Death Eater Takes a Holiday by Lee Lee Potter

[jane_elliot]

Yes, I know, I'm supposed to be writing, not reading.  But the Small Fandom Big Bang website just went live and there's already two stories posted and I'm just too excited to be creative.  Thus, this...

Death Eater Takes a Holiday

Everyone and their grandmother has recced this story, to me and to the rest of the world.  I've been hearing about it for

Comments

[cassiopeia13]

PLOT: I loved your plot, though, the set up with the holiday was a mite strange given that you rushed through it to get Harry and Snape together, might have been more enjoyable if they'd only slept together on the last day, at least it would have been 7 days leading up to it...

But I did like that you HAD a plot beyond the usual “how to get Harry and Snape to live Happily Ever After” It started with a plot, it continued with a plot and while it most mostly a character study of how they all grew and changed and came together, you still managed to have an interesting twist with Harry’s stupidly powerful self, the abuse, him going through that, reliving it, the healing and eventual fight of Voldemort. I greatly enjoyed the story and wondered through the whole thing what would happen next…though I did find the end predictable

WRITING STYLE: This is where my crit comes into play and while I realize you had a beta, there were still many things that could have been cleared up. Taking out the continuity errors which you’ve mentioned you know about, I’ll touch on other aspects, though perhaps in the future an outline or at least some notes to keep people, places and the time straight might help. I have to admit that at first I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue reading as your changing of tenses was highly annoying and VERY confusing at times, though I am glad I continued.
Your tenses at points changed from past to present. You should watch that. I realize, as a writer myself, it is hard to sometimes get your sentences to come out on paper as you see them in your head. Many writers, especialy starting out, write as if they’re telling a story with spoken words, rather than written words, which is a VERY different way of communicating. Things that sound right out loud don’t always translate well onto paper and I think that is where the problems lay. Also, Flashbacks cause your story to be choppy and seem unorganized. It makes it appear as if you had an afterthought you wanted to mention and so did a flashback to cover it. If I could make a suggestion, instead of doing flashbacks, have those parts of the story be at the beginning of your chapters. Manytimes you would have something like “harry laid on his bed thinking back to earlier” and then did a flash back. No need to do that when you could have just started with what had happened earlier.
The last thing was you’re telling this story from YOUR point of view, meaning you know what’s in all the characters heads, which is fine, but sometimes you would switch to a new character without any indication and it got confusing. There was one part that stood out, where Snape’s apprentise messed up a potion. Voldy said “You stand and watch” and then crucioed someone…. Only, it was unclear who he was talking to since there were three people in the room. Was he crucio-ing Snape? Which to me wouldn’t make sense since Snape was doing his job right, or was be crucioing the apprentis who messed up? There were a few times when things like that happened, and I think it was because of the quick changing POV ‘s.

So that’s my very long…. Er…review. All in all it was an enjoyable story, even with some grammatical errors causing confusion.

[jane_elliot]

I have to admit, knowing that the POV and tense change issues occur throughout the story makes me really, really glad I didn't keep reading. Did the author respond to the review?

[cassiopeia13]

Not yet, but I only sent it yesterday.

I honestly after the first few chapters didn't notice most the time, but there were times where it became blaringly obvious.

the tense was little things... I think she was writing in a style that would SOUND good, but read, just didn't work. I believe a lot of authors start off that way, because honestly, that's what we know. We, as young people, tend to think how we speak will translate into writing and sadly that is not the case.

[jane_elliot]

I have a degree in English lit, which has made it pretty much impossible for me to ignore seriously bad grammar and/or style mistakes. Though, if a story is *really* good, I sometimes can overlook minor punctuation issues. Sometimes:)

[cassiopeia13]

Haha. Yeah I definitely understand that. I have noticed even publications tend to have mistakes in them. So small grammar mistakes I don't really mind. Especially commas which is such a general mistake I most the time don't notice unless it's REALLY obvious.

I highly doubt you would have been able to get through this story even with the edited version that I read. *HEH* You'd be bald by the end of it.