Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Harry Potter fan fiction

Like millions of other people, about eight years ago I got interested in the Harry Potter book series. The stories were charming, innocent, and engaging, and the universe the author created was fabulously imaginative. I very much liked the first four books, and I was willing to overlook some of their flaws, like questionable story logic and two-dimensional characters (Professor Snape and the Dursley family leap to mind). The fifth book, however, left me unsatisfied. Harry had a tough year, but the author's clumsy and highly visible manipulations to remove virtually all support from Harry made the story hard to swallow. Still, I was very keen to know what would happen in the final two stories, and I found I had a few ideas.

I somehow became inspired enough to want to do something I’d have never thought I would try: to write a story. Writing with someone else’s characters is a little like using training wheels, which suited me fine. I did it for no other reason than that I wanted to, and I had no idea whether it would ever be read by anyone other than those I knew. I posted it to a fan fiction site, where to my surprise, the story got many positive comments. I’m sure it will never be mistaken for great literature, but many people spent many hours reading it, and were more than satisfied after they finished; a few told me that they lost sleep, having stayed up too late because they couldn't stop reading. What more could a writer want? Over time, I found that through fiction I could explore issues in which I was interested; character development and moral dilemmas played significant parts in what I wrote. As I write this, I have completed five of my own Harry Potter stories. (I do plan to write again, but my next story will be an original one, not in the Harry Potter universe.)

My first two stories (Harry Potter and the Veil of Mystery and Harry Potter and the Ring of Reduction), completed before the author published the sixth book of the series, were my own versions of Harry and his friends' sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts. Late in the fifth book, Dumbledore tells Harry that the power he has that will defeat Voldemort is love. We are not, of course, told how this works. In these two stories, two central questions are: what is the connection between Harry, love, and Voldemort's defeat; and how can Snape appear so evil and still be trusted by the good and wise Dumbledore?

The third story (Phoenix Intuition), in the same timeline but set four years after Harry has finished studying at Hogwarts, had a substantially different style than the first two. The sixth and seventh year stories were in the same style as the official books: covering Harry's year from July to June, told entirely from Harry's point of view, in familiar settings. Phoenix Intuition has four concurrent storylines (which of course came together in the end): one featuring Harry and his friends, one focusing on the story's villain, one telling the story of political intrigue in the wizarding world, and one focusing on the Muggle political world (which is being manipulated by a wizard). This one wasn't as well received by fans as the others, probably because of the different style and the lack of strong focus on the central characters.

After that, I had no specific plans to write anything else in the Harry Potter universe, but after the seventh and final story was published, I got inspired again. The next story (Harry Potter and the Antiquity Link) was set immediately after Harry's defeat of Voldemort, and I considered it more of a character sketch than an adventure story, as the trilogy had been. The central question: what was the psychological toll on Harry of the events of the seven published stories? He'd been through all kinds of trauma, culminating in a decision to give up his life to save wizarding society. What would that do to a person? This story was about answering that question, both for the reader and for Harry himself, who is mentally out of sorts and has no idea why.

My next story (Harry Potter and the Amulet of the Moon) was a follow-up to that one, and asks the question: what might have happened if a character (not Harry) in the published series, faced with the most critical choice of his life, had chosen differently? The main theme is how our experiences shape us, and how the same person with different experiences might end up a very different person than he thought he could be.

The main difference between my stories and the official ones is that the real ones are written for both children and adults, while mine are with adults in mind only. Mine explore issues such as personal vs. collective responsibility, capital punishment, spirituality, self-interest vs. self-sacrifice, political machinations, relationships, and various types of moral dilemmas. (In other words, the kinds of things I want to write about in this blog.) I imagine children would be bored silly by these aspects of the story, but some readers tell me that these things are what they enjoy about my stories.

In the end, my audience for these stories was myself: I wrote what I wanted to read. I made them available on the web in hope that others would enjoy them, and I now make them available here. I hope anyone who has read and enjoyed all of the published Harry Potter stories will give these a try.

8 comments:

  1. I have been reading your stories on FanFiction.net and am totally hooked. Your writing is excellent and inspiring.
    And I disagree with your statement that children would find the issues you explore boring. As a child, books that explore those issues were the ones that I sought out as often as possible. Books are an excellent medium for learning to deal with the adult world with all its moral ambiguity.
    Thank you for sharing your works with us.

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  2. (Well, I've spent 10 minutes trying to post my just-under-the-darn-4096-character-limit comment, only to get an error page each and every time - Blogger error code 'bX-v9ha7w' FYI - let's see if the first half will make it through.)

