Title: Saviour's Last Hope
Author: Darius Winter (me)
Rating: M
Pairings: None as of yet, will probably stay that way.
Genre: Action/Adventure/Mystery
DLP Category: General
Published: April 13, 2007
Words: 4089
Status: Oneshot (though technically Abandoned)
Summary: Harry knew killing Voldemort wouldn't be easy, he knew he wouldn't fulfill the prophecy without great sacrifice. What he didn't know was just how much it would cost him, and that his fight would last long after Voldemort was dead.
Link: http://www.ficwad.com/viewstory.php?sid=57190

FF.net is not working, so I haven't posted it there yet, but I will once it's back up.

Criticism is more then welcome, rip my story to pieces please, if it sucks, don't be afraid to tell me, if you see anything I can improve on, tell me.

This is a challenge response to Void Sorcerer's challenge which can be seen here.

http://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=5110

Fixed it. Boys will be boys -MS



Checked by Minion, March 10, 2013

 

This is tantilizing. I very much enjoy how desperation has degrated Harry.

 

Very good start. I see no problems with it so far and it's written quite well. I can't think of any constructive criticism and there are very few punctuation/grammar errors.

4.5/5

 

I like it. It drew me in, and I really want to see how this plays out.

 

Very intriguing, I really like the 1st person perspective, usually, I don't but you've done it very well. I must say this Harry is much more realistic than almost any I've read, bankrupt after the war, looking for ways to get money, actually caring about money. This and the Resistance of Azkaban are the only two like that that I can think of. 4.8/5

 

I can't really rate it yet. I need to get a vague idea what the story will be like, but I can say it's a very good start.

 

I'm having a lot of trouble with ficwad, when I go to Edit story, no story shows up, and you can't upload new stories to FF.net right now... I've contacted the ficwad administrator but I doubt they'll do anything.

 

Nice. It's almost too bad that this is a response to a challenge. I think that chapter one by itself would be a very good one-shot.

 

I really like this, the story is very well written and has left me wanting to read it more. Haven't read another fic like this one before and I'm very keen to say how this story plays out. 4.5/5

 

Good start, but why didn't Harry decide to hunt for the Death Eaters earlier?

 

Because he wanted to just settle down and live his life out, but with the poison, and his lack of funds, he doesn't have a lot of options left.

 

I remember this. Eh. 3/5 Maybe 3.5

 

Not really my cup of tea, but it's well written enough to draw me in anyways.

4.5/5

 

I like it. It's been mentioned, but your Harry seems realistic. The same goes for the events surrounding him. Some stories are very clean cut in the eventual defeat of Voldemort, but I find it hard to believe that however much training Harry goes through, he'll be able to completely match so much experience. So seeing Voldemort throw a spanner into the works even after being bested is a good thing.

Strong start, looking forward to more.

3.5-4/5 for current length

If you can't get ficwad or ff.net to work, couldn't you use the Work by.... section here?

 

Really liked this so far. pity you are having troubles with ficwad and FF.net as i am very much looking forward to more. keep up the good work.

 

I think you got out to a good start. I mean I don't think we can really judge how the overall story will turn out yet, but it was well written and interesting to read. I love the idea as well. Can't wait to see what else you have planned.

 

I didn't expect to have to say this to someone who isn't, apparently, a newbie - but take another glance over the posting format: http://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=101

The 'DLP category' and 'Genre' are missing.

 

If I didn't know any better I'd say that you were trying to imply something besides telling me to fix my format! I'll fix that right away though! I feel like such a silly-willy forgetting do that! Well, now that you've told I'll know better next time and never make dumby mistake like that again! Thank you MS!


EDIT! Oh silly me! I can't edit it! I'm sure you didn't know that, because I sure didn't! If you could please put down the Genre as Action/Adventure/Mystery, and the DLP category as General, I would.... Well I don't know what I'd do, but what I do know is that I would be Happy Panda!

 

Overall, a good beginning, both in form and in content. However there is room for improvement.

Form:

You took some risks by choosing a first person PoV in present tense, congratulations for that. When done well, such an association often leads to a truly incredible writing; see the first paragraphs of Vash's Inremeabilis. However it is very difficult to handle correctly. First person (especially in present tense) enables you to focus on what the main character is seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling, considerably more so than third person. That implies description,a description based on odours, colours, sensation of warmth or cold etc., i.e. how your character perceives his surroundings with all his senses. Such description doesn't have to be omnipresent, but it should be more present than it is now.

Opening your chapter with "I walk slowly through the door" was a little awkward, possibly for this reason; it struck me as blunt. Harry walks through the door—does it creak when he pushes it? Is the room dark, are the walls bare, is the house cold and gloomy or warm and welcoming? See, instead of describing dryly Harry's actions, describing them while adding his sensorial perceptions helps in setting an atmosphere, a tone for the story, and is in my opinion a smoother way to enter the chapter.

