plodding along, inch by painful inch
Mar. 16th, 2009 01:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingNo work on ch. 14 today, but I went over ch. 13 and incorporated most of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snaegl's suggestions. I also noticed, while checking that one borrowed line of dialogue really was canon (Cat is absolutely right that's it's a badly phrased line!), that I had a blocking problem. Because I actually wrote the scene in McGonagall's office where Harry explains the plot (Rowling skims it, for obvious reasons, but I needed to show Ginny's emotional reactions immediately after the Chamber), I'd invented a sofa and made the Weasley family sit down instead of standing through several minutes of exposition.
The problem is that they don't sit down in canon. Rowling says that "[Ginny] was standing with her head against Mrs. Weasley's shoulder, and tears were still coursing silently down her cheeks."
It's a ridiculously minor issue, but the point of "Secrets" is to be perfectly compatible with canon (except for the Valentine's Day thing, which is just unreconcilable with earth calendars and earth school scheduling, and my previously stated assumption that Tom was paraphasing diary entries rather than quoting them verbatim to Harry in the Chamber), so I went back and made about twenty small changes to keep the Weasleys standing near the doorway and remove all refences to sitting, sofa cushions, and getting up from a sofa.
I also yanked out a certain amount of melodrama, and remembered to mention back in scene 1 that Harry is covered in ink as well as blood. *sigh*
I am never, ever, ever going to try writing parallel canon again. Ever. It is just way too frustrating and it feeds my bad habit of obsessing over tiny, stupid details.
snaegl's suggestions. I also noticed, while checking that one borrowed line of dialogue really was canon (Cat is absolutely right that's it's a badly phrased line!), that I had a blocking problem. Because I actually wrote the scene in McGonagall's office where Harry explains the plot (Rowling skims it, for obvious reasons, but I needed to show Ginny's emotional reactions immediately after the Chamber), I'd invented a sofa and made the Weasley family sit down instead of standing through several minutes of exposition.The problem is that they don't sit down in canon. Rowling says that "[Ginny] was standing with her head against Mrs. Weasley's shoulder, and tears were still coursing silently down her cheeks."
It's a ridiculously minor issue, but the point of "Secrets" is to be perfectly compatible with canon (except for the Valentine's Day thing, which is just unreconcilable with earth calendars and earth school scheduling, and my previously stated assumption that Tom was paraphasing diary entries rather than quoting them verbatim to Harry in the Chamber), so I went back and made about twenty small changes to keep the Weasleys standing near the doorway and remove all refences to sitting, sofa cushions, and getting up from a sofa.
I also yanked out a certain amount of melodrama, and remembered to mention back in scene 1 that Harry is covered in ink as well as blood. *sigh*
I am never, ever, ever going to try writing parallel canon again. Ever. It is just way too frustrating and it feeds my bad habit of obsessing over tiny, stupid details.