    >>
    The fifth book, however, left me unsatisfied. Harry had a tough year, but the author's clumsy and highly visible manipulations to remove virtually all support from Harry made the story hard to swallow.
    <<

    I've heard others make exactly the same complaint; they found Dumbledore's reason to estrange Harry just too contrived and unrealistic. The fifth book was a dropping off point for quite a few readers, I think. I believe that the fourth is the most highly regarded across the fandom.

    Which is a pity, because the fifth book is my personal favourite (although, given how abysmally Harry's story was completed with Deathly Hallows, my affection for the series as a whole is nothing like it used to be). I very much enjoyed the 'action' feel of the novel, with Harry actually being proactive and training, and at the time I felt that the formation of the DA augured well for even larger scale and more exciting group dynamics in the last two books. Plus, Hermione is my favourite character, and Order of the Phoenix was *her* book, really, in some respects. It was her idea to set up the DA, she saved Harry from being tortured by Umbridge, she comes back to talk sense into him about the possession ... what a girl!! :-)

    I guess the pattern of every Rowling book was the same - one or two really big plot contrivances for which the reader had to suspend disbelief, the story being set up so the reader never has enough clues or information to work things out for himself, the requirement always for a chapter of exposition at the end from Dumbledore so everything can be explained, starting each book at the Dursleys, and so forth. These practices were exaggerated and exploited so horribly in the last book of the series I wonder now why we let Rowling get away with it in the previous ones! Still, back when Order of the Phoenix came out, I didn't have a problem in accepting that Dumbledore would hide from Harry for a whole year, just so he'd be kept in the dark about the prophecy and Voldemort's seeking same. That was simply the big "suspension of disbelief" gimmick for that particular book. Just like the "why didn't Crouch!Moody just grab Harry at any time during the school year?" hole in Goblet of Fire, or Lupin forgetting his Wolfsbane in PoA, or a set of trials being set up that three eleven year old children could beat (one being a chess game that used the chess skills that Ron never displayed again (well, until your latest novel!)) in Philosopher's Stone.

    It seemed funny to me that readers who had accepted the flaws of the first four books weren't able to make the same allowance when Rowling did much the same thing for the fifth.

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  3. (Hmmm. I suspect my just-under-4096-character initial comment might have been accepted ... and then expanded in some encoding process ... which broke something? Sloppy programming, if so?)

    > a few told me that they lost sleep, having stayed up too late because they couldn't stop reading.

    So I wasn't the only one!! Good to hear! :-)

    > As I write this, I have completed five of my own Harry Potter stories.

    So ... how many words does it all stack up to be? And how's it compare with Rowling's own word count?

    > Dumbledore tells Harry that the power he has that will defeat Voldemort is love. We are not, of course, told how this works.

    In retrospect, sadly, it didn't matter; it was never used. :-(

    But I'm glad you didn't know that, and that you took Rowling for her word (literally) back then; otherwise you would have never written your trilogy!

    >>
    In the end, my audience for these stories was myself: I wrote what I wanted to read. I made them available on the web in hope that others would enjoy them ...
    <<

    In my HP fandom experience you're pretty much unique in that regard, I think. Oh, other - most? - authors write what they "want to read", I would imagine, but I'd say they all have an idea of how big the HP fandom is, their likely readership, the fanfic archive sites that could host the stories, before they started writing.

    Did you really have no idea as to the size of the HP fanfiction readership before you started?

    Anyway, thank you for writing your HP books! It still amazes me that we readers can get this sort of quality reading (for free). Your HP stories and some others have greatly 'amplified' the whole HP experience for me (and made it all worth while, even after Rowling dropped the ball with Deathly Hallows).

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  4. To BookwormDragon: Thanks very much for the comment, and I'm glad you think that kids would like the stories. I'd hope so; I haven't had any feedback on that one way or the other.

    To Brad: Thanks for coming by and commenting. I didn't know there was a 4096-character limit!

    As for the yearly plot contrivances, you forgot the one where Hagrid sent two twelve-year-olds into a forest to have a chat with flesh-eating spiders. That goes way beyond 'trusting' and well into 'moron' territory. Granted, it had been established that Hagrid was not a rocket scientist, but still...

    I do get your point about that, but somehow the one in OotP seemed more egregious. And yes, I did like a few parts of OotP, like the DA, but that wasn't Harry being 'proactive' so much as letting himself get roped into something. Harry has got to be the least proactive hero I've ever seen.

    How many words in all five? Wow, interesting question. (Pauses to check)

    Veil of Mystery: 383,651
    Ring of Reduction: 452,166
    Phoenix Intuition: 225,952
    Antiquity Link: 312,302
    Amulet of the Moon: 225,172

    So, the total is 1,599,243. Funny how PI and Amulet are almost exactly the same, and add up to almost that of Ring.

