ANASTASIO ATTANASIO ALIAS RICKY IN “TELL ME A STORY!” by F.P.Barbieri

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(NOTE to inverarity68 and anyone else who is interested: while the first story was only a sort of ouverture, here the world-building begins in earnest. Concrit welcome.)

Comments

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You have a point that the ending is both dry and insufficiently concerned with the nominal protagonist. I will try to do better in stories to come, but I am pretty much making it up as I go along. My problem is that I am trying to do something that has no real model. While I have drawn the basic categories from JKR's mythology, I could not, as you did, place a central institution such as a school at the centre, with the certainty that the adult leadership - whether Dumbledore or Diana Grimm, Raspire or Scrimgeour - knew most of the answers. The whole series of stories is a struggle towards a half-seen, half-unknown centre; either that centre does not exist and must be built, or if it does (I cannot say more) it must be found. So the whole element of world-building can neither be delegated to a Hermione character reading one or more versions of Hogwarts: A History nor be forced bit by bit out of a more or less unwilling set of adults. The adults are nearly as blind as Ricky. Even his father, the Minister, is not quite sure exactly how many wizarding tribes actually exist in Italy, for there are cave-dwelling and subterranean groups who speak unknown languages that never have been written down, and who have not come out into the sun since before Rome was founded; and there are other groups who hide in forests and mountain, at war with the whole world, of whom it is not always clear whether they are men or ogres (orchi). At the same time, the whole element of child's eye narrative is something I have never done before. I know in theory what I want, but in practice getting there is proving infernally difficult. I say this not to excuse any poor writing that may be found in the closing paragraphs, but to explain its presence.