hp look back: Eight Ways From Sunday
Aug. 9th, 2011 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhThis entry is going to be a little more self-indulgent. Soundtrack to come!
Eight Ways from Sunday: Seamus/Dean, Harry/Hermione, Draco/Ginny, Ron/Padma, R, 70,000 words total. A sixth-year post-GoF ensemble comic romance.
It could be standing before you, needing a bit of a push. Or sitting beside you, waiting for you to let go. Perhaps it's sneaking up from behind, hoping you will turn around. But sometimes, love falls from a clear blue sky, and you just have to catch it. How do you decide which is the right path, when you're only sixteen?
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EWFS turns out to be a remarkably difficult fic to talk about because it's the center of everything, the beginning of everything. It's where I learned that I could write, where I figured out how to write, where I started understanding how to take all these classic romantic comedies I grew up on and the sprawling ensemble epics that I read and put them together in some way that made sense. It's the second story of any substance (other than little ficlets on the FA boards) that I ever wrote, so I guess I dove into the deep end! Because of EWFS, I ended up in Nocturne Alley playing Seamus. Because of EWFS, people started to find out who I was in certain parts of fandom even before the whole friend-of thing. So it's probably the story, or one of the stories anyway, that's closest to my heart.
I'm not going to talk about shipping here--I might do a bit at the end of this about how I feel about all these HP ships--but this started out not being one large fic. Originally, I was going to write a smallish 5th year fic about Ginny and Draco, a 6th year about Harry and Hermione, and a 7th year about Seamus and Dean. (For that I wrote the scene where Hermione and Seamus are picnicking and listening to, but not watching, the Quidditch match, the first thing I wrote for this fic.) But they all wanted to be written at the same time, and then Ron was like, "Oi!" and so instead I wrote with four overlapping relationship arcs that pay off at different points--first G/D, then R/P, then H/H, and finally S/D. In order to keep the whole thing from spiraling out of control I set down a pretty strict structure. The center of the fic is an A/B structure of one chapter of classes that opens with an interior monologue, followed by a chapter centered around a Hogsmeade weekend, which I paced out once every three weeks. Bookending that are two party chapters, staring with Harry's birthday and ending with the dance at school, and then surrounding THAT are a prologue and epilogue. I work better when I have a structure, though as I've become more confident as a writer they've become a bit looser. But I think comedy, too, works better when it's properly paced.
I didn't realize at the time how much people care about Hermione's specific appearance, especially her hair, or I might have changed what I was doing with that bit of plot. It wasn't, of course, to give her a makeover so much as to free her from her own identity and all that went with it. But I would hope that like any cliche, when it's well done it doesn't feel like a cliche and I do think I used it in a specific way. The same with Seamus's nickname for Hermione--I wanted something that was just theirs, that established their friendship as being central for both of them, a way in which they changed each other.
And in that sense, the relationship that keeps the whole thing together is really Hermione and Seamus. I write a lot of romance but I like everyone to be grounded in a world of friendships, even kind of gossipy circles of friends, with everyone in everyone else's business and everyone having stuff going on. This tight web might be why it's been so easy to see all the futures that got laid out for these characters in this GoF in-universe alternate-reality, to keep writing in this continuity, to keep writing about these people having these relationships and this history with each other. I tend to write linked stories in any fandom, because that's how my mind works, and this is where that started.
At the time I was writing this I had three very close friends in fandom--e!vil pink ladies we were, hence all these icons I have of Jan from Grease--and I don't think this story would exist without them. One, my primary beta, has dropped out of fandom and mostly offline. One, who helped me with the larger themes and helped me come up with the title, is sadly no longer with us. And one, who probably gave me more constant encouragement than anyone, ever, is happily still a good friend.
Which brings me to the title. Eight Ways From Sunday is a reference both to that old saying of six ways to Sunday, altered to be about the eight main characters, but is also a reference to the Noble Eightfold Path in Buddhism. I remember that Ely and I mapped out the paths to the characters, but I can't replicate that without her here, so you'll have to trust me that at the time it totally worked. This bit of Ely-inspired hidden spirituality will come back in the sequel.
