Membership Vote, "Journey"

[pocketfullof]

We have a new candidate for membership! As usual, only members may vote in the poll, but comments and feedback are welcome from everyone. I know our anonymous author would love to hear what you think.

Title: Journey
Author: Anonymous
Rating: PG
Summary: A trip to Muggle London helps Harry put his life back together.
Words: 1800

Comments

[quidditchmum]

I'm going to bite here because I would hate to be hanging with no feedback. How Harry and Ginny got back together has been written many, many times, so I feel like it is really hard to get a fresh take on it. I'm a relative late comer to fanfic and whilst I have given a lot of thought to how I think their reunion might have happened, I don't think I could pull off a convincing fic that someone hasn't already written. For a fic of this nature to stand out, it would have to have either an original hook (very hard to come up with at this point) or be so funny or so heart warming that it couldn't be ignored. I don't think you quite hit that here. That said, I think your writing has great potential. I suggest giving it another go with a more original concept. I hope that was helpful. Good luck!

[snuggle_muggle]

I didn't hate this story or anything, but I felt like it had a few areas where it could be improved. First of all, I didn't think the characterization was really quite "there." Harry having tears in his eyes, for example, at the end of the story seemed a bit overdone and I thought Molly at the beginning was not realistic. Also, perhaps more seriously, there didn't really seem to be much of a "problem" that had to be conquered in the course of the story. Was it Ron? Was it Harry's fame? Was it Molly's paranoia? We never really know, so there is no satisfactory conclusion. I would suggest a rewrite after a serious analysis of what exactly you want the problem that's keeping them apart to be, then write the story so they can overcome it. Avoid sappy or weak characterizations in the process and then the ending will be much more satisfactory with us really caring about Harry and Ginny's triumph over the odds. Hope this helps

[nundu_art]

The writing is okay, but the plot didn't seem to have a direction, was contrived and contradictory. Harry wanted to get away from people who knew who he was (hence the trip into Muggleland), but then they jump on the Knight Bus? Hermione doing Sudoku? I don't see her wasting her time in that manner, not to mention it was not around in the late 90s.

[lord_spyridon]

Just to back up the author, Sudoku has been around for ages in varying formats but in its modern formatting, it appeared in around 1980 in Japan. It didn't become an international hit until 2005. I can kind of see Hermione doing it but maybe not so soon after the war ended and only as an interest of curiosity thing, not as a real hobby.

I don't know what is really irking me about this fic. It might have been that some sentences had a feeling of being thrown in there haphazardly or the feeling that plot itself was highly simplified. Another could have been the radical shift in Harry shooing his friends out just based on the fact that Ginny went to the bathroom and her believing what Harry said. I mean, she's lived with Fred and George and could probably tell that Harry was covering up the real reason why Hermione and Ron left.