Choices, PG-13, Narcissa/Severus

[flyingspatulas]

Title: Choices
Author: Gwendolyn James
Genre: Angst/Romance
Audience: Most People
Pairings: Narcissa/Severus, Narcissa/Lucius
Warnings: Character Death
Length/Complete: 3291, yes
Summary: I sacrificed everything to be what they wanted me to be, just so I could have a small piece of their empty admiration.

Comments

[jen_deben]

Your writing is clean and has a good flow to it, and you have the start of a good story here, but I never felt emotionally engaged with the story.

To craft an effective plot, you want your protagonist to be faced with problems, and to make choices to try to fix those problems. The choices can lead to things going right or going wrong, but you do want your protagonist to be the one moving the plot forward.

Narcissa doesn't do anything here. Her father tells her she's getting married. Her sister tells her not to screw things up. Severus initiates their relationship. Severus tells her they cannot run away together. Lucius's mother tells her she's to produce an heir. Draco becomes Daddy's little boy. Do you see? Narcissa doesn't do anything in this story. She's a doormat. She makes no choices; she doesn't affect the plot.

Given that the story is supposed to be about the tragedy of Narcissa's life, you really can't afford to have the reader not care about what happens to her, and not caring about Narcissa is far too easy here. It's hard to empathise with someone who is spineless.

Narcissa never rebels, and we never find out why. If we knew precisely what horrible things would happen to her if she fought back, then we could empathise with her decision not to. We would empathise with her even more if she did try to fight back, and was caught and punished for it, and forced to do as she was told anyway. We, the readers, need to see her struggling to fix her life before we'll feel sorry for her when she fails.

The fact that you "tell", rather than "show" the story is acerbating the problem also. "Telling" also tends to leave a reader emotionally disengaged. Narcissa tells us that she doesn't want to get married, she tells us she's in love, she tells us her heart is broken. It's like listening to someone whining, so it doesn't help us feel sympathetic toward her.

To "show" a story, you want the reader to picture the scenes, feel the emotions and see the characters - if possible, to even see their body language. You can do that with careful description. If the reader has to figure out what Severus feels for Narcissa based on how he behaves, rather than on what he says, then almost by definition you've made the reader empathise with Severus. They will understand what he feels, because they had to partly feel it themselves in order to figure out what was going on inside him. As another example, rather than saying Narcissa's heart is bleeding, describe very clearly what she feels - an aching in her chest, or a tightness in her throat. If you make the reader "picture" what Narcissa feels, then you're helping them empathise with her.

Good luck with this! I am very interested in stories featuring Narcissa and Severus right now. From canon, they appear to be almost the same age, and might very well have been in the same year at Hogwarts. Maybe there was love! :)

[flyingspatulas]

I can see your point, but I really feel that Narcissa *is* someone who has just let life happen to her. There are real people who do the very same thing. I don't think that a character has to be brave or proactive or even someone who stands up for themselves. I see Narcissa as a woman who has lived a seemingly "perfect" life, but at a severe personal cost - she has lost who she is. She is not the heroine of her own story, but I also do not feel that she is "spineless". She is scared, and yes, even weak at times, but that does not make her a character to be despised.

Narcissa never rebels, and we never find out why.
The whole first section discusses how Narcissa lives to please her family - she wants their approval. I didn't feel that I needed to spell out the exact consequences of "rebellion" because I assumed that the reader could infer from canon and from the brief statements about Andromeda just what would happen if Narcissa attempted to take her life into her own control. I have always hated when authors babied their readers and told them every single detail about how everyone is feeling and thinking at every moment. I like to hope that my readers are a bit better at critical thinking and emotional empathy than that. However, I feel that because this is a personal narrative on Narcissa's part that she does describe her emotions very plainly. I don't know about you, but when I write in my journal, I focus more on my emotions than on the exact events of the day. I see Narcissa as being very realistic about her life, but that doesn't mean she can control it.

We, the readers, need to see her struggling to fix her life before we'll feel sorry for her when she fails.
I can understand that as well, but that is not how I see Narcissa. I see her as one who has seen from her sisters' examples just where her choices can lead her, and she has chosen to emulate one rather than the other. She feels trapped in her life and does not have the courage to escape it. However, there are parts of the story where she does try to convince Severus to run away with her, but he believes he is protecting her by not letting her do it, and she does not dare to fight for what she wants at the cost of losing him.

Phew! Thank you SO MUCH for the helpful review. It is a very rare occasion that I get to discuss my writing in such a constructive way and useful way. I really appreciate it. :D