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]

Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
Concerning Formulae

The Harry Potter books have a definite basic formula, no sense denying it. It goes like this:

1) Harry is at the Dursleys.
2) Harry is taken/driven/rescued from thence, and goes of to Hogwarts.
3) Harry is awesome at Quidditch, Magic is awesome, School is awesome, but -
4) Voldemort, or some Bad Guy (or Sirius) arrives to louse things up,
5) Harry wins, sometimes pyrrhic, but you can’t have everything,
6) He goes back to point A so we can start over next time.

The question, of course, is why this formula is hardly ever followed in fanfic.

Reason A is easy: Because we Fanficers like to be at least slightly original, and, well, not al of us are willing to write out a whole year. (Some of course, will take an entire year to write seventeen DAYS worth of action. ‘nuff said.) We’d much rather write either a slice or two of this formula, or go off on a complete tangent and have Harry Potter replace the Knight Rider, complete with a talking black techno-broom called Kitty. (Maybe not quite that far off.)

Reason B is more complicated and goes to the core of the question of why we write fanfic at all: because we aren’t satisfied with the books.

This doesn’t necessarily mean we aren’t satisfied with the quality of Rowling’s writing, (though not all of us are). Lack of satisfactions can arise from a number of factors, the most glaring being that we never want the story to be over. For fanficers, there is no such thing as an ending. What if she does kill Harry off in the end? We’ll still have dozens of people to write about, and even if we didn’t, there’s always AU.

Second cause for dissatisfaction would be the good old, “she didn’t write enough,” argument. I think, even if JK wrote an entire library full, there would still be some die hard fans out there begging for more detail on Gill Wimple, or a complex analysis of Wizarding shoe styles.

“She didn’t write enough,” has a vindictive grip on creative brains. It has us constantly questioning canon asking, why? who? what else? how? and coming up with endless ideas for various magical people and objects.

The final cause for dissatisfaction is what causes fics to be glaringly AU. It arises when we just plain don’t agree with what she DID write. This is why Sirius is still alive in some places, Harry actually grew up as the adopted child of the Tonks family, and Hermione runs off with Draco Malfoy.

Of course, not all of us would say that our desire to write stems from dissatisfaction; rampant devil bunnies, creativity and curiosity are also suspected and are currently being held for questioning. They do have the right to remain silent, but we all know they won’t.

To get back to the point, the reason that hardly any fanfic follows JK’s formula, is because, as much as many would protest, we don’t want to be exactly like JK. We want to elaborate on her work, not reproduce it.

And even if the general populace doesn’t agree with this explanation, they’ll have to admit that if we all did follow the formula, things would get pretty boring.

As a sort of postscript, here are a few popular fanfic formulas. Now, I’m not disparaging them, (ok, maybe I am a little bit) nor am I offering them as surefire means to fanfiction success. I’ve seen them done beautifully, and I’ve seen them done in ways that would make Snape sit in a corner and weep. I’m simply giving them as I have observed them as common patterns. Here goes:

ROMANCE:

1) The Main Character (Hereafter to be known as TMC) is apparently proficient at any musical instrument.
2) TMC only plays in secret but:
3) The Love Interest (Hereafter to be known as TLI) overhears and
4) They either culminate a beautiful friendship OR
5) Overcome a lifelong hate and
6) Live Happily Ever After

1) TMC is amazingly proficient at an obscure branch of magic.
2) TLI is injured, taken sick, or beaten to bloody pulp so that:
3) Only TMC’s newfound skill can save them, but:
4) TLI won’t admit it and suffers in silence until:
5) Dumbledore spills the beans and offers everybody lemon drops at which point
6) TMC solves the problem
7) They either culminate a beautiful friendship OR
8) Overcome a lifelong hate and
9) Live Happily Ever After.

1) TMC hates TLI with a passion.
2) And visa versa, but:
3) Dumbledore or a Random Meddler thinks they’d be perfect together, so they:
4) Lock them together in a room, where:
5) They overcome a lifelong hate and
6) Live happily ever after.

1) MC has a secret relationship with TLI but nobody can know about it because of
2) Voldemort and the war,
3) They’re hiding it so well, but,
4) A former friend or current enemy overhears and
5) Spills the beans, (either directly to Voldy or via Rita Skeeter) at which point,
6) TLI is captured by the Death Eaters and
7) Killed to break TMC’s heart, or,
8) Rescued so that they can
9) Live happily ever after.

