 Perspicacity 2008-09-01 . chapter 1Generally you do a good job with a relaxed narrative, much like JKR herself produces. It’s comfortable, functional prose that won’t win any beauty contests, but does get the job done. You do a good job of dramatization and you’ve created a nice start to a story, one which promises to be interesting. Also, you don’t fuss around for a long time with nothing happening--a common problem with fanfiction stories. Rather, you jump into serious action and intrigue already, something which bodes well for your story.
A few pointers and things I caught:
I agree with your comment in another forum about your needing a beta, but I disagree that plot is your only issue--you’ve several little mechanical errors throughout that need to be cleaned up. They are just frequent enough to be distracting.
If you want traffic, make sure you put a second character with Harry, even if it’s not a love interest (Harry/Voldemort is better than Harry solo). Because around half the fandom represented on the site is slash, people search by Harry + X, either making X the slash or het pairing of interest to avoid stories of the opposite persuasion. Harry alone is a much less common choice. Also, if your story is going to be slash (or het, or no pairings), it’s courtesy to warn folks somewhere, e.g., in an A/N or the summary.
Your title is misspelled. It should be “statute” and not “statue”, unless you really do mean it as a piece about sculpture.
One inaccuracy: fifteen year old boys aren’t in a “girls are icky” stage any more, so much as a “how can I get them to show me their tits” stage. I was fifteen once myself. I know. :)
Your narrative started to get a little muddled toward the end of the chapter. You might benefit from working on that section in particular.
While it’s hard to tell how good this will turn out from the first chapter, there’s enough quality here that I think it’s worth your continuing. |