Spoiler: Review

It's an emotional piece, obviously. I feel like these, more than other pieces of writing, have a certain mindset that you need to be in to truly appreciate them. And I'm not, at the moment, so I think the real point of this has passed me by.

I can give some commentary on the technical bits, therefore, but I can't really comment on the feelings this evoked because it didn't really do too much of that for me.

First off, the choice of eight days - I think you might've been better with seven instead? You might've scrapped the day of rest, or perhaps incorporated it at the end for a Biblical allusion or something, weird as that might sound.

Second, there's some minor technical flaws, like "Ginny and the kids looks happy to see me". I'm not sure what that's meant to imply, actually. If Harry's divorced I feel like there could've been more of an emotional impact. If he's not and just devoting all his time to Headmastery, as the next sentence seems to imply, then that too could've been clearer, maybe by mentioning he'll spend time with them during his vacation.

I did really like the final line, though. It's a neat little bow.

 

Spoiler

Well. Not quite sure what to make of this. For the first little bit I thought it was a less than great attempt at making Hogwarts the POV 'character'; in some ways, I'm a little disappointed this isn't the case, although it does mean that it's better written than I originally thought, so there's that. You do a fairly good job of humanising the staff in quick strokes, too, although equally there's a couple of points that don't work quite as well, like the too vague bit about Ginny and the kids being happy to see Harry, which could mean nothing at all, but invites a closer examination that there's not enough to support.

One element that tends not to be done in my experience is the fact that all the staff, presumably Hagrid aside, go home for the summer. Maybe it's just that the few fics I've read that touch on this subject are bad, but all too often it seems to be the case that a lot of the staff basically live at Hogwarts all year round.

The writing isn't anything special, but it's basically fine. The 'Thanks for that, Hermione' feels a little clunky, but that's balanced out by the final two lines, which are very effective.

I think, ultimately, my main issue here is that it feels like a fleshed out list of nice details, rather than a proper if short fic. It isn't badly done, but it's...inconsequential, I suppose. It is a complete piece though, which is good. 3/5

 

Spoiler

I like it on the whole. The way you structured it works well for a brief, evocative short story. It's a yearly ritual almost like the twelve days of Christmas, and it also works for the 'Professors during the Summer' prompt. Well done on that.

The technical writing is sound, though there are a few moments that seem out of place. The comment about Hermione interrupted the almost mournful tone you had going, and the comment about Harry and his kids was confusing. Why wouldn't his wife and kids be happy to see him?

There's also a couple clunky sentences like this one that need to be rephrased, especially in a piece where every word counts:

The overall issue with the story, I think, is that there aren't enough emotional stakes involved. This story should grip the reader by the heartstrings and call to mind the sacrifices that everyone made in the war. That's the point of it, I assume. It didn't work on me, and I think that's because it's set so many years after the war. How old is Harry here? 50? I think it would have been more effective emotionally to tell this story three or fear years after the war, when everyone has finally come to grips with the war and are now creating rituals of remembrance around it. That way you could really show people dealing with the grief of loss as well as the routine of cleaning up, etc.

Anyway, needs a little work if you want it to pack a punch, but I'd say 3.5/5. (rounded down if this were up for library review and for the sake of the contest)

 

Spoiler

I don't quite know what to make of this, to be honest. There's sadly just not enough meat on this to make a good comment or constructively critique the writing as such. Nothing really stands out except for the "we" part, which feels a bit off stylistically, given that the revelation that it's Harry doing the talking comes rather late.

 

Spoiler: Review

I'm not vibing with this one like I thought I would at the beginning. Maybe it's more my personal distaste of this format, but I felt like it was vague for vaguery's sake. It's technically well-written, but there's not much to the character(s) other than two or three lines that really articulate who's speaking. To keep the conceit, I'd think it would need more subtle, inherent characterization. The kind that just kind of jumps at you.

The "thanks for that Hermione" bit is what I mean. Really allows you to see the character.

Otherwise I feel like there isn't a whole lot here. I like the idea of people coming in the summer for this kind of purpose, but it's a little heavy-handed in its execution, imo. I think if it was given more space, more time to build up the emotions it's going for, it could be really good.

Overall, 2.5/5

 

Spoiler

I wasn't hooked on this story at all.
The format in itself can be used to great effect (See: You Meet in Paris by Enembee), but there were no emotional stakes and I didn't feel attached to any of the characters at all.
Them having a yearly memorial to Dumbledore seems odd to me as well. Perhaps it would've worked better, if they had a tribute to the victims of the war in general.

