snowgall | Fic: All In, Draco/Harry, PG-13

Entry tags:

Fic: All In, Draco/Harry, PG-13

Figured I might as well post this link to my LJ for posterity. My first (and most likely last!) fic :)

Title:

All In (or on LJ)
Author:

snowgall
Pairing: Draco/Harry
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 427
Summary: Draco introduces Harry to strip poker
Warnings: Unbetaed*; misuse of British-isms by an American; scanty knowledge of poker
Notes: Written for Draco's Kinks and Tropes Party July 10, 2015 for the prompt "Draco introduces Harry to strip poker" by

indyonblue

*Concrit is welcome for this. Seriously, this is a first fic and I have no delusions that it is a masterpiece or anything. I would really love to know how to get the dialogue to flow better (the way Draco talks about betting their clothes still doesn't really work for me, honestly), how to make the setting more clear, how to get their thoughts across non-clumsily, all of it, basically. You can send me a PM if you like, or comment below, and my feelings won't be hurt at all. I've already gotten more nice and sweet comments on this than I expected, so I don't need to be coddled.
Oh, and if I got any British-isms wrong I definitely want to know! Like, does it make sense for Draco to say "What I am interested in, is seeing what Harry Potter looks like under his kit" ? Is that the right way to use "kit" or did I flub it? Using language right is really important to me, so please do tell me if something is off.

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This is beta - there is one "to" to many in this sentence: "I'm going to back to my room to strip off."

Concrit: I find this is really well-written. You quickly and forcefully set the scene, introduce the characters and the main "plot". You are not afraid of effective repetition. Your words and sentences flow and end on the right beat, rhythmically. All good stuff. Your true test, of course, will be a longer story with more moving of characters around a scene, with more complicated motivations and a full suspense plot (with sex scene). :)

To me, not a native speaker of English, the dialogue flows wonderfully. Especially the line when Draco offers to bet taking off their clothes. I love how dialogue and prose flow into each other. I was wondering, though, while reading how Harry can see Draco adjusting his trousers when they are, presumably, all sitting around a table. You never describe the location at all, and it's rather awesome how well that works. But perhaps here is a good place for a concise visual of the setting.

There a few lines where I would use punctation differently. Here, for example:
"I'm not interested in birds, Blaise, " Draco is grinning now,[.] "What I am interest...

And - totally minor and subjective quibble - I am not fond of using "he laughs" as a speech tag. Draco cannot laugh "Potter", he can only say "Potter" in a laughing voice, or say it and then laugh, something like that.

Just curious: Why did you decide to write the ficlet in the present tense?

Thank you so much! This is all very awesome feedback! I am going to go fix those typos right away.

Good point about whether Harry would be able to see Draco adjusting his trousers under the table. I actually did wonder about this myself, but when I tried having Draco do anything else suggestive (run his hands down his torso? Lick his lips? It just seemed campy and I couldn't make it work. So I did the trouser thing because I didn't know what else to do, and I thought Draco needed to do something to entice Harry. But it bothers me too! Maybe it's a glass table? What else could I have Draco do?

And the last line was SO DIFFICULT to figure out. I had so many stupid endings I rejected before settling on this one. (Like Harry saying "Join Me?" or something equally clumsy). So I see what you mean about using "laughs" as a speech tag. For me, it felt like I needed to break the line with some sort of tag (I can't explain why I felt this way, I just do. I've never studied creative writing, so I don't know why or whether some things work and other things don't.) So the line felt like it needed a tag, and that's just the one that came to mind. But I'll think about your suggestions and see if maybe they might work better.

It's so weird that I wrote it in present tense, because that wasn't a conscious decision at all! And indeed, I sometimes find present tense to be jarring in a fic, so I am really surprised that it came out this way. I wish I had been more thoughtful about it, but what I was really stressing over was the dialogue, not the tense :)

Thank you so much for this!

As for the trouser adjusting. I do like the movement, and you are right, running down his hands his torso would be way too campy, and please, no more lip-licking as gesture of enticement, it has been already old in 1986. ;)
But I was wondering: Does Harry need to sit opposite of Draco? Couldn't Draco sit to his right, so that, at a small poker table, he could actually see the movement?

As for the last line. Yes, you totally need a speech tag, the way it's written now. What do think about doing it like this:

"Potter." He laughs. "I'm all in."

Is the punctuation with full stops too sharp? Not enought flow?

