Dumbledore might have mentioned Riddle was popular. He was enough to at least become Head Boy, and I doubt someone who isn't respected makes it there.

I seem to recall mentions of followers, too, during sixth year. They were the early Death Eaters.

 

Riddle was handsome, charming and manipulative as fuck. Of course he had friends.

 

There's also the idea of having Harry grow more naturally into a better hero, instead of leverging any number of bootstrap-to-awesomeness methods that irritate so many.

"Oh great. Another Time-Turner-in-a-trunk training montage. Why couldn't you get off yer ass and write a believable rise to power over the full seven years?"

"Well, 'cause NMB said it was lame..."

 

Wordhammer, you pretty much hit the nail on the head there! It allows much more exploration of character and circumstance, even if you write it quickly, with the early years covered in a chapter or two. Its still better than dealing with them in a paragraph of reflection or a couple of throw away comments.

 

@ Mordecai: My response to an author saying that would be: A) Learn to write better: It's not how many words, it's which words you use and how you use them. B) Does the story actually need the description? If not, cut it. If yes, then keep it. C) Can the story be written so that the reader is slightly confused (but hopefully intrigued as well), and that acts as a hook?

@wordhammer: I think the problem here is that the 'Ubermensch Gambit' really is overdone. The real draw of Harry as a character is that he's supposed to be the underdog- it seems logical to play that up. Have your bad guys be competent-ish, and have Harry use misdirection to win. Sucker punches are fun! Have him make some powerful allies that do a lot of the heavy lifting. Naked Power isn't the only way to have Harry succeed; this is hardly a new idea, but I've yet to see it handled well. Renegade Cause is probably the closest, but... well, that's got a lot of the problems with how Harry is handled in general.

As a side note, I do believe I've mentioned my opinions on Time Turners.

 

ASBOT: a) Only to an extent. To convey detail and meaning to a world and a story, you need to take the time to do so.

b) You can't cut description down to only what directly relates to the plot. If you go for Chekov's gun as a rule of thumb for a fic, it quite quickly becomes mind numbingly boring for anyone who is half way intelligent, as its almost guaranteed they will see what ever single thing you mention will be used for or relate to well in advance of the reveal. On top of that, description is fun to read if it is good and relevant to the overall atmosphere. You can take it too far, like Tolkein did at times, but you should never cut it down to only the most relevant details.

c) If I'm being confused by a fic, then I'm going to close the window. Confusion is not what you want to inspire in a reader, because it means they are lost, that they don't understand what is going on. An element of mystery is one thing, confusion is something else entirely.

 

A) Eh.The funny thing about writing a story is that time moves at the pace you set. If you want to paint a world in photographic detail with your prose, do so. You don't need 7 year story to do so. You can do it in a 24-hour fic.

B) It works for Butcher, Gaiman, Grossman, and a metric shit-ton of other authors. Overwriting kills stories. Actually, if you read the Lord of the Rings, the prose is fairly pared down. Most of the overwriting happened in the notes.

C) This seems like a personal preference, although it may be poor phrasing on my part. I like having to work for ideas a bit as reader, and not having all the information force-fed to me makes me intrigued.

 

Couldn't disagree with you more Mordecai. I personally think that usually the longer a story becomes the worse it gets, especially with regards to fanfiction. Why take four hundred thousand words to say what ten thousand can do just as well?

iLost, if you have something to say, say it, but don't fall into the trap of thinking that pouring words on to a page is going to make for a better story. Remember, The Great Gatsby is arguably the best book ever written and is only fifty thousand words long.

 

While I won't say that I make a principle distinction in long story = worse story, I will say that only about 40% of my favorite stories are over even 100k words. The amount of one-shots I read is fairly miniscule, so most of these are fairly short stories or still WIPs. While admittedly a lot of them are WIPs like VINCET, Forging the Sword, Ectomancer, Control, and others, this just proves that you can have a large part of an excellent story in as little as 80k words.