DRAMA or ANGST (although neither terms make much sense…)

1) TMC is in horrible danger!
2) So are all their friends!
3) And even their puppy dog!
4) So, they discover the need for the McGuffin
5) But its behind horrible magical and mental obstacles
6) So they spend all their time trying to get it while
7) Minor Characters die like flies, until either
8) They get it and use it to win, while,
9) Major Enemy Characters die like flies, or,
10) Fail miserably while,
11) Major Protagonists die in a flood of guilty failure.

1) TMC is in horrible danger!
2) But he doesn’t know it, so –
3) SideKick runs about trying to warn him,
4) And either succeeds but jumps in front of,
5) The Killing Curse and dies, leaving
6) TMC to move on, scarred by guilt, OR,
7) Succeeds in time for them to counter it and
8) Die together like heroes and save the world, OR
9) Conquer like heroes and save the world, and then
10) Live Happily Ever After.

1) There is Evil Afoot and it wants to
2) Kill TMC! BUT first it needs to
3) Get TMC’s best friend on it’s side, who either
4) Betrays TMC and watches his fall, laughing malevolently while
5) TMC dies in tears, OR
6) Is an unwitting dupe who watches
7) TMC die while
8) Shedding tears of remorse himself.

1) Battles happen.
2) Everybody dies.
3) Except the TMC who is having all the flashbacks about:
4) The death of their best friends, some of which
5) He himself killed, either
6) For the greater good, or
7) Accidentally.
8) TMC either spends all his time
9) Visiting graves, or
10) In St. Mungoes, or
11) Somewhere far away, where nobody will ever find him again, so he can
12) Live Woefully Ever After.

(Sometimes, at this point, we start with Romance Scenario Number Two, with TMC suddenly turning into TLI.)

HUMOR

1) War? What war?
2) Somebody doing something unforgivably silly, pretending to be Muggle.
3) A Muggly doing something unforgivably silly confronted with Wizardy,
4) Any person in authority being successfully pranked,
5) Extra points if it’s with pink hair,
6) Much British slang is bandied about until
7) The Happy Ending.

1) Every other formula described yet,
2) Except that it’s funny.

[zymurgy]

Tuesday, March 28, 2006
In Defense of Repetition.

Repetition is a touchy thing. A lot of authors are deathly afraid of it – and rightly so. Too much of something as simple as a single word can completely ruin the flow of a passage. For instance, take a look at this example:


Harry went to Hogwarts that September. Harry was overjoyed that he was finally leaving the Dursleys once again! Hermione and Ron met Harry at the station and they all had a joyous time of it.

In that time, I’ll bet you were already heartily sick of the word Harry – and you were probably even looking askance at the lack of creativity showed by the indirect repetition of ‘joy.’

The same passage could be improved by shuffling things about and making use of either a brain or a thesaurus, thus


That summer, overjoyed to be leaving the Dursleys once again, Harry returned to Hogwarts. Hermione and Ron met him at the station, with much laughter, hollering, and sprouting of canary feathers.

Or, if that passage is too banal, try an example right out of Order of the Phoenix:


Dudley backed into the alley wall. Harry was pointing the wand directly at Dudley’s heart. Harry could feel fourteen years of hatred for Dudley pounding in his veins – what he wouldn’t give to strike now, to jinx Dudley so thoroughly that he’d have to crawl home […]

We have here four ‘Dudley’s and two ‘Harry’s in close succession. Not only that, the ‘Harry’s are both the first word in consecutive sentences. Now, I would never, ever try to rewrite anything JK … oh, wait, never mind. Yes I would.

My standard beta response to this would be: This passage is correct technically, but it’s a bit bumpy. Try something along the lines of:


Dudley backed into the alley wall, staring wide-eyed at the wand pointed directly at his heart. Harry stared back, fourteen years of hatred pounding in his veins– what he wouldn’t give to strike now, to jinx Dudley so thoroughly he’d have to crawl home…


There you have it! We’ve halved both the ‘Harry’s and the ‘Dudley’s in one fell swoop, and, in spite of adding additional action of staring, and the description of Dudley’s eyes, we’ve managed to make the passage shorter by two words altogether.

