Christ please at least put the verb at the end.

I don't know where the word know is.

'Their' is not singular.

This story makes little sense. The killing curse is unblockable; in canon it is not possible to keep oneself alive with anything apart from magic Voldemort has demonstrated he is not capable of performing. In any event, there are a thousand and one other lethal spells and if Harry's mysterious mentor can teach him a curse with that many Latin words he can teach him something that does not require that great of a sacrifice. Perhaps it still does not require that great of a sacrifice, or perhaps that specific sacrifice is impossible to make and the whole premise is false from the start, which is how he's going to fall in love with Luna. I suppose I could criticize the fact that you didn't go anywhere with that, but in truth you didn't go anywhere with anything, so it was not for want of priority. Consequently, the story approaches romance without really getting there, which is the main sign apart from the unfulfilled foreshadowing that it is simply not finished. Reviewing it as if it were finished, I would give it a 3/5, though that would be the rounded up score. It did not get a lower score for the sole reason that it approaches romance, and therefore at least addresses the prompt.

 

Fuck.

I’m actually mad at you, because I think you’ve got a great hook here. Harry give’s up Love and Luna’s here to help him find it. Is it gonna be an adventure, a slowburn romance, a quacky fic? But, it just ends there. I was scrolling, eager to see more. But, there isn’t anymore, this isn’t a story. And that spell. Dude.

 

I think this entry is shorter than some of its reviews will be.

Some bad Latin, is what. This is a mistake many make, but Latin is intrinsically different from English in that it's subject-object-verb, not subject-verb-object. What that means is you have to construct sentences like "I the thing did", rather than "I did the thing." (This is a rule that cna be disregarded for poetic effect, but that doesn't seem to apply here.)

Anyway, onto the story itself. It's weird how you explain some parts entirely too much, like Harry "not being able to love anymore", but some you don't. Hermione says "mentor" in italics, so clearly some shit must've gone down there, but that's never gone into again.

It also feels weird to hear Hermione of all people say something like "Why not cast the killing curse?" Golly, why would Harry not cast the curse that killed his parents and left him an unloved orphan?

All of that aside, though, like all the others said: where is the actual story, the romance? You set up a hook and then it's never resolved. It feels incomplete. I can't really rate this more than 2/5.

 

What struck me the most about this entry is that it is a story full of missed opportunities. Its central theme, if there even is such a thing, appears to be love and the loss of it for the greater good (not even remotely romance, but that has been pointed out enough), and yet the story avoids to address any discussion of the matter at every turn. In fact, it reads more like the incomplete set-up for a story idea that ran out of steam before the first chapter was completed.

The premise is actually not that bad – Harry, who is the living, breathing testament to the power of love in canon, trades his greatest asset and now looks at the prospect of having to spend the rest of his life with people he doesn’t love (anymore), before one of his friends takes it upon herself to help him. The means by which this is accomplished, though, do not work at all.

The first paragraph is not bad, passive, but overall a useful introduction to the scene we have all seen playing out before our mind’s eye in so many different ways before, the triumph of love over pure evil. However, all of the potential went straight out of the window with the Latin phrase which, in addition to being contrived, cringy and a throwback to stories of mostly lesser quality from years past, also suffers from incorrect sentence structure.

The second part of the story introduces the reader in to the problem with Harry‘s apparently successful spell. Here, the order of events (or the omission of them) relies on the reader‘s knowledge that Voldemort will be defeated, which is a) lazy writing, and b) leaves a tremendous opportunity on the table. We never get to see the effects of Harry‘s spell – does Voldemort simply keel over, does he spontaneously combust? We don‘t know. It would have made for interesting visuals, if nothing else, and could have clued the perceptive reader in regarding the cost of Voldemort‘s defeat. Instead, the story takes the reader by the hand and force-feeds them what they apparently need to know. Subtlety, your stronghold this is not. The only mystery we get is that of Harry‘s mentor, and that‘s never mentioned again.

Finally, we see Luna and Harry have a private convertsation. The first part of their encounter – Luna‘s admission that he doesn‘t feel ready to face her father – is a nice touch, serving as a bit of characterisation, but ultimately this is nothing more than padding the word count. We don‘t know whether Harry‘s awkward reply ("You‘ve had stranger thoughts, I‘m sure") is sacrifice-induced or just an attempt at a laugh and moving the conversation along. Xenophilius betrayed his daughter‘s friends out of desperation and love for her, launching a frantic gamble to get her back. Has his love for his daughter cost him his daughter’s love ,at least temporarily? Does Harry still understand the concept of love? This is, after all, the closest we get to some sort of avenue towards discussion on the matter. Has Harry’s opinion of Xenophilius shifted in the wake of his sacrifice?

