I have read it again, and I just cannot stop myself from saying aloud how great a collection of short stories this is. The unifying element of these stories is that these are stories where servants (or similar in-background characters) save the situation. Another unifying element of these stories is how well written they are. Really, highly recommended!

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/10323811

Frickles talks Harry Potter fanfiction, writing it, and more!

(Author of A Malignant Ruse Harry/Daphne, A Discordant Pattern, etc)

This book was a bit of let-down for me. Yes, it is very nicely written, characters are well described, they have even some (slight) development to them (which is rather rare in all fanfiction stories), but it feels like painting by numbers. Elizabeth and Gardiners travel all the way to the Lake District, so there is never a meeting at Pemberley, and Lydia is ruined (for long time it seems irrecoverably, but it turns out better). Then Elizabeth meets Darcy when she hides in London with her uncle and aunt and everything proceeds as you expect. Lydia is sent to Canada to be married and saving the fame of the Bennet family, D&E have their happily ever-after, Jane finds some replacement for Bingley, who in the end (with many rounds around) marries Georgiana. Everything is very predictable and it takes extraordinary time to get there (59 chapters). If you read one of stories like this, you probably shouldn’t bother.

Pride & Prejudice meet Persuasion meet Horatio Hornblower, slightly too long and slightly failing on “Show, don’t tell” rule, but otherwise obviously professionally written thing and the tension is really high and adventure dramatic. Highly recommended.

I have heard about this story so many times, I have felt compelled to download it and read it. It is pleasantly written, I don’t have any serious complaints about it, but in the end it is just yet another indy!Harry mixed with (never explained) sudden whirlwind romance, where Harry and Daphne get from 0 (him not knowing her name) to marriage (and of course the married bed) in a week or so. If you read something like this, you've read it all, I am afraid. Interesting part is that the whole story is from Daphne’s point of view (that’s at least something different).

What in the world I have just read? It could be just one rather normal run-of-the-mill indy!Harry story with mildly evil Dumbledore where Harry will build his own base and defeats Voldemort, but the author for reasons I really cannot understand put whole story into Harry & Hermione’s third year (of course, it is a Harmony story, it is indy!Harry after all, isn’t it?).

Which again is nothing bad. There are really few stories in the Harry’s third year and there are many themes which could be fruitfully investigated. I would love to finally somebody utilized the best JKR sentence in whole heptalogy (“Lucky you,” said Ginny coolly.’ OotP), it is the year of Ginny’s and transition from freaked out little girl to the storm of energy she is later in the series, it is the most peaceful Harry’s year (whole year happens absolutely nothing, everything is in the end), so we could have more of non-Voldemort-happy-life-at-Hogwarts. Did author use anything of these?

No, she/he didn’t. I have ab

We all know what procrastination is so I'll speed through real quick:

1. It might not actually be laziness, you might be worried to much about it or if you work a physically intensive job it could simply be that your tired. Find the underlying reason and treat it basically.
2. Sometimes there's just no solution like going fuck it and just starting it with no plan. I know this won't work for some people but my very long droughts were stopped by me just starting it and letting what happens, happens.

What I really wanna talk about is the holding yourself accountable part:

It's very easy to just not do that and it's also very easy to over do it. The most important thing here is not only consistency but also the realization that you aren't going to be consistent.

Some day, something will break your streak.

Maybe someone in your family dies whether they be human or pet, friends schedule a get together during your writing time, you're moving or something else. Life happens, missing da

I'm choosing to stay here for the long term whether or not people join in with my discussions. (Though I love it, if you do.) So if I don't make a post in a while, don't worry I check this instance near daily.

But that aside, I've been meaning to make a Google doc or just a document in general of all the advice I heard and incorporated as an accessible way to share with other people. Writing well is difficult and there's no need to add searching multiple sites for good advice on-top of that.

Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EOeUwpUoklG4zqzp5VCHrT8TYWPHtf0PV2KCjK6JqY4/edit?usp=drivesdk

(If anyone doesn't want to use Google doc can you suggest an alternative and I'll copy it over to that.)

The more I make/outline fanfiction the more I've come to realize the importance of canon and the expectations of it from the readers.

Now it seems like a no duh that canon is important without it you don't have your characters, setting, themes, and what abouts. But it is, it's a bit of revelation that I may have already instinctively known but didn't fully consciously realize.

Canon is a spectrum

Fanfiction is the act of taking established characters and making them into other characters, and the established plot into another one and (trying)making it believable.

The show or book or whatever gives us the beloved characters that we wanna play around with, we wanna see them grow outside the initial conditions the original maker has set, we want to seem them struggle, succeed, be funny, or whatever and because of that, we'll be willing to give a pass on the writer if the character is close enough and their vibe is the same.

And because quality isn't usually always available why d

After reading an excellent “One Week Late” by Bethany Delleman, I hoped that this story might another (very rare) example of non-canonical pairing P&P story. I have always thought that the relationship between Colonel Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth could be very interesting to explore, and generally that a relationship with a solider (looking how well the relationship with a sailor worked in “Persuasion”) could be interesting as well. Except the story had did not much of that exploration. Since the first wedding, it was quite obvious how it will end and there were only two ways how to achieve that end, neither of one which I liked. In the end the author decided to follow both of them. Oh well.

A very good short story about a scientific expedition.

This is a rather enjoyable (and long) fanfiction for Harry Potter. It's set in a somewhat similar world to canon, but is modified in various ways. Such as Peter Pettigrew not hiding out as a rat.
It is a Wrong Boy Who Lived story (this being a story where Harry has a sibling which is thought to be the Boy Who Lived), and it has loads of other common tropes but it applies various twists upon them that makes it a lovely experience.