This is my preferred method of dealing with repetition – rearranging things so that content is clear, with fewer instances of the word, and perhaps a bit more description to even things out a bit.
Now, onward to, as the title promised, the defense of this hideous ogre.

Everything can be good in the right quantities, at the right time, in the right circumstances. Repetition has its place in writing. To start, here’s that passage from Phoenix again, edited for repetition according to another school of thought:


Dudley backed into the alley wall. Harry was pointing the wand directly at his cousin’s heart. The underage wizard could feel fourteen years of hatred for the boy the size of a whale pounding in his veins – what the raven-haired teen wouldn’t give to strike now, to jinx the overweight bully so thoroughly that he’d have to crawl home […]


Now, taking a look at that makes me want to cry. If I read a story about Harry, I expect his name mentioned often. Not all the time of course, but it’s downright nauseating to watch him start off as Harry and start morphing into, “the bespectacled boy,” “the green-eyed Wizard,” and other strange aliases.

While I certainly don’t condone needless repetition as stated earlier, I am very much opposed to forced substitution and beating around the bush. Some writers do this sort of thing all the time, so afraid of Rogue Repetition that they tip the scale dramatically in the other direction – instead of simply juggling about with somebody’s actual names (first and last depending on circumstance), pronouns and a healthy dash of descriptive phrases, they’ll go ahead and come up with very strange alternatives, such as “the Quidditch-Robe wearing Gryffindor.”

Here’s another genuine JK Rowling example, also from Order of the Phoenix:


Harry hesitated for a fraction of a second, then said, “Lines.”
“That’s not to bad, then, eh?” said Ron.
“Nope,” said Harry.
“Hey – I forgot – did she let you off for Friday?”
“No,” said Harry.
Ron groaned sympathetically.


This passage contains three Harry’s and two Ron’s, but that’s not the interesting bit. What we’re looking at is the infamous word ‘said.’ Here it is, four times, without any substitution at all – not even a perfectly legitimate ‘ask’ instead of it on the second line.

Writers, myself included, worry a lot about how often we use the word 'said'. Some would go ahead and play the replacement game, using ‘sighed’ ‘grumbled’ and the like, but see how JK makes that all unnecessary by simply shuffling them about.

We have the first one after the main sentence, and before the quote, the second sentence reverses that. The third repeats the second placement, but it’s a short sentence, which segues nicely into the fourth line which solves the problem by being a free standing quote, and we end with Harry saying no again.

Now, the two “Harry says no,” lines are not only repetitive, but glaringly so.

They’re there for a reason – JK is beating it into our heads that Umbridge is a mean old grouch, and that Harry’s not even telling Ron all of it. It’s repetition with a purpose, for emphasis.

Before you go and chew my head off for condoning this sort of writing horror, here’s a rather repetitive passage, this time about a ring:


Bassanio:
If you did know to whom I gave the ring,
If you did know for whom I gave the ring
And would conceive for what I gave the ring
And how unwillingly I left the ring,
When naught would be accepted but the ring,
You would abate the strength of your displeasure.

Portia:
If you had known the virtue of the ring,
Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,
Or your own honor to contain the ring,
You would not then have parted with the ring.

Now, hearing this on stage, some people tear their hair out and say, “Enough about that ring already!” Incidentally, so is character one who really doesn’t get what the big deal is.

Of course, the reason for this is because when things are extraordinarily important to you, you simply can’t shut up about them – how many times have you said “Harry Potter books,” lately? – and can you imagine that passage with, “to whom I gave the piece of jewelry,” and so on? Although, if this sort of conversation had gone on any longer without somebody going off in a huff, I would be all for cutting it down to size.

(On a side note, you can now tell your folks that you voluntarily read Shakespeare.)

The trick with Repetition is keeping to the golden mean. How do you avoid sounding like a broken record, but not sound like a particularly chatty thesaurus either? That, my friends, is why erasers really ought to be ten times as long as your pencil, and not the other way around. It takes constant fiddling, (and occasionally being yelled at by distraught beta-readers) a cool head, and a willingness to admit that writing, “the long-haired pillock,” instead of Bill is just plain silly.

[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.

[zymurgy]

Tuesday, April 11th, 2006
Concerning Characters and Death

According to Canon, quite a few people are dead – Quirrel for starters, and Diggory, Black and Dumbledore.