    No, I really didn't have any idea of how many people read fanfiction when I started. I truly didn't know that anyone outside my immediate acquaintances would ever read it. Now, of course, I know how big fandom is, though I still haven't researched archive sites. Just too damn lazy...

    Thanks very much for the kind comments. They're very appreciated.

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  5. Sheesh. This error I keep getting on long entries is very ... exasperating. It happened again on a post of 3,861 characters. Arrgh.

    >>>>>>>>>>>>
    As for the yearly plot contrivances, you forgot the one where Hagrid sent two twelve-year-olds into a forest to have a chat with flesh-eating spiders. That goes way beyond 'trusting' and well into 'moron' territory.
    <<<<<<<<<<<<<

    Heh. Yes, that's one of the "silly plot contrivances that tests the reader's willingness to believe" flaws - one of many - but I don't think it's one of the huge, flawed, *entire-book-spanning gimmicks* - on which an entire novel hangs.

    Let's see ... in book #1 I guess we've got the notion that the headmaster would hide the Stone in a school full of children ... and attached to that is the climactic gamut of tests that the Trio just happened to be able to solve handily, one-time chess skills and all.

    Book 2 ... I don't think there was a similar sort of failed contrivance that spanned the entire book (the monster roaming the castle, and Riddle's diary, worked rather well, no obvious flaws IMO). Nor book 3 ... unless you want to think that giving a Time Turner to a 14-year-old girl is a bit rich (Hermione could have taken over the world with that Time Turner. It's the ultimate 'super power' for anyone with brains, in my opinion. :-)).

    Book 4, the silliness of Crouch!Moody waiting a whole year to grab Harry, when he could have done so at any time. Book 5, Dumbledore not just refusing to tell Harry about the prophecy, but avoiding him for the *whole year*. Which was bad in itself, but then really shown to be the clumsy contrivance (I've got to think of a more condemning word) that it was in the very next book, where Rowling decided *just like that* that Voldemort would no longer pursue this *proven* and *successful* means of attacking Harry through the mental link ... and just turn it off. Pfah!

    Book 6 ... ugh, why do you make me remember HBP? ... maybe Dumbledore deliberately turning a blind eye to Draco's taking the whole year to try and assassinate him. Two students are almost killed from the first attempts, the school is invaded by murderous terrorists ... all because he wanted to give Draco a chance, as I recall? Snape knew about Draco's mission, and told Dumbledore, didn't he? But Dumbledore didn't do anything about it. I think that's a big book-spanning plot hole which is too silly to swallow.

    (Although the Draco in Amulet's other universe might have appreciated all of that rope that Dumbledore gave him. I don't think he ever mentioned it though; it was just his decision not to kill at the very end, right?)

    And book 7 ... well, it's several orders of magnitude worse in terms of fail, but I guess the whole Hallows/Elder Wand gimmick was the one-book wonder which spanned the entire story and on which the novel - and the entire series - depended. Culminating in the contradictory (and brand-new) wand lore unveiled at the very end.

    Sigh.

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  6. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    Veil of Mystery: 383,651
    Ring of Reduction: 452,166
    Phoenix Intuition: 225,952
    Antiquity Link: 312,302
    Amulet of the Moon: 225,172
    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

    I found a listing of the word count for Rowling's books via Google ... they're pretty close to the word counts I got for a sample of three of the books that I have in electronic format, so I'll trust them:

    Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - 76,944 words
    Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - 85,141 words
    Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - 107,253 words
    Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - 190,637 words
    Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - 257,045 words
    Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - 168,923
    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Approximately 198,227,

    A total for Rowling of 1,084,170 words. Wow. I knew your stories stack up pretty heavy/tall, but you've exceeded her count by almost half again. Three of your five books were longer than her biggest novel, and the other two weren't that far off.

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  7. Hey Semprini,

    I wanted to say thank you for writing your stories. I stopped reading hp fan fiction years ago, but when you came out with new stuff, I couldn't help but read, remembering how great your trilogy was.

    I re-read Antiquity Link when I visited Tokyo, and then realized I had never read Amulet of the Moon. Amazing stories, and I've enjoyed reading them during my travels.

    Thanks again, and I look forward to reading anything you come out with in the future, fan fiction or not.

    Cami

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  8. Hi! I've read the Veil of Mysery, Ring of Reduction, and Phoenix intuition, and they're three of the best stories that I've ever read on fanfiction. I'd disagree that they're only for adults; I'm 13. I really like the length. Since I'm a fast reader, there aren't many stories on fanfiction that can hold my attention.
    When I read these, I couldn't stop reading them. As I said before, they're really good.
    I look forward to reading The Antiquity Link and the Amulet of the Moon.
    -Miranda

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