It needs a bit fleshing out for me to rate this highly, but I like the idea. Revising it after the competition could make it a nice little piece that you, as a reader, could visit once in a while.

 

Spoiler: We Praise. We Critique. We Thank

I offer this spoiler to Xion. The choicest cut, the first libation.

Spoiler: Down the rabbit hole

Spoiler: Formalise

I'm not going in order, and I've jumped here because I think its a similar mind space for me to entry #1. Let me just say, what you have written is evocative, simple, clean and effective. It is a wonderful vignette. I can't truly call it a story.

Plot & Pacing:
We go in and are immediately captured by the tone of the piece.

Lots of us who review these competitions always go on about the importance of the opening line. There's no grand image here, certainly, but it is undeniably effective at establishing tone and context and then building on it from there.

I like the events that are described, I think you're very effective at catching the tone, and the way you've broken the prose up with this meta-textual ritual of the We X (except the one where you put ', again' which I think helped emphasise even though it broke the pattern), gets you a bonus point from me for the prompt being ritual and summer holidays, and the writing having a ritual phrase throughout it. It's certainly no daphnazkaban. It suits the piece.

I think it works as what it is. I got a feeling out of it.

There's another story out in this competition that uses faux-excerpts and journals and tells its story in non-traditional prose, and there's also interstellar which jumps to mind with its faux-documentary videos - I think if you kept this scene and put it into some work that dealt with a story in some non-canon time frame and used pieces like this for context and world-building it would be fantastically appropriate. I like that sorta' thing, but it's very YMMV.

However, the essential point of it being a vignette stands. We the reader gain knowledge, but the character value of endurance/healing is unaltered. There's no appreciable change for the society depicted in this story by this story. And let's be honest, the reason it resonates with me is that it's on the back of HP, on a story world that is huge and a battle we've seen and a resolution and story world we know. If this was Original Gangster, could it stand alone and make sense if we all suddenly got 'Yesterday' style amnesia and didn't understand the context? No.

(to be clear, I'm not criticising fanfiction's fanfictionness [which would be the height of conceit and dickheadness by myself] I'm saying could this story make sense if you read it from start to finish on its own)

Characters:

It's first-person plural for the vast majority with some accents of Harry's thoughts and feelings about certain moments. It breaks it up well, I suppose. It invites a sense of community and contributes to the feeling you're going for, of an enduring, healing society, of a society healing through ritual. When the ritual is almost concluded it converts back to first person singular and lots of I. I was squinting to see if I could say that the change of this plurality to singular, of Harry the member of a community to Harry the father could qualify the story as a proper scene, even. I think you can go either way.

As a plurality, then, it's difficult to really discuss characterisation and characters. Further, this Harry is the headmaster of Hogwarts and old enough to be grey.

So I can't really pin down how old he is in the wider story. The way he talks about things, and his children, makes me feel he's younger than his position and role in all suggests he should be.

It's nebulous and unclear - it suits the piece - but it makes it difficult to offer meaningful feedback on, if I'm honest. Some of the phrasing of his thoughts is a bit clunky to be honest. In substance it's fine, just some execution issues, really. I suspect this was written not far from the deadline - it would be very quick to clean up.

I suppose some of the problem is that Harry describes that they endure and mourn, but it feels like he exults and celebrates (which they do too, to be fair. But he feels healed and content, not healing and grieving), it's an incredibly minor nit-pick. It's meant to describe society.

Prompt Use:

Oh man, this got it all. Prompt x 3, as discussed. It is, perhaps, the most wholesome representation of teacher's summers in this competition, and the most wholesome use of ritual magic.

Copy-edit:
Some of the language could be better expressed as discussed. It was clean, with minimal technical errors, though I'm not exactly a pro at that sort of thing.

Spoiler: Formulate

So I'm trying to discuss one thing that might be useful to think about for each piece. It's not necessarily something I'm saying you need to do but to offer techniques and information that I have read that might be good food for thought. My idea is that even if you're the most knowledgeable writer in the world, discussing some things can never be a bad thing and may either confirm ideas you hold and help define them further or offer new things that you may be interested in.

Your entry is a big societal thing, so I guess we could discuss the roles of conflict and what novel writing excels at and how that might be useful. Or we could do arcs: positive, negative and flat. Or we could do both I suppose and pretend it's one thing.

Levels of conflict:

Spoiler: reference

As always, I refer to my two favourite books on story writing, the ones that discussed the fundamentals that underlie the more modern stuff on structure like Save the Cat or Snowflake, and helped me to grasp a fragment of the why rather than the how. These are: Robert Mckee's Story and John Truby's The Anatomy of Story, in that order. If I link any videos, they heavily rely on these two, too, it often seems.