In Fanon it’s generally considered okay to revive these people (well, maybe not Quirrel…) for various reasons. What isn’t considered okay is to kill other people off.

Readers often get rather upset if you kill people. Except, in the grand tradition of entertainment, if they’re minor characters. Nobody cried when JK offed Emaline Vance, after all. And in a lot of “drama,” or “angst,” fanfics, several minor faceless characters will be AK-ed in the final battle alongside some supporting characters we don’t particularly like, say, Argus Filch, and of course biers and biers of bad-guys.

However, there’s a singular dislike of “death fic,” enough so that its now customary to put a warning about it in the summary, “Main Character Death”.

Now, nowhere in any other entertainment do they do this. Would you have read HBP if JK had added, “Warning: Language, Gore, and Character Death,” on the back jacket? Or, indeed, read any book or watched any movie if you’d known in advance that Character X would kick the bucket in the end?

I am against offing characters lightly or merely for shock value. As with everything, character death has its proper place. There’s nothing I dislike more than reading a fic where there’s a ‘final battle,’ and afterwards somebody just rattles off a list of who made it and who didn’t – seemingly at random:

“Harry, here’s your mourning robes – Neville, Hagrid, and your next-door neighbors are all dead! Voldemort’s SUCH a stinker…”

However, I am all for it if its done well, although I will still cry. Fanfic authors have written good stories and bad stories in every category, and that includes stories that involve the death of main characters. I didn’t cry when JK killed Dumbledore – I cried when a fanfic writer did.

The question isn’t so much whom you kill or why, but how well you do it. I’ve no objection to reading a well-written fic where Harry dies in the end. I do, however, object to a fic where Emaline Vance is randomly killed and nobody cares. (Oh, wait, that was HBP – nevermind… ) The general rule of thumb is:

If you don’t feel bad about killing them, don’t.

Or, in the case of the bad guys:

If they didn’t fight tooth and nail against you, don’t.

Cry havoc, and unleash the dogs of war! Go ahead and write fic about the last few weeks of James and Lilly’s lives. Feel free to write fic where Lupin is put down by the Ministry. Write that bit that’s been nagging you about how the Weasley’s would have had eight children if it weren’t for the first war.

Please remember, however, to keep it G!

[zymurgy]

Tuesday, April 18th 2006

Technobabble

“Quick – hand me two schleps of zickschnack syrup and a glordand!” yelled the Healer, checking the patient’s vitals.

“Stat!” shouted the nurse, scrambling for them.

A moment later, the Healer was flimoogling the glordand furiously, watching the vital numbers flash over the vlagosphere, while the nurse injected the Glottoshnizack victim with the syrup.

“We’re losing him! Start the Vivilocutor!”

I’m sure that, although half the words in this scene are made up, you had absolutely no trouble knowing what was going on – we’re somewhere in a hospital, somebody is very sick and two people are doing whatever they can to save him.

In the world of fanfiction, this sort of thing is a bit less obvious, but nonetheless fun. For instance, we could do something like this:

“I have,” said Snape, “made several revisions to the original Formula, sir. Replacing Asphodel with Grillshank for example, and reducing the amount of sminkgrass.”

or this:

“You don’t understand!” shouted Hermione. “According to the Braculus Runes, and the Megrologic Numbers in this document – you’re Magic level is higher than Merlin’s was!”

It doesn’t much matter to the plot or anything else just what herbs Snape tosses in or out of whatever it is he’s brewing. He could have simply said “changed the ingredients,” for all the good it did the plot. Hermione could have just said, “Arithmancy you can’t understand says that…” instead of babbling like this.

What you’re seeing here is what I call Technobabble. It’s merely decoration – a sort of flourish. It adds nothing to the plot or characters, it adds nothing to the understanding of the reader since its all made up, but it does add a dash of salt to the overall story.

In fantasy and science fiction it is vitally important to keep up the illusion of an otherworldly setting – it isn’t enough to have magic brooms and things that we can understand. There has to be something that so obvious to the other world, they’d never think twice to explain it to the rest of us.

