Leaving, twice

[ishonn]

First was the poem, in April. Nearly two months later I looked at it and thought I could try to write the same thing in prose. Now I think the fic is much better than the poem, perhaps because paradoxically it's more poetic.

EDIT: December 15th, 2006
My precious magda2em drew a picture to illustrate the fic. You can find it here:

Comments

[paulamcg]

Thank you so much for looking for the reasons for the third person. I can understand how it helps in achieving the detachment (even though I think I’ve shown my first-person Remus and Sirius, too, as somewhat detached from their emotions).

Yes, I knew I was getting sidetracked when mentioning the issue of he versus you in Dress, as that’s not the same thing as the choice of person to use for the viewpoint character. I just got carried away, thinking about my own tendency to choose something that scares readers off. In three stories I’ve been arrogant enough to let my first-person viewpoint characters think about other characters in the second person.

I’m glad you got rid of the other men! And no, please don’t consider whether you could talk about the werewolf in order to avoid the repetition of Remus in stories using his or Sirius’s perspective. I explain my view in detail here.

I agree that Bottlebrush’s interpretation is interesting. It looks like the result of attempts at seeing a greater role for this piece in the whole of the HP story. I suppose I’m so used to reading stories which deal with Remus and Sirius’s intimate affairs without much wider context that I didn’t even think this was necessarily set near Halloween 1981. I thought that if Sirius left here, he could still come back to live with Remus (once or several times) before the major tragic events.

And I have to admit I allowed myself to be totally drowned by Remus’s conviction, despite the third person. I wonder why. Perhaps because while my Remus certainly makes mistakes, I don’t expect my readers to notice them before he does. Now I like to play with the idea that this Remus could be just hypersensitive.

[ishonn]

I'm sure it is possible to keep characters detached from their emotions in their narration. However, in this piece I wanted to filter information. If I used first person voice, I would be forced to let Remus spill it all in order to remain real. During this little scene there were hundreds of racing thoughts going through Remus's head. I didn't want to TELL, I wanted to make the reader FEEL. I hope I succeeded.

Oh no, I wasn't going to consider referring to Remus as the werewolf! Not in my life! I always felt a little... it might be silly, but disloyal and unsensitive to Remus whenever this idea crossed my mind. I rather meant trying to rephrase some paragraphs in order to avoid repeating names. With Sirius and Remus the problem seems to be the amount of 's', at least to me. But I'd sooner leave the text as it is than think up artificial and irritating epithets or periphrases. I agree with your remarks on The Snitch and think you succeeded in forming a precise rule: I can refer to my characters in a way they can refer to themselves.

I must admit I, too, wasn't thinking of a wider context while writing Leaving. My aim was to capture a scene, a moment, a notion. But I'm immensely happy to learn new interpretations and see my work completed in different ways.

I see you trusted my Remus completely. I can't help wondering if it's mainly due to the influence of your own vision, or because I didn't get the possibility through clearly enough. On the other hand, I didn't want to openly question Remus's understanding of the situation. So perhaps it's right as it is. I'm ver glad you liked the idea after all.

[paulamcg]

Yes, you show us Remus acting and observing; you don’t describe his feelings in detail.

This reminds me of what you said about A Rosy Sunset:
You're not obvious, describing feelings, but you make me feel everything for myself as I see every move and hear every breath of the narrator. You expect your reader to be intelligent enough to understand your traces

I suppose this story is not easy either - at least not easy to read and not believe Remus. At least it wasn’t for me.

Still, I maintain that it’s possible to filter information in the first-person, too. I want to reach the illusion - only an illusion - that my narrative (both first-person and third-person) records the viewpoint character’s consciousness. Of course, it’s not possible to write down each of the hundreds of racing thoughts and changing or persistent emotions. We can’t possibly word everything in our minds. But I’m not even aiming at an identical copy of reality. These images of reality I build up are supposed to help us see what life is about more clearly than we can in the chaos of our real lives. I choose what to include for a purpose. Perhaps I’ll continue about this in the letter, if it still seems significant enough.

I wouldn’t like to emphasize the problem of recurring names. I want to believe that the reader won’t notice the repetition. But you’ve made me start to think that it works better with names like Tom and Jack, which sound very different and almost as familiar as e.g. and and they. Perhaps, if we want to write beautiful pieces about intimate interaction - during which the object of almost every act and observation is one of the two characters - we’d better write het stories. Of course, that’s if there isn’t something we can say specifically about homosexual relationships, and don’t want to write about our particular favourite gay guys. In my third-person narrative I’ve especially enjoyed writing and reading some scenes in which Remus (who’s almost all the time referred to as he, which I find more natural, because I don’t think a person actually calls himself by the name in his mind) interacts with one female character - usually an owl or a mother figure, as I said on the Snitch, too.

[ishonn]

I'm wondering if it's good that my story is not easy. I have a notion that it is.

I expect that the reader feels it only natural to identify with Remus and to trust his perception. So perhaps it's just me, but all the time while writing this story I really wasn't sure if Sirius was leaving. It might be that my trust in Sirius came first in this case.

I agree with you that it is possible to filter information in first-person narration, and I'm sure that your stories are best examples - whereas I as a reader don't feel that you hide anything from me . Still, I'm convinced that in the case of Leaving I wouldn't be able to put as strong a filter as I wished in order to attain my goal, as I would lose credibility. I could write this story in first person, but I'm sure I'd achieve a completely different result. I'll be delighted to learn more of your remarks on narration voice in the letter.

It might work better for Sirius and Remus if we called them Moony and Pads/Padfoot, but again these are names I only use in very particular situations. So yes, we're either going to start writing about other characters, or are doomed to repetitions and can only try to make them unnoticeable.