I don't refer to the intensity of conflict here, although that is a useful thing to discuss in longer stories when you're struggling with pacing.
Rather, I refer to the categorisation of conflict. I am a staunch believer, unfortunately, that there are only three. This keeps things simple. They are:

1. Inner conflict - this is man vs. himself, obviously. This is the unique strength of writing a story compared to pretty much any other medium. Other mediums dont struggle with tell vs. show quite so much as writing, I think, because of this.
2. Personal conflict - This is man vs. man - this is Harry falling out with Ron, Ron making Hermione cry etc.
3. Extra-personal/societal conflict - This is man vs. world. This is Jason Bourne taking on Blackstone or whatever it was they were called.

I think, personally, you're always going to have a proclivity towards one or the other. For many of us here on DLP, we're much more interested in 1 and 3 than 2. Certainly, you'll want to have some central problem around which your story revolves but the best stories, the complex stories, are able to weave a problem through all three. If you're writing a story that pushes a problem to the most extreme version of itself that it can be (whatever that problem is) it should likely run through all three of these levels. Looking at Bourne Identity again - the predominant story is Bourne fighting Treadstone (it turns out), right? But, then, he also has that whole thing with (?)Marie and the effect this chase has on both of them, and he has to wrestle with his Identity as he comes to realise that he was a CIA wetworker and what that means for him, and why he's in this situation, he needs to find peace for himself.

Identifying conflict:
Ok, so, in your story, what conflict can we identify? Hmmm.

Certainly, the closest we get to personal conflict would be the nod Harry gives to Draco. Inner conflict? Perhaps a sense of wistfulness, but I can't truly identify any? Personal - maybe Ginny and the kids wish he'd come home a little bit more quickly, or spend less time at the school, otherwise. Maybe her grief for George keeps her away, who didn't even make it to the battle of Hogwarts? I don't know, its entirely my supposition.

Let's be clear, I'm not suggesting that with the tone you've struck or the vibe you're going for, because it takes place mostly in this first person plural, that we need to throw in some societal obstruction from the ministry or some wholly out-of-keeping death-eater revival effort, but I think you do need to throw in some conflict. This story would be given well to personal conflic between Harry and Draco, and societal conflict between Harry, Draco and the wider community of mourning. Certainly, some inner conflict that lends itself to a stilted mourning in Harry might be appropriate, or perhaps some slight... I don't know, nihilism? That he can overcome.

In my mind the central tenet of a story is: There is something/one who is in situation [blank]. There is a conflict/obstacle. There is something/one who is now in a different situation. The purpose of the levels of conflict is to help you figure out how you can throw an appropriate obstacle to get someone from situation A to situation B.

The point of conflict:
Which brings me to my second point.

In almost everything I ever comment on in #reading, I'll be thinking - a story needs to have a character learn something or fail to learn something. The story needs to mean something. To have some lesson that resonates with the reader. The lesson has to be important, the character needs to wade through shit to achieve it, or to fail to achieve it and fall.

But that's not actually true, because the flat arc is real and the flat arc is valid. Marty Mcfly. Paddington Bear. This video on the two of them says it better than I can. The important thing to take away from it though is that although you can write a flat main character, he has to be the instrument of change - the impact character on everyone else in that world - the vehicle of conflict within those around him. There still has to be change for it to work.

The essential purpose of all of this, and the reason that I said it was similar to entry number one is that it lacks these essential features to qualify as a story in my mind rather than something... else.

I could write in more detail on the actual basis of the arcs, but I might save it for now. I think the two videos do it really well. There's a lot of internet resources on flat, positive and negative arcs. I'll probably end up discussing the mechanics of change for entry 4 anyway, and this is quite hefty as it stands. I will say the useful thing about character arcs, positive and negative, is that they help you figure out where to divide your act structure in longer pieces. More than just externally grafting a structure onto your story, you can build pace more naturally into turning points for your character, and decide where the acts should be and make it organic in a way that only builds up your story to more than a clunky summation of formula.

The important thing to note here, the one thing to take away, is that I consider you a success in that you have successfully captured a powerful and difficult emotion. The tone is top notch. But I am disappointed because you haven't turned it toward anything useful, anything for us, the reader, to take away and remember about this.

You can make a good story out of this rather than just a good account.

EDIT: I forgot to throw in this link, she also has a whole book on creating character arcs which almost exclusively deals with combining the flat, positive and negative character change arc to three act Save the Cat structure. I've not used her website much, but I imagine it has the vast majority of what her book does regarding this.