Instead, the story rushes without a second glance towards a half-baked resolution that leaves more questions than it answers. I guess it‘s meant to be both a hopeful note to end on and s cliffhanger, but ultimately, it‘s just confusing.

All in all, this story is just not interesting. It has a somewhat unique hook that is utterly wasted, with only an echo of a plot to hold the various fragments of scenes together, which results in a reading experience that could generously be described as disappointing.

 

What is this? This reads like it was written in ten minutes.

Your beginning doesn't carry any weight, even though we later learn it should. The spell Harry uses is almost meme-worthy. And that - was the entire mentionable plot of this fic. In less than a hundred words.

Then, in the discussion with Hermione (which is as infodump-y as discussions get) we know that Harry sacrificed his "love". Which is a clever idea, especially considering the "power he knows not". But what does that mean for him? Does he know? Does anyone know? Why didn't you tell us that *before* he cast the curse on Voldemort? How about, say, a King's Cross scene with Dumbledore where he warns him not to carry on with his plan, not to give up what seperates him from Voldemort? Why is all of this without context? Why don't we get to witness any reaction from his friends?

Then, the Luna scene, which is basically "oh, let's go look for it, even though you don't even feel like there's a change."
First of all, *why* is there no change? This sacrifice should mean something, it should at least be influencing him. Why are you making it seem like it doesn't make a difference?
Then, how do they want to "buy his love back"?

Or, and that question goes for this whole entry: What's the point? This is lifeless, emotionless, without conflict and it reads like you stopped writing before it could even begin.

 

This is very slight.

It's capably written. There's a couple of odd words that aren't right but overall speech sounds human, tags and spelling are fine. Speech marks correct and all that.

I've read the other reviews for this entry. I doubt that my opinion is particularly useful, and we've noted that it is short.

Instead of focusing on the negatives, therefore, I thought we might discuss what could you do to make this better, not specifically but generally. In terms of underlying principles.

When is a beginning not a beginning?

When it's a whole story is the simple answer.

This fic appears to be that second category of competition entry. I believe it may be the prelude to a longer story, which is perfectly fine and valid. However, you're likely competing against stories that have attempted to create a full narrative and resolution within their entries and lack of a resolution is not a selling point when you're being judged.

The thing is, whether it's a complete short story or the first section of something longer it should be a complete story in itself. Halt's probably covered this somewhere in his writing thread, and I'll link a video here and here that discuss the idea below more completely.

Your first chapter in any longer story should be an example of the story to follow and within itself contain a discrete beginning, middle and end. It should begin with a set-up, have something the main character wants to get, the conflict which stops him from obtaining it, a crisis and then either resolution or a new goal. Often, this isn't going to be something that's ultimately important to the main plot, except in a character building way, but it will be representative of issues being faced throughout the main plot that is yet to come, and therefore what you'll be getting in this book. In one of the videos above, the example given is Percy Jackson.

In the first book, he goes on a field trip, he fights a monster, he defeats it with his water powers, he meets a mythical figure who explains what happened.

In your entry here, there isn't a complete story within a story, even if this is only the opening. You invested very little in set-up, showing only the key difference in a canon scene, but not all the important events that must have occurred to get there. You show what the problem is, but the conflict in obtaining that want and the consequences of that conflict and the alteration of Harry's goal or need isn't shown. Which brings me to my next point.

When is a story not a story?

In the words of Ultron, in Avenger's 2, it's when 'you want to write a meaningful protagonist, but you don't want him to change'.

The most important truth in any story is that character = story. That's true for everything. Now I'm not saying every principal character needs a character arc or a tragic history. Marty Mcfly and Paddington Bear don't and they're great. But there does need to be character change in someone.

Everything else is 'your' particular fancy. Most of us here aren't romance nuts, we like big wands and big spells a lot of the time. Conversely, there are a lot of women that vastly prefer the archetypal trashy romance story beats over anything resembling copy-editing or realistic dialogue.

