s actually Draco because he misunderstood something he overheard in a dark corridor while he was hiding from Filch, and there’s a Basilisk who wears sunglasses so that it won’t petrify people, and Neville turns out to be a member of Arborists Anonymous… ) so that we could read it? Honestly!

Finally, the importance of being K is a question of numbers. It is better to have something that everybody can read, rather than something a few, however few they may be, cannot.





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[zymurgy]

April 4th 2006 (Roughly)

The Constitution of a Character’s Character

Due to a Weasley Twins April First prank, which involved an attacking purple feather boa and somehow resulted in the complete rearrangement of my clocks and calendar, I have been living on Chinese time and thought it was the year of the Rooster for the last several days. Retribution, once I got over the jet lag and managed to extricate myself from the furious clutches of the boa, was as swift as possible.

Unfortunately, this prank resulted in the horrific happening that Twisted Tuesdays was late for the first time ever. Fortunately, however, nobody noticed – except your Chizpurfle, who was wondering why his cage hadn’t been lined lately.

Now, on to our main theme: [I] What makes Fred and George, Fred and George?[I]

One of the biggest problems fanfic writers face is that of keeping everybody in character while still managing to write a unique story, but not dogging canon so closely that they become “in caricature,” instead.

For instance –Hermione’s main character traits would be that she’s asocial, studious, and pedantic. So we expect those to be her traits when he come across her in fanfic, too.

As with repetition, this process is all about finding the golden mean.

We don’t want to read about a Hermione who has been reduced to only these traits. You’ve all seen this happen – a Hermione who is always in the library, with sixteen extra projects, and knows everything about any subject possible, simply because “that’s what Hermione does.”

On the other hand, we don’t want to read about Hermione who’s tremendously popular, attractive, flirtatious, or who doesn’t know beans about Hogwarts.

In short fiction, the issue isn’t quite as touchy – the few main traits serve as a touching block just to establish that she is who you say she is, and depending on setting you show those that help your plot.

However, in longer fiction, for those of us that write four hundred pages without having finished yet, it is a make or break point for many readers.

For example, say you’re reading the fifth chapter in a row about Hermione, and for the fifth chapter in a row, she’s described as having ‘her nose in a book,’ and is always, always, always, always, always, always, always acting note-perfect Hermione no matter what happens. Did Harry fall off a broom? She quotes, “Hogwarts, A History.” Did Voldemort attack? She quotes, “Hogwarts, A History.” Did she fall down the stairs and break a leg? You guessed it – she quotes again. And I’ll bet her fall was worsened by the sixty pound bag of books she was lugging. My guess is, that after all this time, you’re wondering who this android is and what they’ve done with Miss Granger.

A Character is, in the end, an illusion – the illusion of a person. Characters do have these traits, and like people, they can be annoying and constant traits. However, like people, they are complicated. Every joker has his serious side; every serious person occasionally jokes. Those of sunny disposition will, shocking as it may be, experience things that cause them to go down into the dumps, and grouchy grumps like Snape can smile.

The bottom line is that while Hermione will be “The Hermione,” she is also simply a person. Although she’s most often set on “serious,” she is just as capable of being happy, upset, embarrassed or angry.

Instead of thinking of her characteristics from canon as set in stone, think of them rather as a foundation upon which to build. You start out with Canon Hermione. Now, put her into the situation at hand. She’s still Hermione, but now she’s Hermione as she’d act in the middle of a food fight in the great hall.

Does she quote statistics on when the last time was that this happened? Probably not. She’d probably storm off somewhere, with bits of cream pie in her hair, fuming about immaturity. Or, if she’d had a particularly bad day, she might lob one right back at somebody. And on an especially bad day, she might just clutch her head and moan, “I don’t like this, I REALY don’t like this…”

Characters, you see, are flexible. Who they are is fairly set, but how they act depends on where they are.

There are three things you must know about your character:

Where they just came from.
Where they are now.
Where they are going. (or at least, where they THINK they are going. Plots can be tricky like that.)

Coming and going, in this case, refers more to emotional state than to physical location.

An example.

Severus Snape just came from breakfast and is peeved because his owl threw the Daily Prophet into his tea, and:

He’s in class now, and he’s his usual horrible self because he’s got the Hufflepuff first years, but he’s preoccupied because:

He’s going to be with the Ravenclaws next and he’s planning how to explain the Caldraic Oath to them.

So, for this example, writing the scene of the present time, Snape is comprised of one part annoyance, one part git, and two fingers of preoccupation.

This little formula, and attention to your framing story and how it connects to canon, can save a lot of time and frustration, and prevent your Harry from suddenly being First Year Harry instead of Mellowed Mature Older Harry.

In the end, of course, proper character writing depends on ten percent intuition, ten percent talent, and eighty percent sweat.

Good Luck.