Spoiler: Finalise

I've read the other reviews now.

On the whole, I think that people are generally all coming away with the same impression. A little bit of clunk. A little bit short.

The thing that most resonates with me is the most recent review on the lack of stakes. I think this really resonates. It's essentially the point that I'm making above regarding the fact that there's no conflict. The other way of looking at conflict, and then change, is risk.

I hope this has been of use to you. I want to reiterate that every entry in this competition has been interesting to read. There is no stinker in this round and it was a pleasure that you've submitted something to it.

Emotionally, it's undoubtedly effective. I hope you can see that there are aspects that require work though and maybe have some avenues to pursue in thinking how to do so.

 

Spoiler

I'm not a big fan of the format. Maybe it's just me, but the pacing just doesn't really feel like it fits, the small sections feel a bit too... uh... hipster for the sentimental subject matter. It feels very vague, there's not really enough there for the full emotion of the piece to come out.

Being short, your entry kind of has the same issue as #1, there's no real conflict and conclusion to round off the story, a lot of it just feels more like fluff than anything, which was probably the point, but it's a bit uninteresting. I don't know, maybe it's just something about me, but I don't think the emotional part was really pulled off in a way that actually created any sort of sentiment.

I think the main issue is that you didn't really highlight what any of it means to anybody, it's just there, but I don't think any real feeling of regret or sorrow is captured, just a monotonous state of being, which is a bit dull. The intention was probably to evoke a feeling of nostalgia, but it just doesn't feel present at all.

It could have been so much more, but in the current state, it's a bit short and nonsensical.

2/5

 

Spoiler

There's not a lot of substance here to review, but it was still an enjoyable read.

There is one issue that I'll dig into. The line that (I think) makes clear that this is Harry's POV is a little off, and not just because of the typo: "Ginny and the kids looks happy to see me." He can't tell? It also seems like too brief a reflection about his family for a man who is about to spend a lot more time with them than he has for the past nine months. Is he looking forward to it? Is he dreading it? It seems odd not to dwell on that all, considering that this whole drabble is introspective. There are more sentences dedicated to Malfoy.

I liked the structure for this. I think it might be worth fleshing out actual scenes with these same subheadings (we maintain, we heal, etc.)

There are a couple nice moments in this story that I liked:

 

Spoiler

@Sorrows, lol

 

Spoiler: Gaze long into an abyss...

It’s a sweet little thang, but I hesitate to call it a story. Not necessarily because of its length (I know what microstories are, I’m cultured I swear) but because I’m uncertain on what it’s trying to achieve. A sense of melancholy perhaps? The mood permeates through the different passages but I’m just not sure why. The war is so long past that Harry’s hair is turning grey, you would think that he would have moved past it's emotional toll already. The tone struck is one that would have been more fitting a few years, or even months, after the events of the seventh book, in my opinion. Still this was never a story aimed at me, so take it with a grain of salt.


Besides that I’m not sure what else I can say.

I caught this small mistake.

I did not really stumble, but still. Not do to not visit home. I don’t know. Maybe it’s fine.

 

Spoiler: 'We' Review

I liked the last line about Harry still seeing Hogwarts as home even after all these years. That was nice to see. Besides that though I think this entry could've been done a lot better to be honest, it reminds me of the Dapnazkaban of last time but as a non-crack story.

First thing that stood out to me was how it's all 'tell' not show.

I can't see why this couldn't have been shown by having them in the headmaster's office, reminiscing. And when Slughorn gets up to tell his story, Harry could've rolled his eyes at the others and thought about how that's as much a part of the tradition/ritual by now.

About the other 'rituals' some of them don't really seem realistic from canon

- Harvesting, I think this could've been shown by having Harry stay behind and help out Neville with maybe one or two other's helping harvest as well as say house elves? I don't think this would be an all-'staff' tradition though.
-The helping house elves clean thing is something that could be plausible? I guess, but I doubt that professors would be doing that -residual spell damage? yeah but not the whole bed thing, seems a bit much.
- I like them trying to rebuild the room of requirement, that makes sense a lot.
-Similarly, the feast for families of professors make sense.

-This one doesn't make sense at all. I would think that the Hogwarts remembrance 'feast' would be during the school year. I don't get why Malfoy would be there if it wasn't even during the year. Also that phrase kind of strikes me as a bit awkward/could be worded better.

I like the premise of it being 'what professors have to do before they start the summer' but it could've been more ambitious in how it was written.