Concrit for perverse_idyll

[perverse_idyll]

I want to receive feedback by: Comment on my post here or email at perverseidyll1956@gmail.com

Here are the works I want feedback on: The Blood of Stars (approximate 10K word cut-off is in Chapter 2, the sentence "Merlin, he doesn't want to go in there.")

Impossible Without It (approximate 10K word cut-off is in Chapter 2, the sentence "Inquiries? About what?" Harry said, bewildered.)

I'll leave it up to the reader to decide how much of the proposed sections they decide to review.

ETA: If neither of those is a good fit for you, I'd be interested in concrit for Soft Touch, Warm, Elegy for a Goat, The Lost World, or In Infinite Remorse of Soul. My works on AO3

My works' fandoms and content notes are: Harry Potter fandom, Severus Snape/Harry Potter. No explicit content within the 10K excerpts themselves, although Blood of Stars gets sexually explicit further on and includes a noncon kiss between a 17-year-old and a 38-year-old. Blood of Stars is in Snape's 3rd-person POV, later Harry's 1st-person POV. Impossible Without It is Harry's 3rd-person POV. Blood of Stars is more heavily descriptive, Impossible Without It is an attempt to be more straightforward.

I have these questions for readers: Characterization and style are always important to me, so I'm happy to hear what readers think. Blood of Stars is the first time I've written a Snape POV so I suppose one question would be, how well do I pull it off? Also for Blood of Stars: is the opening too confusing? I don't outline, so I can sometimes use help with pacing. Questions of clarity or general reader investment also matter. Since both stories are still in the early stages, you won't be able to comment on the narrative arc, but any observations on the speed, continuity, and structure of what's there is welcome. Frankly, all feedback is welcome.

I would prefer gentle (5) or direct (1) feedback, or something in between: I'm fine with all levels as long as the feedback is offered with respect.

Comments are unscreened.

Comments

[perverse_idyll]

This is really excellent feedback. I haven't looked at this story in a very long time and probably won't until I'm actually ready to sit down for a serious read-through, but this is going to give me a standard to strive for. I've forgotten a lot of the phrases and imagery I used - except I know I leaned heavily on description because I always do - but I remember at the time I was in the mood to write something self-indulgent. On a prose level, that's bound to clog the fic with overwritten and repetitive moments. So I'll keep that in mind when I revisit it and start making notes to continue.

I had also deluded myself into thinking that writing and posting each installment as I finished would help spur me on. This works for some people, but it was fairly idiotic for me to believe I could keep it up. I'm too overloaded in real life and too slow a writer to stick to a regular posting schedule. I also don't have a beta, someone who might have pushed me to curb my excesses and would have noticed the descriptive dissonance, such as sopping vs. rigid. I burst out laughing at the vast and dramatic variety of things I've assigned to Snape's heart. It's a wonder it didn't just give out on him, poor bastard. I will definitely be weeding out a bunch of those, and I'll try to stay alert for similar abuses of defenseless words (and body parts).

I want Catesby and the house elf to both be witnesses to Snape's "resurrection," but I'll see if there's some way to differentiate their encounters and liven up the pacing. Snape's whole section leans heavily on interiority and very little on dialogue or action, and I remember worrying about readers getting bogged down in all those words and Snape's stew of depression and sense of persecution.

The Problem of Harry is an interesting one, and I can tell it's going to take work. I like your suggestion about getting Ginny out of the room, and I think that can be accomplished by having her slip out to rejoin her family in grieving over Fred and leaving Harry behind to sleep off the exhaustion of his fight with Voldemort. But there's a small (or maybe not so small) clot of issues surrounding the two of them. I'm not that invested in Ginny, but I don't want to be unfair to her character. Which doesn't change the fact that she's an obstacle, and once Harry is married to her, getting him to leave her for Snape requires either turning Harry into an asshole (which many readers will reject as OOC) or creating a marriage unhappy enough that it fractures under the pressure of Snape's reappearance in Harry's life. It's even harder once children are on the scene.

So in creating cracks in their relationship, I suspect I overdid Harry's dissatisfaction and self-blame to prevent the narrative from making it Ginny's fault. I want there to be a sense on both their parts that they rushed into marriage, and it's not living up to what they actually want out of life. In my view, Harry's not the sort to talk about it, but Ginny probably would. I wanted some of Harry's guilt to come from his immense need to have a family and his bewilderment when this doesn't actually lay his demons to rest. (One of my characterization notes here is that grown-up Harry isn't nearly as Teflon in his response to trauma as teenage Harry seems to be, but that doesn't mean he actually deals with it.)

So in a sense I made Harry the fall guy for the mess their relationship is in. On top of that, I wanted (God knows why) to try my hand at first-person POV, then started doubting myself because I kept running smack into fannish scorn or downright refusal to even consider reading first-person narratives. That took some of the wind out of my sails.

Okay, I hope you don't mind me nattering on at you, but I'm going to break off now and resume sometime later. It's four in the morning, and I'm not able to sleep due to a blasted heat wave that makes the whole concept of sleep feel futile. But I have to try, because I'll be back at work in about five hours.

Many, many thanks, and I'll pick up the thread again as soon as I have a free moment. Don't feel obliged to respond unless you feel like it, but discussing this here is helping me figure out a priority list of problems I need to fix.

(Oh shit. I'm hearing thunder outside. And the wind just came up out of nowhere, and now lightning is flickering. Welp, there goes any chance of sleep tonight. Please, no dry lightning strikes. I don't want to be evacuated due to wildfires again.)

[impilii]

I'm so glad that this was helpful! I totally understand the siren call of posting a WIP for accountability purposes--it’s so tempting to believe that that will be hugely motivating!!! And then…

Re: Catesby and the house-elf, I see that there's a strong reason to keep both. Something that occurred to me as potentially an interesting option after I posted would be seeing how it feels to move the house-elf interaction to after Snape and Harry’s confrontation. I think the two encounters plus all the wandering he does works against the urgency of finding Harry, but if you moved one of them it might help? The house elf interaction seems like it could be a good one because it also has a bit of a “goodbye to Hogwarts” feel about it, and you could ramp that up a little too to increase the differentiation.

I definitely have some discussion thoughts on Harry (and Harry and Ginny), but my upcoming week is quite busy so it may take me some time to come back and put them in coherent order. Wishing you luck with the weather!