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Working on a Slytherin!Harry story starting in first year

Discussion in 'Fanfic Discussion' started by Anarchy, Aug 16, 2017.

  1. Anarchy

    Anarchy Half-Blood Prince DLP Supporter

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    Are you trying to convince someone to not write something? Seems counterproductive. Luckily I stopped writing this weeks ago and am currently working on a different project which is going much better (Durmstrang!Harry, for those who are curious. Seemed smarter than instead of trying to work out this puzzle, to just go to a completely new setting and do pretty much the same thing except without the stations of canon being a limiting factor).

    Interesting point. I wonder if it's simply because JKR hadn't though of the Hallows during the early books, and needed to write her way out of that situation, otherwise you'd have Voldemort going after the Hallows years and years ago. It does feel like there would be a bit of mental gymnastics needed for Voldemort to not have heard of the myth of the Deathly Hallows at some point, and the in-book explanation doesn't seem nearly enough. I'm not too concerned over it though, as it was just an idea.
     
  2. Corvus Black

    Corvus Black Professor

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    I think the explanation is that if he ever did hear the legend of the Deathly Hallows, he dismissed it out of hand as a silly myth from what amounts to a book of children's fairy tales.

    What surprises me more though is that he didn't recognise the symbol on his family's ring as being the same symbol that Grindelwald used.
     
  3. Miner

    Miner Order Member

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    I've no investment in whether or not you write a story. But no I'm not trying to convince you to write or not.

    I'm just offering what I think is a fairly logical perspective on your problem, which apparently isn't required anyways.

    C'est la vie.
     
  4. TheTycat

    TheTycat Third Year

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    Voldemort only started to search for the Elder Wand because he needed a solution to his and Harry's brother wands, but that doesn't mean he didn't know about it before. The way Ollivander describes his torture makes it sound like Voldemort brought up the Elder Wand, which would require some knowledge of it. Until the Wand became relevant, Voldemort could've had a cursory knowledge of the Hallows and written them off as either a myth or not worthwhile. If you decide to revisit that idea, there are reasonable ways to explain increasing Voldemort's interest in the Hallows.
     
  5. Hush

    Hush Seventh Year

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    It's a shame that you stopped working on this, I was looking forward to eventually seeing some words. Out of curiosity, what was the puzzle that you were having trouble with? It just seemed that from your posts you'd nutted everything out and just hadn't come to a decision on which pathway to use. I personally liked the idea of the stone only prolonging Quirrell's compromised life and not doing anything for Voldemort individually. It could also give a path to Quirrell surviving Voldemort leaving his body and acquiring his own, giving a nifty little character in the later years we've never seen before. Now that's something I'd really like to read.

    I think it's more than a little amusing that you mentioned not wanting to completely throw away canon and yet your solution was to apparently chuck it all in the dumpster. I myself am less interested in a Durmstrang story merely because of the lack of touch stones. There's only Viktor but he's a few years older and it seems unlikely that he'd be spending much time with Harry between his course load and somehow becoming the world's greatest Seeker at seventeen. Not even touching on the militaristic style of Durmstrang. I'm also curious about what the premise for Harry at Durmstrang would be? Would he start out at Hogwarts and transferring? I'm just struggling to come up with a plausible reason to get him there let alone how his overarching story unfolds. I also feel like Karkaroff would leverage his position and knowledge if and when Voldemort returns, which puts Harry at a severe disadvantage. Like instant dead disadvantage.

    Anyway, best of luck with your writing. I hope you eventually return to Slytherin!Harry.
     
  6. Anarchy

    Anarchy Half-Blood Prince DLP Supporter

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    The puzzle was having the story be worth the words used to write it. Like, what was the goal? Is the goal to have Slytherin!Harry still find an arbitrary reason to go after the Philosopher's Stone? Sure, I can come up with a decently plausible situation in which that can happen. But, I realized that if I'm tinkering with all these different plot lines to still ultimately make sure Harry still hits all the checkpoints so the overarching plot of each year doesn't change. Like, what if the Philospher's Stone does actually bring Voldemort back? Some stuff still happens, some stuff doesn't. But, I figure that if I'm going to go through all that effort, I might as well just does something from scratch. Then there's the whole issue of getting around the fact that it's still a year 1 fic. In my fanfiction career, I must have read that damn Snape scene a thousand times. It's like reading Moody showing off the Unforgivables for the first time - every single 4th year fic does it.

    At some point I may come back to it. I won't pretend that I'm good at actually finishing stories. It's not like this was even my first attempt at writing a Slytherin!Harry, it was probably like my 6th or something. I do tend to bounce between stories A LOT. At some point I'll bounce back to the Euphoria sequel, bounce back to the generic Bellatrix timetravel story I was working on, or even bounce back to some random thing I've posted in the WBA and have completely forgot about. And truth be told, the Durmstrang!Harry story is something that I've already bounced away from once and came back. Like, I've outlined two other stories (one is a Wastelands kind of timetravel story except it takes place during Hogwarts years instead of after, and another was a pretty bad political type story which I quickly scrapped after writing the first chapter) since I started that, which means that I've had three stories since I've started this Slytherin!Harry. But right now, I do have the Durmstrang!Harry story open and that is what I'm currently writing.