The central unifying principle, therefore, is that the events of the story serve to change someone who is experiencing them from them at the start to them at the end.

If you can figure out who they want to be, then who they need to be, you can shape the events of your story to get them there. You can create someone with motivations who has a problem that prevents them from getting there easily. If you can create a character arc that is meaningful and resonant, you can use any story act structure, and graft on whatever plot you want, because ultimately they're the same thing. And if you've done character right, then you've done story right.

In fanfiction, so many stories are bland because people focus on the action scenes and the powers, but if the character has no risk and no reward, no stakes, there is no impact on the character or others, how can we care? How can we like them, or relate to them, or be fascinated by them?

Another way to express this, from a different perspective is that story = theme. And that theme is the moral or psychological question that drives the story, the question that the character themselves struggles with. This video on true detective and seven really sums it up.

If your story question is 'can they catch the killer?', then your thematic question might be 'Does fighting evil create more evil in the world?' and you can answer yes, no and in some ways with your various protagonist, antagonist and supporting characters. This might be a helpful way to think about your story, because if your main question was, can Harry find love, you may be better able to realise your plot events, by understanding what thematic question you want to ask about love itself. If it is left ill-defined then that will translate into your prose, as it has in this story.

Ultimately, this sounds hard, and it's harder than coming up with events because it's a little more abstract. But if you can figure out what the point of your story is you can then come up with events that show why that point is the conclusion to your question.

---

I'm sure this would've been better if you hadn't rushed. I'm reluctant to be more specific about your prose and specific skills, because I don't think you'd make them again if you plotted out what you were trying to achieve more thoroughly. Your writing may have flaws or not, but there's not much way to know when your entry is this short and this nebulous. The most fundamental advice would be slow down, and be more thoughtful. I'm sure if you weren't being speedy you wouldn't have used that incantation, you would've written much more than you did, and you would've written character dialogue that wasn't entirely expository.

If you remember that your characters should be theme and your themes should be characters, then your plot will kinda' naturally occur.

Best of luck. Hope there's something of use in here for you.

 

There's not really an awful lot to say about this, because as everyone else has said, there's not a lot of it. In and of itself, that's not necessarily a bad thing; I've read shipping fics in the past of similar length which have at least managed to hit the 'pleasure button', so to speak, through general cuteness, a couple of nice lines, decent writing, what have you. This...doesn't quite land on any of those, although I didn't find it badly written particularly.

The bad has been extensively covered, so I'll simply say two things more: first, no matter how short it is, you did at least submit something, which is more than many, including myself, managed, so points for some effort, at least. Second, whatever I might say about the execution, this actually has the best story hook of the lot, for my money. I'd be very interested in reading a full version of this, with a bit of polishing up to go with it. Hopefully that's still a possibility?

 

I feel akin to a tuna struggling to jump out of a boat here. There's a lot to unpack here, but I don't want to really hit you over the head again and again. What is clear is that there is a gem, a speck of an idea here that should be the start of something, but there are many things that should've been changed entirely. A first draft:

I hope that helps.

 

What? That's it?

Honestly I could probably end the review there, because there's the crux of it. Exposition scene could've been done less blatantly, and spell name is silly, but I'll give credit that the end had a hook. But it wasn't actually a hook, it was an ending, and so this isn't a story but rather just a cocktease.

By all means, write something short. It can easily hit, especially with this genre. But there's just... there's just nothing here but a neat concept. It's not even a concept explored, just one presented, and that sucks. If you're short on time, write something that fits the short length you can get out in that time. We've had plenty of such entries before and plenty were good. Yeah, easier said than done, but at least you'd submit something that feels complete, meanwhile this is like maybe 20% of an entry.

Overall rather disappointing.

 

I was on board with this until it ended where the second scene of many should have been. I'm finding it hard to say something substantial about this, because there's barely any substance, but let's look at what is there.

On the technical side, I find no faults, so well done there, although zero mistakes is kind of the minimum required with a piece this short. Luna's line about buying back the love Harry lost/sold was something I imagine Luna saying... but then it's over.

I will say that you have a very good hook. Someone might dismiss it as laughable, but sacrificing your ability to love to defeat Voldemort fits the HP world perfectly. I can almost imagine the peculiar adventure Harry and Luna would go on to buy back Harry's love. I liked this piece as a setup to a bigger story, but as a whole story, it's severely lacking.