Not A Chapter

This is an analysis of this story.

I started writing this on a whim. I wanted to write a looping story along the lines of Ground Hog Day or the Edge of Tomorrow (All You Need is Kill).

First, some essential elements of those stories I got wrong.

The before and after:

In the beginning of Ground Hog Day, Billy Murray's character is a selfish jerk. He also hates the small town. By the end of it, he is almost a saint, everyone knows him, and he ends up liking the town. Another central theme is him getting the one girl he couldn't get.

In the beginning of Edge of Tomorrow, Tom Cruise's character is a sleazy, cowardly, weak guy. By the end of the movie, he is strong and is willing to sacrifice his own life. There is a central theme of the one girl he couldn't save is the one he wants to save.

The time frame:

Both of these stores are in a short time frame like 24 hours.

I didn't do a strong before/after with my character. He was already mid-loop. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but as a newbie veering off the path was not a good idea. I also made the loop time frames way too long.

I intended to make him weak and get stronger through the loops. But I realized the loops were too long, and it's hard to tell a story in that time frame. I decided to introduce the time wraiths.

How the story would have gone:

From the DOM girl, he finds out that when he significantly alters the timeline, the time wraiths come for him. The time wraiths are spirits. Reflections such as glass/water act as a spiritual medium to the spiritual world. They are like the natural defense for fate, like the universes immune system to those messing with time.

The more he would try to change things, the more time wraiths would attack him. The time wraiths devour time and wound the spiritual/magical representation of his artifact, shortening his loops more and more until he is down until only one day, the Battle of Hogwarts.

As his loops shrink he becomes more obsessed with trying to change the fate and save Iris Potter. I wanted him to basically be insecure and trying to prove that his life has meaning by changing things.

He also finds that when he fought the time wraith, he was able to absorb some of its essence (stabbing it with the spiritual/magical representation of his wand - a unicorn horn). The more wraiths he ends up fighting, he absorbs their essence giving him more powerful magic and an ability to somewhat manipulate time.

The time wraiths get worse and worse, and when it gets down to only having one day left in the loop, and no loops left, he ends up trying to fight Voldemort and sacrifices himself to stop him and save Iris Potter. I'm not sure what the final theme would be. Maybe by trying too hard he wasn't accomplishing much, and he had to let go of his life for it to have meaning.

More mistakes I made:

I wanted to make the story AU, but had no reason to do so. This is also a bad thing for a newbie writer to do, since it is veering off the laid out path set by canon (which is why fanfic is a good beginner-friendly format).

If the AU served a purpose, it could have made sense, but I had no reason to do it other than emulating some fics I liked.

If I were to try this story again, I would make it more of a comedy and shorten the time loops to one day.

For instance, having a character thrown into a random Hufflepuff during the Battle of Hogwarts. That works perfectly for the Edge of Tomorrow. So, the comedy is all of his early grisly deaths. Ultimately his goal is to save everyone. It forces him to get strong every loop. He can also find out all the little details throughout the day to change things for the better. The before-after is him being useless to him turning into a badass. That was probably the story I intended to write.

I also just started writing without any planning, and I did that every chapter. I still ended up with a final destination for the story, but it felt too forced.

Anyway. I wanted to write this analysis for myself and for anyone who might be interested in writing. If anyone reads this, please do share your ideas/criticisms as well.

Thanks to you who read the story. Sorry I didn't finish it.