Notes on stories...

[icarus]

While I work on Percyness: the Percy Weasley Archive (for some reason stories won't upload yet), I thought I'd write the notes on my Harry Potter stories. I've always enjoyed resonant8's story notes and the context they provide, even when it's very brief.

So without much ado: Primer To The Dark Arts.

I was sick as a dog, recently let go from my big corporate job, stinging from a political backlash over a Buddhist mess, and fresh from a bruising experience in a Lord of the Rings RPG.

Darn it, I needed something to cheer me up.

I devoured all the good LotR slash I could find, but there aren't many who can successfully imitate Tolkien's voice, the way he wafted from third person omniscient to third person limited, there and back again, not to mention his rich lyrical descriptions and almost prosaic Victorian values. keelywolfe and billthepony hadn't updated in a while... but keelywolfe did write Harry Potter fanfiction.

Well, kiddie porn (shh! That's how I thought of it back then) wasn't my cup of tea, but a quick glance hooked me on Harry/Ron (the HP world's Frodo/Sam). So I tried ff.net for more.

Ai, yi, yi. Dreadful characterisation, feminized Harry, unbelievable positions (this was back when ff.net allowed NC-17), and most of all a kind of dry core that wasn't Harry Potter. Where was the humour? The magic? I tried Diagon Alley (the old Diagon Alley) and found I loved Snape. And for some reason, the Snape fic preserved the humour, used magic, had intricate plots. I discovered Telanu, who I felt really captured JKR's world and voice. I discovered Cybele and Minx and Sushi, who understood Snape.

But I still wanted Harry/Ron. So I rolled up my sleeves and wrote three stories: the Harry/Ron An Irresistible Photo, The Book Of Eros, and the Harry/Snape Afterglow (Begins: Harry woke in a larger bed than his own four-poster, tangled in the slippery black duvet. He was wearing nothing more than the sheets, which were a thin, decadent silk. He fumbled for his glasses. With a glance around the room, his memory of the night before came back into focus, as well as that of last few days.) On a whim I thought... how could the Book of Eros and Afterglow be the same story? What would it take to get from here to there?

So I slapped together an outline, found an underlying theme (why won't Dumbledore let Snape teach Defense Against The Dark Arts?), and started writing Primer to the Dark Arts, totally caught up in its spell. I couldn't stop writing. It was all I did for six weeks, posting a chapter a day on ff.net (this is the original 27-chapter version that had to be consolidated to 14 chapters for Fiction Alley). I figured it would never be noticed and wrote it for myself, lifting my mood out of its slough (you'll note the humour, magic, awkward boyish sex: it's everything I wanted to read at the time). I was determined to finish it quickly though, because I'd been burned by a lot of tragically unfinished WiPs.

I had no clue anyone was reading.

Then I posted the cliffhanger in chapter 10 for the FA version. I really was sort of stuck, musing over how the rift between them could be fixed. My email filled with complaints! "Noooo! You can't leave it there!" Oh. Whoops. I quickly wrote the next chapter, guiltily.

But somehow in the process the story changed and became a place where I worked out some deep spiritual questions about the nature of right and wrong.

On the surface it sounds so simple, but the reality is that you can do the right thing and still do damage. You can do nothing, and still be responsible for damage by your inaction. You can mean well, but good intentions aside, your actual actions (ill-advised or not) still count. You can do what's most pragmatic and care only about results, but actual results get away from you and there are all these unintended consequences. So Harry's me, caught between a rock and a hard place. Snape is the pragmatic voice. Dumbledore is the ethical voice.

I don't think I came up with any answers, but I do believe that I arrived at a good balance that wasn't really a compromise.

I felt that Harry after GoF (I wrote Primer before OotP) was too dependent on Dumbledore, too blind, and needed to grow up a little. The pressure from Snape is what he needed to find his own ethical center. Meanwhile, the pressure from the relationship with Harry was what Ron needed to grow up a bit as well, though he's not one to change as suddenly as Harry.

I failed in my attempt to write a Harry/Ron novel, but fortunately mad_martha filled that void. In the meantime, although I see a lot to change in this story (which was going to be my one and only contribution to the Harry Potter fanfic world, ha-ha), every time I pick it up to edit and revise, I can't stop reading.

Comments

[tjstein.livejournal.com]

Primer to the Dark Arts was one of the very first HP stories that I'd read online. I remember reading it on ff.net before it was finished and was taken in by it immediately. Unfortunately I forgot to bookmark it and didn't discover it again until well after it had been posted in its entirety on FA. I've always thought it to be one of the most plausible Harry/Snape and Harry/Ron stories that I've seen.

If you ever write Snape Manor...would you take OotP and/o HBP into account in your characterizations?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I remember your comments. It was such a surprise to receive reviews, it startled me when my email would ping.

If you ever write Snape Manor...would you take OotP and/o HBP into account in your characterizations?

It depends. If Harry in HBP veers more towards my characterisation at the end of Primer then that would be a happy coincidence (that would make life much easier). But I think I need to have continuity between the stories, especially as they happen only a few months apart. Which means I'll have to re-read Primer again, won't I?

That's the nice thing about writing what you want to read. There's always a ready supply (though you do kinda know the ending).

Icarus ;)