Oh! How simple to just write the dialogue with full stops instead. Why, that never occurred to me! (She laughed :)

I think I'll make that change :)

As for Draco sitting next to him, I'm torn. Because you're totally right about the trouser thing, but for some reason I liked him sitting across from Harry because it would be easier for Harry to stare at him that way, without necessarily being obvious about it. This is something I'm going to have to think about.

(As an aside: It's really rather fascinating how every little decision you make in a fic has all these consequences! I'm really enjoying getting this feedback from you and getting to think critically about writing)

Maybe other people will chime in and let me know if the trouser thing is enough of an issue that I should just move Draco one seat over! I am definitely willing to bow to the masses on this one.

Love reading your advice, Vaysh. I must chip in about the last line. I think it definitely loses the graceful flow it currently has when you break it up like that. I really admired the flow of snowgall's writing here and I think it would be tragic to lose any of that, especially in this last line, which is so joyful and keeps the momentum Harry and Draco build up as they are about to leave the room. I would stick with the original for that reason, although not stylistically correct, or go for the slightly less lovely, "Potter," he says with a laugh, "I'm all in."

Oh no! Dueling advice! Now I have to find an arbiter :) Maybe I will gather up the courage to show this to my husband and see what he thinks. (just to be clear, I don't need courage to ask him for writing concrit - he's great for that - but to show him my fanfic!)

I'm so grateful for the feedback though, and it is so interesting that there isn't just one 'right' way to write it. If only it were that easy!

And it's also becoming funny to me that we have already written more words discussing this fic than are even *in* the fic. But I like to think that picking apart a shorter piece makes discussing the craft of writing easier. Maybe because you can be more focused and not have to worry about a sweeping complex plot or anything.

Really there's so much that I don't know about how to do this, so keeping it focused on a short piece is probably the most helpful to me. Vaysh was being highly optimistic when she said, "Your true test, of course, will be a longer story with more moving of characters around a scene, with more complicated motivations and a full suspense plot (with sex scene). :) " ! This was hard and stressful enough for now :) Any more complexity and I would give in ♥

"Your true test, of course, will be a longer story with more moving of characters around a scene, with more complicated motivations and a full suspense plot (with sex scene).

I've almost given up on trying to get all that right! Sometimes I think, if we really sat down and thought about what we were trying to achieve, we would never write at all. Remember this is meant to be a fun hobby, first and foremost. And I think someone's excitement and sense of fun/ urgency to tell the story when they are writing is often the most wonderful part, and outweighs stylistic elements in making a fic a gripping and memorable read.

It's really rather fascinating how every little decision you make in a fic has all these consequences!
It's the most wonderful and a very strange thing. And one of the ways the characters can run away from the plotline you had in mind at the beginning.

I'm not good at beta-ing at all (just usefull as an alpha-reader for feedback about the flow, incongruencies and stuff like that). Nothing threw my out of my reading flow here.

As for the dialogues. Some writers/authors/smart people who know more about this being an author thing said it's helpful to read dialogues out loud (reading whole stories can be helpful too). That way you'd hear, where your characters sound too stiff or stilted. As an ELS I still count on my beta for that (because sometimes I just don't know), but I'm sure you'll manage on your own.

And just thinking about it. A glass table would be a great way for Harry to see Draco's tight trousers. :D

The characters totally ran away from me here! I hadn't even initially planned to have Blaise and Ron part of it at all, but they inserted themselves, and insisted on staying :)

I believe you're right about reading dialogue out loud. I didn't do that here, and I should try it. I know that sometimes I read other people's dialogue and I wonder if it would sound at all natural read out loud.

Thanks so much for the feedback! I'm trying to think how I can make the table glass without it being a clumsy insertion. I'm still thinking about this problem!

You used kit just right! I've just reread it on AO3 and I concur that

vaysh may well be right about the ending, as well. I am a lousy beta! I don't actually have a clue what I am doing, but this was certainly a super read.

Do you think you might try your hand again sometime, dear?

You're not a lousy beta at all! I am so thrilled to be getting such informative concrit on such a lightweight ficlet.

I really don't know if I will do this again. It still surprises me that I did it this time! I remember thinking, "oh cool, newbie writers are writing for this fest and they're doing a great job." and then I was curious which prompts hadn't yet been claimed and I went through the prompts and when I came across this one I just thought, "oh. I wonder if I could do something with this?"

But at first it was just an exercise for me to see if I could do it. I didn't even plan on posting it at all. But once I finally had a last line that I liked, I got brave and decided what the hell.

