#arc writing

"Fuck, you're so wet."

Draco roughly pushed Harry away. "You literally saw me crawl out of the pool! It's not my fault I still have to cover from the sun to heal properly and you deciding to hug me out of nowhere."

Great question! This happens to be one of my absolute favorite parts of writing and pkmn irl itself. I've always been more of an ideas guy myself. I hope you don't mind but I decided to turn this into a bit of an overall tutorial for planning and writing arcs. Feel free to ask for any specifics because I could delve into my personal process for arc brainstorming, but I was admittedly writing this before getting ready for work and this post was getting kinda long haha

Knowing where to draw inspiration from can be a good place to start. It's wonderful to be inspired by music, a movie or tv show, a book, or even other people in the community and their writing. Ask yourself what elements of that thing draw you in. What do you like? What would you maybe do differently? I must mention though to be respectful of the work other blogs have put into their writing. Being inspired is a wonderful thing, lifting exact details or passages is not. If you're unsure, there's no harm is asking!

The most helpful thing I can tell you right off the bat is that you want to find out how to brainstorm. In schools they'll often try to teach you ways of brainstorming and outlining to structure your essay writing, if you're lucky they might even mention that there are multiple ways you can do this. The ones in school never worked for me personally, so for a long time I assumed brainstorming and outlining was a complete waste of my time and would launch straight into my writing drafts. But as I wanted to write more complex things and I wanted to indulge in more creative writing, I found myself getting stuck all the time. The truth is brainstorming is a helpful tool, but you have to know what type of brainstorming works best for you. Flowcharts, bullet points, stream of consciousness, word clouds, moodboards, drawings, whatever it is that gets your creative juices flowing. In my experience it works best to remember that not every one of these elements will make it into the final arc. You want to get your ideas down first and trim the excess later. I personally pay for a program (Milanote) that allows me to brainstorm in the methods that work best for me, but by no means do you have to pay for a program to do this. Pen and paper works just fine.

The next thing you wanna do is establish what you want your arc to do. Not every arc has to be a grand character development, but all arcs do something. No matter how small that something may be, something has to change as a result. Maybe your character meets a new person, obtains a new Pokemon, gets a new scar and a story to tell their friends, or maybe all they got was a t-shirt. If you already had a loose concept for your arc this can help you hone it. You can start asking yourself, "how does my character reach this point?" and work up to that. Map out what you think your character would do when dropped into a particular situation. This can also help you to establish the tone you want your arc to take. Is it silly and lighthearted or is it more serious and high stakes? Refer to the stakes tag post about proper tagging.

It can help to conceptualize your arc as a series of events rather than a single event. This allows you to understand how many posts you may need to split the arc up into, how much time the arc may take, or other hard to sort details.

These things ramp up when you start to incorporate more people into your arcs. Planning with your fellow writers is extremely important and that requires a lot of communication. Some writers prefer to do what we call pre-writing, which is typically you and the other writers get together and write out the posts in advance. This gives people the chance to look over each other's writing and make edits before the posts go live. Planning discords are useful for keeping things organized, but google docs or other collaborative writing programs can work just as well if those better suit your needs. Organize who is posting what and generally at what time, especially if the post involves other people's characters.

Modesty

There are many rules about pureblood society that Harry has had to learn to properly fit in. Which functions and occasions requires long robes and a collar high to cover his entire neck, where it is appropriate to wear nothing but a tunic, and where his place depends only on the words of a select few.

This time, the layers upon layers of robes aren't for modesty, as isn't the mask in his hand. They're for protection. He knows Draco will recognise him, both intimately familiar with each other's duelling style. 

Harry pecks a quick kiss on Draco's cheek before his face, too, is covered by a mask turning him into a faceless threat. 

"Don't die on me, will you?" Harry asks, hoping his worry wouldn't show.

Draco gently cradles his face. "You've already killed Dumbledore and Moody, there isn't that big of a threat to me left."

The only reason I'm dressing up is Draco. Pressed shirt, fitted vest, a silken cravat — all black, no necessary adornments. I know even he would dress simple for such an occasion. Putting on my robe is deafening, suffocating… it's made of light, tightly woven linen and yet it feels like it's made of stone that weighs me down. I cannot breathe; I have no other choice. 

I finally dare to look at myself in the mirror. 

I'm considering ships for the fic and I've got:

Harrymort - Dark!Harry staple, but would mess up the excellent plot of dark lord takeover. Still very tempting!

Drarry - A classic, very Evitative and this fic is already somewhat similar

Theorry - I refuse to call it Nottpott Theo is dark-ish enough, but a touch cliché with him being Harry's first slytherin friend here

An older Slytherin OC - Would be fun to write maybe, but I avoid anything Harry/OC, so there's that

Lucius/Harry - Would probably lose on Draco's support or his friendship, both of which are plot relevant and hard to replace

And so I present Mollymort!

Molly/Voldemort with a companion ship Arthur/Lucius.

All appears mostly canon compliant until GoF with bg Arthur/Lucius going through some mess during CoS, Narcissa having four different lovers at the same time and Molly trying to forget her evil ex.

Harry kills Sirius BY ACCIDENT within the first 234 words of the fic. Then he spends the next 8k in Azkaban and I still have yet to write him getting out on a technicality.

It's this little self indulgent project (little but I know it'll be at like 100k when done) born out of rambling and brainstorming with a friend, featuring dark Severus, a bit of Severitus, DE adoption and dark!Harry. And murder.

Here is the first 234 words

His heart is beating in his throat, adrenaline flows through his veins as he strides through the darkened street. Wand in one hand and dragging his trunk with the other he feels invincible. Even in his rage, he thinks this is what freedom tastes like, walking away with everything he owns.  The burst energy is only temporary. He finds a spot under a streetlight and sits on the kerb. For the first time in hours or even days he allows himself to breathe. He has no place to go.  London at least for a night seemed like a good idea before finding a way to stay with his friends. The only issue was that he had no means of getting to London. A train? Sure. With what money? Fly? He'd get arrested. Which might happen anyway considering the incident with the aunt. That's when he hears leaves rustle and a stick break behind him as something approaches. He quickly stands and whips around. His wand aimed at… a dog. A mangy dog that needed shower almost as much as food. He held his wand tighter and hoped the dog would leave. He's had enough dogs for his entire life. And the past week has made it even worse. The dog, seemingly cautious, took a one step closer. The wand in his hand burned as his panic surged, powered years of survival, and he cast.

Two twins, two good friends, once is a Slytherin... the usual. The next is Voldemort coming back and Harry decides to protect his brother by joining the Death Eaters. It's not well-known, most DEs that know about it are dead by the time the war ends or are on the Order's side and as resolute to keep their secrets. Like Snape.

The Potters never knew where Harry disappeared during the years the war raged.

Until Harry shows up for his 8th year. Well, not his. He's the new Defense teacher.

No one but Harry really knows if he was a Death Eater by conviction or by convenience.

Here's a little snippet for you!