For example, JK constantly shatters the illusion by having the Wizards be simultaneously so isolated from Muggle culture that they don’t know that Muggles wear trousers, and so conscious of their differences that they constantly refer to things as the wizard this, or the wizard that. It would never have occurred to Draco Malfoy to say, “the Wizard prison,” because, as far as he’s concerned, there isn’t any other prison. He’d simply say, “Azkaban? PRISON, Goyle, honestly, you’re so slow…”

Technobabble is a flashy way of avoiding a glitch like that. A character in a magical world thinks magic is normal. He doesn’t call his wand a magic wand. To him, it’s just a wand. He won’t bother to inform you that the quill he’s handing you is self-inking, because that’s obvious to him. And he definitely won’t bother to explain how anything works.

Of course, babble has to be handled with care. Too much of it is a sign of a poorly constructed plot – if it’s foundation is a maguffin, and its action is solely technoabble, your readers are constantly going to be wondering when something concrete is going to happen and be ultimately disappointed. Too little, and you destroy the illusion.

Technobabble belongs mostly in dialogue. Your characters are in the world and so they must talk that way. Pomfrey won’t say, “Skelegrow – the bone-restoring draught!” unless she’s branched out into advertising. She’d just call it Skelegrow.

As the writer, however, you’re free to explain things in description. In fact, you’re going to have to because otherwise your readers will only have the vaguest sense of what’s going on. Descriptions can be a mix of worlds, dialogue must remain in its own world.

To illustrate:

Albus Dumbledore fiddled with the large machine on his desk. “The nice thing about having a Nuisadestratus is that it depletes the amount of negative Magical Energy floating about.”

The Nuisadestratus is first described by the author as a “large machine.” Albus, of course, calls it by name – just as you would say “toaster,” and not, “boxey machine with slots in it.”

Now that we know what Technobabble is, we have the fun part: How to create some.

Some characters come with built-in paradigms for this sort of thing – Madam Pomfrey has all sorts of potions for healing. All a writer has to do is pick an illness or injury the potion is going to cure and name it. Snape has pertussis, and Pomfrey needs a potion for him.

What do we call it? To start out with, we take the word Pertussis, and try to wrestle it into a potion-sounding word. Pertuserum sounds fun! As does Sisper Salve.
Harry needs a spell to turn Voldemort’s blood into ice. Blood is a bit unwieldy, so we’ll use sanguine instead. (Here’s where a thesaurus can come in handy.) Ice is rather short and unwieldy, so we can use ‘glacial,’ instead, knit that with sanguine and add a nifty Latinesque ending to get the incantation, “sanguiglacere.” Quite a handy incantation, that!

We can modify this new-found word to get a noun, adjective, and anything else we might need: Sanguiclacerus Curse, those sanguiglacinery spells, he died sanguiglaciniously.

Of course, knowing actual Latin or another foreign language is also a great way to go about this – if “nosebleed curse,” sounds boring in English, try the exotic German “Nasenbluten Hex.”

Pig Latin is easier and makes for great fun. A blasting curse? Astblay Want to turn Snape’s hair pink? Inkpay! Want a beta? Etabay! (Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.)

You can play this sort of game with anything you need to name. Your characters live in a random set of cottages? Why not have it be Rancotshire?

It’s fun and its easy. As always, however, remember not to overdo it.

Good Luck.

[zymurgy]

Tuesday, April 25th, 2006

AUD

Dear Friends at Project Ferret,

I write to you from my bed in the Janus Thickey Ward in St. Mungo’s. They’ve taken me in for multiple personality and alternate universe disorder, and stuck me here next to Lockhart. Which is rather strange, since I remember being Lockhart a while back. So, if this column arrives late, blame the hospital staff that insists on monitoring my writing to look for symptoms.

I had never heard of alternate universe disorder (AUD), so I am going to warn you all to prevent you from contracting it. The disease itself isn’t all that bad, but the food here is, so please take care of yourselves and avoid getting stuck with it – if your sanity isn’t precious to you, perhaps the threat of an unending cycle of porridge and haggis will sway you.

Alternate Universe Disorder is frequently not diagnosed, as it closely mimics Pottermania coupled with FFF or Fan Fiction Fixation. It has several symptoms in common with these two disorders, including an obsession with all things Potter, frequent writing bouts, bouts of hysteric panic at being unable to write, lack of a personal life, and a disassociation from reality.

However, it can be found out by one key difference – those afflicted have a complete disregard for the actual happenings in the Potter books, despite their obsession with it. They have chaotic minds, skilled in DoubleThink. They are capable of simultaneously knowing that Sirius is dead and believing him to be alive, capable of acknowledging dozens of versions of characters in various ages, and even considering the possibility of Voldemort’s good heart.

