December 31st, 2005

Illustmaker me

Random HP thought to end the year on

I'm still in favor of the idea that at some point, JKR has changed her mind, and Harry will end up DADA teacher. She's made him enjoy teaching, has now established that Lupin won't come back, and has worked the DADA position itself into the Voldemort plot. I still think it makes sense and would make me feel good. ;)

However, I had another thought. She always said it would be a classmate we didn't expect who ended up a teacher.

What it it's Malfoy?

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Illustmaker me

Views of the Loch--game-meme sort of thing

I'm reading The Art of Fiction (yes, sjepstein, I'm finally getting around to it), and Gardner gives a writing exercise about tone and details and so on. The exercise is to describe a barn from the point of view of a man who's just lost his only son, and to get it across without mentioning anything specific about the situation--just get the character across by the way he describes the barn. I don't know how it is as a writing exercise, but it sounded like a fun LJ-game.

So, these are the rules:

1. In a paragraph, describe the Hogwarts lake from the point of view of a canon character at some point in canon (or known canon history). Do not name the character or give any details about the situation. No, "It had been years since..." sorts of things, nothing that will nail the character down explicitly (gendered pronouns are all right if your character is one of the things on which the environment has a physical effect (eg, "the water ran over her shoes")). Do not use emotion words (eg, "The lake seemed lonely..."). The lake should be viewed at roughly the same time of day. (Yup, I'm taking away the "dark, stormy night.")

2. Repeat three times, with different characters in different situations. You may choose any season for the character to be viewing the lake, but the weather should be similar--if it's cloudy in one, it's cloudy in the others.

3. Let your f-list guess who's who, and when (and say why they think so). Don't confirm or correct.

4. A day later, post a follow-up paragraph to each that reveals the character and situation.

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