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edenfallingAn interesting thing about writing a sort of parallel canon rather than going explicitly AU (or writing future-fic or past-fic) is that now and then, I am writing a scene that JKR has already written. On the one hand, this is useful because I know exactly how it goes; I don't have to wonder what happens next, or who will say what. On the other hand, it severely restricts my options, and forces me to be very careful about characterization, because I have to make JKR's previously written dialogue and actions make sense with my own perspective and with the narrative and themes that I have been building.
Annoyingly, the Ginny I have developed over the course of "Secrets" needs a fair bit of contortion to fit her canon dialogue from the end of CoS. This is partly because I have actually thought about Ginny's inner journey (which I don't think JKR was doing much back during CoS, though she probably did have some notion that Ginny's encounter with Tom Riddle would make a nice parallel to Harry's own encounters with Voldemort, and lead into her perfect love shtick), partly because I really do not construct and punctuate dialogue the way JKR does (I also paragraph differently from her), and partly because I do not buy into some of the underpinnings of JKR's moral universe and have been attempting to subvert and complicate it to some degree.
In a related point, I take a lot of Tom Riddle's dialogue down in the Chamber with a grain of salt. See, some of the 'diary entries' that he 'quotes' to Harry really make no sense as anything Ginny would have written in real life -- they paint her as oblivious beyond belief. Therefore, I choose to think he was paraphrasing and exaggerating.
The Watsonian explanation is that he's trying to get to Harry, and is using Ginny's 'words' as a weapon. The Doylist explanation is that JKR was too subtle about her plot and has to pull a bit of a deus ex machina in order to explain what Ginny and Tom were, jointly, doing all that year. So Tom conveniently explains the plot, but he 'quotes' Ginny so as to disguise the explain-o-matic dialogue just a bit.
('Watsonian' and 'Doylist' explanations are useful terms I encountered when reading![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
selenak's journal. I had been using 'in-story' and 'out-of-story' to mean the same thing, but the Holmesian terminology is more elegant. *grin*)
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"Secrets" progress: ch. 12 rough draft (12,975 words); ch. 13 rough draft (1,975 words)
NaNo progress: 2,425 words written; 47,575 to go
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Election tomorrow. *bites nails*
Annoyingly, the Ginny I have developed over the course of "Secrets" needs a fair bit of contortion to fit her canon dialogue from the end of CoS. This is partly because I have actually thought about Ginny's inner journey (which I don't think JKR was doing much back during CoS, though she probably did have some notion that Ginny's encounter with Tom Riddle would make a nice parallel to Harry's own encounters with Voldemort, and lead into her perfect love shtick), partly because I really do not construct and punctuate dialogue the way JKR does (I also paragraph differently from her), and partly because I do not buy into some of the underpinnings of JKR's moral universe and have been attempting to subvert and complicate it to some degree.
In a related point, I take a lot of Tom Riddle's dialogue down in the Chamber with a grain of salt. See, some of the 'diary entries' that he 'quotes' to Harry really make no sense as anything Ginny would have written in real life -- they paint her as oblivious beyond belief. Therefore, I choose to think he was paraphrasing and exaggerating.
The Watsonian explanation is that he's trying to get to Harry, and is using Ginny's 'words' as a weapon. The Doylist explanation is that JKR was too subtle about her plot and has to pull a bit of a deus ex machina in order to explain what Ginny and Tom were, jointly, doing all that year. So Tom conveniently explains the plot, but he 'quotes' Ginny so as to disguise the explain-o-matic dialogue just a bit.
('Watsonian' and 'Doylist' explanations are useful terms I encountered when reading
selenak's journal. I had been using 'in-story' and 'out-of-story' to mean the same thing, but the Holmesian terminology is more elegant. *grin*)---------------
"Secrets" progress: ch. 12 rough draft (12,975 words); ch. 13 rough draft (1,975 words)
NaNo progress: 2,425 words written; 47,575 to go
---------------
Election tomorrow. *bites nails*