Most forms of AUD are surprisingly benign, manifesting merely in strange flights of fancy and conversations incomprehensible to those not afflicted – a confusing state, to be sure, but harmless. However, it may turn malignant, in which case the patient becomes contagious, creating their own stories which in turn spread the contagion to others.

Be on your guard against AUD! Because, frankly, there’s only one bed left in this ward, and Snape wants it.

- Zymurgy

P.S. The Haggis really IS horrid. Try and smuggle in some pixie sticks and pez the next time you visit.

[zymurgy]

Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Chaos and Turmoil

In a world where chaos and turmoil rein it is comforting to hold on to a few small truths:
Children will never be as obedient to their parents, as their parents were to their own.
Everybody wants to write a book.
Journalists are always on time.

Even these, however, have their rare moments of being overturned. For instance, Tuesdays have remained unbearably straightforward for a while and Norbert has been curiously narrow-minded lately.

Rest assured that neither Cat nor I have been abducted by aliens, forced into an alternate dimension, or broken another deeply held belief by swearing off writing altogether. Rather, we were distracted by an extremely large, bright and highly reflective object in the fourth floor corridor. We apologize.

Without further ado, I bring you my main subject: chaos and turmoil.

What to do, when your characters are involved in a frantic broom chase, a battle, or a never-before-seen Magical procedure? Chances are, things are happening far faster than you can conceivably explain and describe them.

Chaos is best described as experienced by your character. Harry can’t (while fighting six Death Eaters upside down from his broomstick in the rain, blindfolded) tell who is exactly where when. All he can tell is that nasty spells are coming at them and he really needs a Portkey.

Of course, just because your character doesn’t know what’s going on, doesn’t mean that YOU don’t. You need to know exactly where everything is, every last nargle. If you don’t, you run the risk of one Death Eater managing to simultaneously shoot spells both at Harry (who’s fighting six Death Eaters upside down from his broomstick in the rain, blindfolded) and run to cast Imperio on Ginny down at the pitch. That the incidents happen two pages apart textwise isn’t an excuse; it makes it worse.

When writing a chaotic or complicated scene, it helps to map everything out first. For clarity's sake, map out exactly who is where, doing what, and when. Then piece out what in all that’s going on you’ll show. In the end, roughly half of what you mapped out will actually be in the story, but because of it, there won’t be any errors.

If you know what order your attackers are coming in on, you won’t run the risk of two of them apparently being in the same place. Rooms won’t grow extra doors for people to escape out of. Nobody's wand will inexplicably be back in their hand a page after it was expelliarmused without having to get it back first.

The other method, which involves much less work, is to describe the event through the eyes of a particular character, who doesn’t understand it any better. Something like this:

Harry ran, dodging spells and hexes. The entire pitch was a swirl of confusion. He could no longer tell who was who in the pouring rain. A spell hit him in the small of the back and the battle faded from view…

Unfortunately, you can only get away with this if you’re very vague about what actually happens. Once you have one bit of fighting in detail, including the whos the whats and the wheres, the rest has to follow suit. If Ron Weasley is shown hurtling from one side to push Harry out of the way of something, readers won’t like it if your focus never returns to him for the rest of the scene, and they have to wait for the scene in the hospital wing to explain that he escaped by rolling under the Quidditch stands.

As always in writing, balance is key. Too much description can make a quick scene drag, too little can be so confusing as to be unreadable.

Good Luck

[zymurgy]

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

The Game has drawn to a close, the winners are taking their bows, and all participants are beginning to look about for other diversions. Those of you who have been with Project Ferret for long will know just where to look – here, where there are plenty of current projects running, and plenty of room to start more.

Project Ferret has recently gone through a few rough patches. We endured a hacking, followed by a complete site upgrade (which did eliminate that problem, followed the decision of the two top administrators to move on.

However, Project Ferret has survived, and it has endured. It survives, and will continue to survive, not because of technical sophistication, or because of any one administrator, but because of you.

Yes, you. This site has been set up, built, maintained, and grown because of its members. Project Ferret could not survive without the brilliant population of Ferrets and Stoats that populate it.