    Oh, I guess I should mention that this Slytherin!Harry story totally had fem!Blaise in it.

    As for the Durmstrang stuff... the idea I have in my head is pretty interesting. I already have a discussion going on for it elsewhere, and while I do want to post a thread for it, I don't want to come off with it seeming like I'm spamming ideas at random (and sometimes I get in this mood where every post I make is like a million words long). The premise is simple, in that he simply got offers from more than just Hogwarts. I'm not really going to try and sell anyone on the idea, since the entire prologue is pretty much already written, and it's hard to sell the idea in a few dozen words when I already spent 10k words writing the scenes. I don't think Karkaroff is the real issue either, as he's a known traitor. Sure, an argument could be made that turning Harry over to Voldemort would be repayment, but to what end? He might get forgiven, but it wouldn't be forgotten. Especially not by the other Death Eaters he helped put in Azkaban. And, what about the parents of the other kids at Durmstrang. Their headmaster just turned over an underaged student to a dark lord. That will go over real well, I'm sure.

    I don't really want to derail this thread into a thread about that story, but I suppose I'll just mention the overarching background plot. The story is tentatively call "The Path to Victory" (though it's changed a few times and I'm thinking about "Path of Glory"). Anyways, the "Path" is a Durmstrang tradition going back hundreds of years. The Path is made up of Trials, and each year brings a new Trial (the trial is chosen semi-randomly, so there will never be a repeat trial within a 7 year period). Complete a Trial every year for seven years to complete the Path. Completing a single Trial is very difficult, and only a handful of students every year manage it. To actually complete the entire Path is a feat unto itself, one that is only accomplished a handful of time per century. I might do something predictable and have the most recent one be a professor at the school. Anyways, each trial is sort of like the triwizard tournament, except it's necessarily a direct competition, and it's not always about trying to learn enough spells to get passed a task. I don't have all the specifics down yet, and I don't even know what each trial is for each year yet, but each trial has a theme. For example, the first trial will be the Trial of Remembrance, and each individual task will have it's own subtheme. One will be about memory, one about history, things like that. The trial that corresponds with the triwizard tournament will be the Trial of Champions, so there will be an arbitrary reason for Harry to go to Hogwarts (though the current plan is for him to not actually be in the tournament). The Path isn't going to be the sole plot point by any means, but it is at least the background goal of every year. It's not going to be all about studying or anything like that, as I really want to work on world building and character building, and the Trials will allow me to explore some aspects I have ideas of but wouldn't normally be able to fit into a story.

    Perhaps another interesting thing is what will actually go on at Hogwarts when Harry isn't there. What happens to the Philospher's Stone? (I'd guess that Quirrell never figures out how to get the Stone out of the Mirror, and is taken out by Dumbledore eventually). What goes on in the Chamber of Secrets? (Can't be that hard to figure out that Slytherin's monster is a Basilisk - the symbol of his House is a snake after all) How delusional will people get to assume that Sirius thinks Harry is in Gryffindor when he tries to get into the Gryffindor tower? (quite delusional, probably). Those are some of the ideas that can be taken from the Slytherin!Harry stuff and possible applied here.
     
  7. arkkitehti

    arkkitehti High Inquisitor

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    I wouldn't do even that. Just go straight to action - the backstory of the first three years can be inferred to or revealed in passing when it's relevant to the story. Otherwise it's unnecessary clutter. You can pretty much tell the whole story of what Harry's place in Slytherin is and who are his friends during the welcoming feast of year four.

    Having a rushed but still three chapter long prologue is the best way to make people stop reading your story.

    edit: damn, I missed the last page completely. Well, the point still stand: no long prologues, action is better.
     
  8. Spiritfya

    Spiritfya Muggle

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    Just let the stone business pass him by. In canon the stone was never in danger because Voldemort couldn't get it out of the mirror. That does not need to change here.

    Verstuurd vanaf mijn GT-I9505 met Tapatalk
     
  9. ygrekks

    ygrekks Squib

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    Still working on it? How's it going?
     
  10. Halt

    Halt 1/3 of the Note Bros. Moderator

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    Isn't the solution to simply not follow the stations of canon? Hell, ignore canon entirely and come up with your own adventures, that's basically what you're doing by writing a Durmstrang story anyway. Saying that you aren't a good enough writing to come up with an entire seven year plot is quitter talk - it's a matter of imagination, not writing skill. Plenty of fanfic authors have good ideas but shitty execution, and some have great technical writing but not an ounce of creativity.

    Take it one step at a time. Start with changing year one, and see how it feels from there, or like others have said, summarize the bits that are canon rehash and then jump into the big changes. Above all, don't be scared.
     
  11. Anarchy

    Anarchy Half-Blood Prince DLP Supporter

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    fwiw, this thread can be locked since it's like 4 stories ago
     
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