But I honestly know that anything longer would have been a significant challenge for me. I've tried in the past to dream up plots, and I always get stuck somewhere and can't make it work, even in my head. Dealing with setting descriptions is also something I'd be too impatient to do. It's funny that Vaysh thought it mostly worked that I hadn't described the location. Mostly I just avoided it because I had no patience for it! Making a virtue of necessity, I suppose :)

Hah, I suck at plots, too (as you've noticed, hee hee). Perhaps our skills lie elsewhere ;) I'm OK with descriptions of place, but I struggle with moving people around (I have dyspraxia - I'm sure that contributes to both plotting and positioning troubles). I don't know any authors who excel at everything. Just being good enough at what you are good at is more than OK, in my book.

Oh and I meant to say that I am so relieved that I got the idiom right! I didn't want it to sound off to Brits.

Many (many!) years ago (1992-3) did a study abroad year in England. University of Lancaster, I you want to know. So I like to think I can do a half-way decent britpick on a fic. But like I said, it's been years (though we also lived in Ireland for 4 months in 2009) so my ear for British-isms has declined significantly. And I'm not at all current with how the cool kids speak these days :)

What is it they say? England and America are two countries divided by a common language. It's so true! Here we'd just say "under his clothes". "Kit" sounds very foreign!

I liked it, and yay you for testing the waters so swimmingly! Being American i can't help with Brit-picking, but I thought the language flowed well, and I don't really have any criticisms. For the sight-lines, you could perhaps have them sitting around a low coffee-type table for the card-playing - though I'm not sure why they would. I have this metal image of Draco tipping himself back in his chair and that catching Harry's eye - but physical location is not my strong suit.

I respectfully disagree with Vaysh about "he laughs" as a dialogue tag. To me it sounds fine. I consider it a perfectly acceptable shorthand for "he says laughing" or "he says laughingly" or "he says with a laugh," all of which are other options. I would not suggest using a bunch of full stops/periods there, because I think, as birds said earlier, that it breaks the flow. In some circumstances periods work, but it's a question of pacing.

The first time I heard someone object to using "laughs", "smiles", "scowls", etc as dialogue tags on the grounds that those actions don't produce speech, I thought the critic was being pedantic. But I've seen enough objections now that I realize that these tags do genuinely stick out at some people. I probably use fewer of them now not because I personally think there's anything wrong with them but because I'm aware they do bother some people.

(On the other hand, there are other dialogue tags and adverbs I enjoy using, which others might object to, because they color the interpretation - but I like having a writer whose voice I enjoy color the interpretation of dialogue, so I go ahead and use them. That's just a question of taste, so you can suit yourself.)

Write more! :D

Oh I like the idea of him tipping back in his chair! That does seem both in character and helpful to the scene. I will think about working that in!

And given the input from both you and birds, I've changed the last line back now. Honestly, I'm too close to it, and I can't judge it with any impartiality or even see it clearly. It's like when you say a word over and over again and it starts to sound odd. I've looked at this line so many times now that I have no idea what it really looks or sounds like anymore :) So I'll just go with the majority for now. Maybe I'll change it back every week :)

And yeah, personal preferences and peeves for dialogue tags and such is so very idiosyncratic and hard to figure out. Obviously I'm OK with using "laughs" the way I did, but I can also see Vaysh's point, and I'm sure many other people feel the same way. It's hard to be sure what to do!

But thank you so much for the feedback. It really means a lot to me that people have taken the time to make concrete suggestions on a little fic, and the fact that you have done so makes me feel like maybe I *should* try to write again. But probably not very soon, and certainly not a very long fic :)

(And I'm really supposed to be writing something else!)

Thanks again!

Maybe fic writing will be a nice break from that other writing!

And, you know, there are far fewer rules for fic writing, because there are so many different styles and tastes that you can choose what you like, or what you feel up for. Follow a plot-bunny hopping down its bunny trail. See a prompt that tickles your fancy. Sometimes you can even repurpose an old prompt for a different fest. It's a supportive community here on LJ and many of us (judging from the comments) would love to read more of your fics whenever you feel so moved!

Good luck with the other writing thing. I am signing "good luck" in ASL here at my computer.... You can do it!

Thank you so much!

And you're so right about LJ being a suportive community. It's really quite lovely how wonderful everyone has been. I have loved meeting you all.

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Fic: All In, Draco/Harry, PG-13

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