Eight Ways from Sunday: Seamus/Dean, Harry/Hermione, Draco/Ginny, Ron/Padma, R, 70,000 words total. A sixth-year post-GoF ensemble comic romance.
It could be standing before you, needing a bit of a push. Or sitting beside you, waiting for you to let go. Perhaps it's sneaking up from behind, hoping you will turn around. But sometimes, love falls from a clear blue sky, and you just have to catch it. How do you decide which is the right path, when you're only sixteen?
EWFS turns out to be a remarkably difficult fic to talk about because it's the center of everything, the beginning of everything. It's where I learned that I could write, where I figured out how to write, where I started understanding how to take all these classic romantic comedies I grew up on and the sprawling ensemble epics that I read and put them together in some way that made sense. It's the second story of any substance (other than little ficlets on the FA boards) that I ever wrote, so I guess I dove into the deep end! Because of EWFS, I ended up in Nocturne Alley playing Seamus. Because of EWFS, people started to find out who I was in certain parts of fandom even before the whole friend-of thing. So it's probably the story, or one of the stories anyway, that's closest to my heart.
I'm not going to talk about shipping here--I might do a bit at the end of this about how I feel about all these HP ships--but this started out not being one large fic. Originally, I was going to write a smallish 5th year fic about Ginny and Draco, a 6th year about Harry and Hermione, and a 7th year about Seamus and Dean. (For that I wrote the scene where Hermione and Seamus are picnicking and listening to, but not watching, the Quidditch match, the first thing I wrote for this fic.) But they all wanted to be written at the same time, and then Ron was like, "Oi!" and so instead I wrote with four overlapping relationship arcs that pay off at different points--first G/D, then R/P, then H/H, and finally S/D. In order to keep the whole thing from spiraling out of control I set down a pretty strict structure. The center of the fic is an A/B structure of one chapter of classes that opens with an interior monologue, followed by a chapter centered around a Hogsmeade weekend, which I paced out once every three weeks. Bookending that are two party chapters, staring with Harry's birthday and ending with the dance at school, and then surrounding THAT are a prologue and epilogue. I work better when I have a structure, though as I've become more confident as a writer they've become a bit looser. But I think comedy, too, works better when it's properly paced.
I didn't realize at the time how much people care about Hermione's specific appearance, especially her hair, or I might have changed what I was doing with that bit of plot. It wasn't, of course, to give her a makeover so much as to free her from her own identity and all that went with it. But I would hope that like any cliche, when it's well done it doesn't feel like a cliche and I do think I used it in a specific way. The same with Seamus's nickname for Hermione--I wanted something that was just theirs, that established their friendship as being central for both of them, a way in which they changed each other.
And in that sense, the relationship that keeps the whole thing together is really Hermione and Seamus. I write a lot of romance but I like everyone to be grounded in a world of friendships, even kind of gossipy circles of friends, with everyone in everyone else's business and everyone having stuff going on. This tight web might be why it's been so easy to see all the futures that got laid out for these characters in this GoF in-universe alternate-reality, to keep writing in this continuity, to keep writing about these people having these relationships and this history with each other. I tend to write linked stories in any fandom, because that's how my mind works, and this is where that started.
At the time I was writing this I had three very close friends in fandom--e!vil pink ladies we were, hence all these icons I have of Jan from Grease--and I don't think this story would exist without them. One, my primary beta, has dropped out of fandom and mostly offline. One, who helped me with the larger themes and helped me come up with the title, is sadly no longer with us. And one, who probably gave me more constant encouragement than anyone, ever, is happily still a good friend.
Which brings me to the title. Eight Ways From Sunday is a reference both to that old saying of six ways to Sunday, altered to be about the eight main characters, but is also a reference to the Noble Eightfold Path in Buddhism. I remember that Ely and I mapped out the paths to the characters, but I can't replicate that without her here, so you'll have to trust me that at the time it totally worked. This bit of Ely-inspired hidden spirituality will come back in the sequel.
