>Subject: [FFML] [fanfic][Harry Potter][spoilerish] New Student (draft)
Y'know, I rushed to read the last book only so I couldn't be spoiled. It
was so easy to spoil Book 6: "Snape kills Dumbledore". I was afraid of
something similar for Book 7. But what, really, is there to spoil?
"Everything's fine, all ends well", while still a bit of a spoiler, doesn't
quite carry the same impact as "Snape kills Dumbledore".
Anyway, moving on:
>Dudley Dursley was a rational man.
<spews Diet Coke all over his monitor>
Er, really? I guess from *his* perspective he's rational, so it's okay.
Still, hard to swallow that first line. =)
>This might necessitate different frames of reference, of course.
This seems a little... brainy for Dudley. I can't ever imagine him using
"necessitate" in an internal monologue.
"He might have to look at thinks a bit differently, that's all" or something
like that.
>Alas, this was not to be.
Blah, blah, blah. You're falling into what I call the "Sandborn Effect":
starting your fic with a bunch of expository stuff. Nothing turns off
readers like huge blocks of uninteresting text to begin a story. (Mind you,
Greg got a lot better at this and in fact went back to correct this in some
of his earlier fics.)
Really, a lot of the introductory text is: a) redundant, saying the same
thing over and over again; b) unnecessary, as anyone who's read through Book
7 already knows all that about Dudley.
As a suggestion, just leave this bit out altogether and plunge right into
the story. If you need to do anything expository, do it later, in the midst
of natural conversation between him and Harry.
>Harry stared at the papers he'd been given. After a few moments, he
>looked up. "I haven't spoken to him in twenty years, you know."
Ooh, you meant *really* post-Book 7, after the epilog and all.
>Dudley took the letter and examined it. It was addressed to Rose
>Dursley, in green ink, and the return address was....
Heh. Well, an interesting premise. But nothing more; we have no idea which
direction you're taking this.
Will Rose be excited or scared? In my opinion, it would be more interesting
to see a Rose Dudley at Hogwart's who doesn't want to be there, hates magic,
and is repelled rather than intrigued to discover that her Uncle Harry is
extremely famous.
To me, there's a lot of story potential there, of someone who's sort of the
anti-Harry, who was perfectly happy in the Muggle world and is not at all
happy to discover she has magical powers.
Then you have Dudley; how will he respond? His childhood house was torn
asunder on several occasions, and his life put in serious jeopardy because
of his cousin. He's got to be less than thrilled that it's starting all
over again. At the same time, he saw what happened to his parents when they
tried to stand in the path of fate, and he may just barely be bright enough
to not repeat their mistakes.
Anyway, like I said, lots of potential, but you haven't scratched the
surface, just set the stage. I'm very interested to see where you take
this; please do continue. I'm looking forward to more.
-Richard
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