This is because Project Ferret’s main focus has always been user contributions. It is the users who participate in discussions and write (so brilliantly!) for the stories here. The users have, indeed, started a great deal of these projects for themselves because Ferrets have always been bold with their creativity and willing to take initiative.

Project Ferret, we’ve long said, is the best collaborative Harry Potter fanfiction site. Indeed, searching indicates that it may possibly be the only site in the HP universe to focus on collaborative work.

Collaborative work is indicative of community. A community is a group of people who work together for a common goal, linked by common interests. We here at Project Ferret desire great and wonderful fanfiction, both to read and to write, intelligent interesting discussion, and underlying all of that, a place to interact with fellow fans in a friendly environment.

Collaborations only function with honorable people. People who respect rules, who are willing to discuss and to compromise, and who have a love of seeing things through. Project Ferret has such people, and prides itself on preserving honesty, friendliness, and harmony in all of its aspects.

In a community, members help one another. Project Ferret has always been, not only about writing or reading good fiction, but about being the sort of place which helps writers create, and readers find, such works.

I should like to take this opportunity to say that every one of those of us, who work behind the scenes to make Project Ferret function on its most basic level, do the work we do out of a desire to see the site and its members grow.

We want to see Ferrets creating and discussing their own projects, helping each other to be the best writers they can possibly be. We want to see more Stoats, and we want to see them scurrying about the boards, discussing their theories about canon and their favorite good reads in fanon.

We hope that you have enjoyed The Game and will continue to remain here to fulfill Project Ferret’s dream, and have the best of fun in the process.

[zymurgy]

Not a Tuesday, July 26th, 07
Reasons Why I Am In No Hurry To Read The Last Book

The Fandom has gone rather insane lately, what with all the last-book parties and frantic reading and finally the bereft wailing and flailing about who got offed who didn’t and the “Why? JK, WHY!?” shouts at the news of who got together with whom and so on and on.

I haven’t joined in this. I haven’t bought the book, dropped out of discussion threads a while ago (the serious ones, anyway) and decided to ignore the fury for a while.

My reasons for this are multiple. First the easy reasons.

1) I like to read at a rather slower, sedate pace than the current feeding frenzy type that seems to be going on. Or, rather, seems to have happened since just about everybody is finished reading yet. Since I wasn’t going to be done at the same time as everybody else, I thought, I might as well start when I wanted to and not when everybody else was.

2) Waiting until later dispenses with crushing lines and running about and “oh, sweet Merlin and Circe, there’s only six copies left and twelve people,” type of panic. And, hey, once somebody has read it that gets miffed enough about somebody dying or the wrong ship suddenly being cannon I can probably get the book at a fabulous discount. (Zym=Student.)

3) I have never been a particular fan of the canon anyway. Excepting for Book Three. And, even for that one I am more in love with the idea of what Book Three COULD HAVE BEEN if she’d been a bit more on the ball than what Book Three actually WAS. So sue me, I’m a bad fan. The only reason I read subsequent books was a mixture of a) wanting to know what I’d guessed right about, and b) needing to know new canon for the fanfic world. Currently, I’m finishing one great and epic (so my friends tell me) fanfic, which only follows ‘canon’ until OOTP. Therefore, I’d much rather finish said great and epic (or so they tell me) fanfic before I read the last one and get all bummed out about the fact that she has either (and most probably) gone and messed up every chance of said great and epic (…) fanfic being remotely canon, or b (less likely, but a ray of hope remains) gone ahead and done a good deal of what I have with the result that I look like a cheap hack or a prophet or something.

4) I am, I’m afraid, not a very good fan. In fact, I’m probably not even worthy of the title of ‘fan’ considering the fact that (as I’ve probably mentioned overmuch) that I consider JK’s work not something to be emulated or admired or worshiped, but rather as raw material. I’m therefore much more a fan of the fandom than I have ever been of her. And, frankly, I’m far more worried about what Sam or some of the people here at PF do with the characters, than what she does. I’ve also gotten so used to the flexible, fairy-chess mindset needed to survive as a fanfic lover that no one ending will ever be THE ending for me. If JK kills a character, so what? I can find a myriad fanfics where he’s still alive and possibly even better portrayed than JK ever managed. If JK doesn’t kill somebody I think ought to go? I can find just as many where he either offs it, or, perhaps better, never existed. GO FANFICTION!

5) I suppose I am also lazy.






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