How I Write - Inside the Worst of Them (Draco Malfoy)

[butterfly]

The important thing about making a character you write feel real is by loving them for who they are, not who you want them to be. Even if it is just for the moments that you write in their point of view - you need to care about their ugly bits, or you're including a note of bias.

I'll use Draco as an example. The reason that so much Draco feels fanon instead of canon is because so many people concentrate solely on his good points (yes, he does have them), while ignoring his many bad points. This presents a very lop-sided view of the character, especially as many of those bad points are things that Draco, himself, probably doesn't consider to be faults.

Draco's failures are probably what stick in his memory - the fact that he's never good enough to beat Potter or Granger. The fact that he's the one who gets hexed, when he probably feels just as injured as Harry does - because Draco can, above all things, hold a grudge. He's still holding one against Harry for choosing one of the nasty, cruel, horrid Weasel boys over him. Boys who laugh at your name and who hiss at eleven year-olds whose only crime is to be put into Slytherin. He can never see any of the Wesleys' good points (of which they have many), just as they would never see one of his.

And he does have some, including being creative, which is something that always tilts my heart. He makes up stories. He does very good impressions. He gives performances to his friends. He's a total drama queen. Which probably gives his father no end of annoyance. He probably wanted a son who had his head firmly in useful things, but Draco's too easily distracted from the things that can make a difference to his future (the wineglass incident can be read this way - focusing on Harry to the detriment of his future).

And he tries to be, and is, a good student - why else would his father only mention that Hermione is above him in scores? If there were too many other people (and any other people Lucius considered 'lesser'), they would have been mentioned as well.

He flies well - Harry mentions that in the first book - but Draco wasn't the youngest Seeker in a century and he didn't completely turn around a Quidditch team.

He's talented and he's smart - but to his immense shame, he isn't as talented and smart as Potter and Granger.

Here he is, with what he would consider a natural advantage - his pure blood and his family - and yet he's not quite good enough.

So he rages and he blames Harry and Hermione for being too perfect and he blames Ron for being a Wesley (just as Ron hates him for being a Malfoy - the Wesleys are just as biased as the Malfoys when it comes to the 'wrong' side) and for taking his chance to be friends with the Boy Who Lived away. And that hate grows over the years as he finds ways to blame them more. It's ugly and it's horrid, but it's a terribly real way of reacting to things.

It's a bit like the beginning of the film version of The Count of Monte Cristo - "I shouldn't want your life."

So, in this way, I find the heart of Draco's humanity and that's where the love comes from. And he does have so many good qualities - he loves his parents, he's creative and funny, he's smart. But he was raised to believe himself to be superior and that is his downfall. He wasn't expecting to go to a Hogwarts that had someone more important than himself attending and he's been breaking himself on that from the beginning.

Comments

[sperrywink]

Amen.

Related to only seeing his good side, I find it is most apparent in stories that bring him into the Gryffindor fold and couple Good!Draco with Horrid!(all other Slytherins). Crabbe and Goyle are cretins, Pansy is a harpy. He isn't really friends with them and never liked them. Harry and Co. are obviously much more fun and more worthwhile friends. And, no, Hermione isn't a borish geek and Neville isn't a clumsy goof and neither Harry nor Ron is a hot-tempered jerk. I start reading these stories and I end up empathizing with Bad!Draco and mutter to myself, 'No, don't buy into all the Harry hype! I know the book is called 'Harry Potter and the Sorcereres Stone,' but there is life that doesn't revovle around Harry! Think for yourself!'

And it is sad, because I agree with you about what his good qualities are and they aren't often explored well. In the stories above, even though it is supposedly Good!Draco, it isn't really, it is just Gryffindor-reformed Draco, who just isn't as interesting.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Yes, that kind of Draco is annoying because, as far as the other Slytherins go, we generally have far more evidence that Draco is a total brat than we do that they are. Because Harry and Co. pretty much absolutely ignore everything that isn't right in their faces (I can definitely see why Snape and Draco probably think of Harry as snobby and thinking of himself as better, even though Harry generally doesn't notice because he's so closed in on himself - he's been trained to be small and not pay attention to people that wouldn't be allowed to like him in any case).

And yeah, it's rarer to see Draco's actual good qualities on display in stories than it is to see a Gryffindorified Draco. Which is a shame, because he does have them - he's loyal, he's funny, he's creative, he's smart, and he's talented. It just isn't focused in a direction that Harry finds acceptable.

[sperrywink]

I agree about Draco’s good qualities and because of them, I do like the stories that portray Draco as popular with the rest of the school. I think it is a reasonable assumption. For example, kids can be pretty malicious, so it makes sense that he thinks he is funny and other kids think he is funny. We only see Slytherins laughing because Harry only sees Draco with the Slytherins (and Gryffindors who will, of course, support Harry first). When Harry gets all the attention yet again for more daring deeds, I’m sure Draco isn’t the only student to resent him and appreciate when he is taken down a peg or two (or would appreciate it if Draco every succeeded). On this note, I do really like Maya’s The Badger Series (http://lasairandmaya.koanju.com/mayafic/) with Zacharias' disinterest in all things Harry.

On the flip side, while Draco may be a bully, he didn’t begin as a spectacularly evil or a violent one, just a maliciously funny one. His humor and resentment are all the motivation one needs to explain his actions. He doesn’t need to be drawn from the standpoint ‘he is evil and always wanted to be evil’ instead of ‘he thinks he is right and why would that be?’

I also find it interesting that Harry's darker side isn't explored more and he is so often portrayed as noble and just. He is quick-tempered and quick to escalate a confrontation to violence and to see the world in black-and-white which exasperates these tendencies. When Draco steals Neville's Rememball and makes fun of him, it is malicious, but nothing that will physically hurt Neville or anyone. It is Harry who threatens to knock Draco off his broom, a fairly harsh retaliation. Harry can also be sly, dishonest and disrespectful in his pursuit of evil (think of his interactions with Snape). When Harry vanquishes Voldemort and has no more evil to fight, I often think he will have a hard time adjusting to peace.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Harry turns to violence fairly quickly really. Kid has a hair-trigger at times.

But yeah, totally agree with all that.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

especially as many of those bad points are things that Draco, himself, probably doesn't consider to be faults

That is a demned good point, and one well worth keeping in mind when writing about any character, I think. (One of the best examples of this I ever got in a writing class was when a prof asked our grad seminar: "What do you think Mark Fuhrman [this was right around the OJ trial] sees when he looks in the mirror? He doesn't see what you see.")

moi

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thanks. And yeah, that's always the most important question when writing - how does this character view things? Because you can't treat their relationships and feelings lightly or you're just writing an original character in that character's skin.

Your comments link says "Tell me your truth", so here it is. :)

[valynn.livejournal.com]

(http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=2+Corinthians+5%3A17&KJV_version=yes&language=english&x=20&y=9)
Click the butterfly :)

[polichinelle.livejournal.com]

This was a wonderfully thoughtful breakdown of Draco's character, one I hope any writer would keep in mind.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

Amusingly enough, it actually did just start out as an example and then I just got involved in exploring him.

It's a favorite thing for me - exploring why characters act the way they do - because every character is the good guy in his own head.