One thing to remember when you write in 1st person, as silly as it sounds: the whole story is told through the character's eyes. Therefore the only way he can describe himself is if he's in front of a mirror! That makes things like "my dull eyes" sound extremely weird.

The lack of description aside, you handled your first person surprisingly well. You focussed on Harry's train of thoughts in a realistic manner, exploiting fully here your first person and your present tense. Both elements helped in drawing me in, and they're also playing a considerable part in the reader's identification with Harry.

Nitpicking now.

Be careful with your tenses. Two or three times, you switch without reason to past tense when your chapter is mostly in present. Ex.:

Had should be have, except for "I had missed something". Was should be is.

From "I burst through the door of my house..." to "...fall directly in the dish.", you switched back to past as well.

Same goes for "I had to go to straight to the source, or as close as I could get to it at this point, and that was the un-captured Death Eaters, and whatever knowledge Voldemort had left behind."

Be careful with redundancies as well, they're particularly inelegant and amateur-ish. When you describe Harry's life, for example... "Life" and "live" are everywhere in this paragraph. Granted, they're hard to replace, and "existence" gets old after one use. But you could construct your paragraph differently, with less sentences, and using pronouns. That kind of things.

At the beginning of the chapter, you use "then" instead of "than" several times. Then throughout the chapter there are small incoherent little things, such as "They say a watched pot not never boils." I'd recommend a thorough re-reading before posting.

And last part of the nitpicking: your comma use. Sometimes it's... wonky.

The way you write it, "darkness" becomes the subject of "trying". A comma is needed here. On the other hand you don't need the second comma and the second "fighting".

That sentence has two main clauses, and they should be separated by more than a comma. Either a period or a semi-colon. Plus breaking the monotony of the repeated commas with a colon, rightly placed, can be a good idea. "I take my first step out of the alley, wincing at the bright light; I need to get out more: I can almost feel my skin burning already."

There are several other sentences for which you need to work on the punctuation, but basically it's always the same things: don't use only commas, and separate the main clauses with stronger punctuation marks. Basically when you have more than two commas in a sentence of average length (lists excepted—I mean commas separating fully formed clauses) you need to change your punctuation.

Another quick quote:

The redundancy is probably purposeful, but it needs to be done more carefully. Emphasise the "painfully" by italicising it, why not; and add a comma. That would be: "a small blue cloud exuded from the end of my wand, slowly expanding, almost painfully slowly." One of the advantage of first person PoV is that you can italicise words more than with 3rd person, since it's your character thinking.

That's all for the form.

Content:

Not much to say since there's only one chapter in... Nice characterisation of Harry so far; how he went slightly bitter and even cynical after so much travelling, searching and killing, trampling on his own ideals while he desperately tries to counter his fate... Very well done. Just one teeny tiny thing: having heavily loaded bookshelves symbolise Harry's amount of knowledge might not be quite right with his character... Notes, diagrams, scribbled parchments, odd objects piled up haphazardly in boxes and cupboards may have suited Harry better. But as I said, it's a detail.

About the plot: it sounds really good, but there were a couple of things I found incoherent.

The question has been asked before, but I wasn’t satisfied with the answer… Why didn’t he go after the Death Eaters any sooner? You can hardly say he “wanted to live his life” considering the life he led until now. You’ll need to give a good reason for that. He could have been afraid; he could have tried to get them while travelling but never seemed to reach them, then he would decide now to devote his whole time to searching them instead of just occasionally keeping an eye open for them. You could say he wanted, by some obscure reasons, to solve this problem without Voldemort’s post-mortem help. Pride, maybe.

Second: his excitement about getting the dish was completely out of the blue. It should have been better prepared. First, when getting up, Harry’s goal in going to Diagon Alley was “to make a public appearance”. Then we discover that in fact his goal was much more important and plot-centred. Second, the object that would potentially solve all his problems being in a shop at Passmore Alley? And all this time he had been looking for it all over the world? That doesn’t make sense. You could have said, for instance, that Harry had made an arrangement several months ago with the shopkeeper, having learnt that he had access to the object (and you definitely should have said that before he entered Diagon Alley); you could have had him receive an owl in the morning, telling him the object had finally been received. It would have justified his excitement.

Last: he thinks it’s “time for a public appearance” then… almost runs when his name is called out? That doesn’t make much sense either.

In short, when you have him get up in the morning, scratch out the “it’s time to make a public appearance” line. Try, instead, to have him talk about the deal, receive an owl, and decide because of said deal to go to Diagon Alley... just a suggestion.

That’s all the criticism I could find.



Too early for a rating. But I’ll definitely read the following chapters.

(Sorry for the mistakes; no time to reread, I'm late for college.)

 

A new idea isn't something I come across too often nowadays, for that alone I'll be paying close attention to the story. The writing style is great, barring a few exceptions that were probably caused by carelessness anyway – rereading the chapter before submitting it would do wonders.
The bit where Harry goes to Diagon Alley for a public appearance was a little confusing, but not overly so, and again, probably rectified by a proof read.

4.5/5 subject to editing based on future chapters.