 

Enembee: I'm not arguing for length for the sake of length, but against brevity for the sake of brevity. An exceptionally skilled author may be able to make every word count perfectly, and thus make 10 thousand words perfect for what they want to do. But most fanfic authors can't, and will take several words where the best author would take one. And there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, especially if the additional length goes in expanding the world the fic is set in.

Its also extremely arguable that The Great Gatsby is the best book ever written, I personally thought it was absolutely dire.

 

Well you're undeniably and provably wrong on that count, but then, as the book says itself:

;D

 

Seven year fic =/= long. Of that I am in perfect agreement with nmb and others. I've realized that in writing this I'm going to have to gloss over some things, which people probably don't want to read for the millionth time. There will be somethings, like most of the first chapter for tradition's sake, and a bit of lulling, but most will be talked over with a sentence.

Classes. Meeting Snape again. I'll try to leave the words for the scenes that matter.

Back to pacing. That is one thing I want to work-on. I want to make the monthly transitions as smooth as possible between scenes. It was something I was pretty bad at in my original stuff. Hopefully this will help.

 

Alternatively, come up with something original enough that you can have a complete story without recap.

It seems to me that your choice is the worst possible way.

You have the choice of massive AU. Tricky, but avoids the problems of canon rehash.

You have the choice of minor changes. Like what was said earlier in the thread: canon, but with some changes to "improve" it. Massive canon rehash, but a complete, self-contained, story.

Then there is the middle way. Canon with minor changes, but leaving out the canon. What you're left with is a kind of fractured and incomplete "highlights" story. Less of a story in its own right and more of a parasite on canon. It does little that a discussion thread on "What would you change about canon?" wouldn't.

 

This has been said, but make changes. And not just minor ones either like a few new scenes here and there, some new backround world details, or new friends and scenarios, but if I was a writer and was going to try a 7 year fic, I would probably change the major plots of each year entirely. I mean, who wants to read a thousandth rehash of Harry confronting Quirrel at the mirror, or Harry going into the CoS to confront the basilisk? There are only so many ways you can go about rewriting those canon scenes, but even if it's done in a highly original fashion, I still wouldn't be all that interested in reading it since it's close to canon, and canon is old and boring.

That shit is lame. I absolutely hate it when I'm reading a Ravenclaw or Slytherin!Harry fic where the author still has Harry rescuing Hermione from the troll, becoming friends with Ron, follows the same old major canon plots, etc. The world is fucking huge. The potential for original plots and ideas is almost limitless. Make some fucking changes.

 

I think maybe I am being unclear. -_- Not quite sure how to word it better than to just sit down and write it.

Thanks again for everyone's insights and discussion. It has helped.

EDIT: Demons, I'm out of thumbs, but you get one.

 

I think you're being perfectly clear. You say you're going to gloss over parts of the story with a single sentence. What's implied is that you don't feel like you need to introduce and develop the character of your own protagonist, prefering instead to rely on the fact that we have a background knowledge of canon.

Which is exactly what I meant when I said that such a story is incomplete and parasitic upon canon. Without the fact that your readers knew the HP story, your story would make no sense.

And sure, HP fanfic is all to some extent parasitical in canon, because otherwise it wouldn't be fanfiction. But the above method of writing is, in my opinion, just lazy.

 

This. So much this. AU's can hide a multitude of sins and by labeling it as such, you can throw in your own take on previous events without anybody throwing a shit-fit. Hand-waving, sure. But it works.

 

I always got the impression that people end up redoing canon because, frankly, they're scared.

Many people write fanfiction because it's like a stepping stone - a solid basis to stand on that means they don't have to create that foundation themselves. So they get an idea, and they write it, but in the end they still lack imagination; still confine themselves to canon events because they're too hesitant, too unimaginative to venture outside that foundation.

I actually caught myself doing the same, once, when I was twelve and writing my very first piece of fanfiction - a time-travel story. It was so tempting and easy to watch the first few episodes of Naruto and to end up following them with only minor variations that barely made any difference at all.

But I overcame that by sheer will, told canon to go fuck itself, and wrote something then that I can still look back on today and be proud of... Because I was an awesome twelve-year old.