Having recently completed the Epithalamium Series with the end of Come Autumn, Sae Pensive, I thought it would be a good time to revisit the linchpin story of the series.
Epithalamium was one of the first fanfics I started writing, and it showed. Although I was—and am—generally happy with the story, the multiple writing tics and first-timer gaffes I committed bothered me, so I decided to do something about it.
Not the plot, characterizations, nor the vast majority of the writing.
The primary revision was to eliminate some of the more egregious head-hopping in the story.
To be clear, I’m not one of those readers who absolutely loathes mid-scene changes of POV. Third-person omniscient (TPO) is a viewpoint long used in fiction, by some of the best authors, but it’s fallen out of favor in contemporary fiction.
While I don’t mind a little head-hopping—especially in the romance genre, where it’s considered acceptable, if a bit outré these days—poorly done it can be jarring, especially in fiction written from a close POV, as I attempted to do in Epithalamion.
So, I’ve tried to clean up the mid-scene head-hops, more or less. This has meant that some scenes are spent less in one character’s head than was the case in the original version. That has generally meant that what was once written as direct or indirect thought from a character has been revised to (attempt to) show thought, often observed by the viewpoint character as behavior.
I am entirely too clinical in writing about sex.
Normally, this doesn’t bother me especially—I believe Minerva would approach it somewhat clinically herself —but in this story, which is so rooted in deep emotional connection and physical attraction between its protagonists, it seemed … disappointing.
So, while the general … um … thrust of these scenes remains the same (including some more analytical moments from Minerva), I’ve tried to add a bit of emotional depth where I felt it was lacking. Hopefully, I haven’t resorted to too much smutty cliché.
In a few places, I’ve cut short passages that seemed to me to add little or nothing, and I’ve added a tiny bit in others, to (hopefully) better fit the narrative or character.
I’ve tried to clean up some of my worst tics and writerly crutches—repeated words and phrases and overused character descriptions—and the more glaring Americanisms.
(My apologies to my readers across the pond for having given Minerva and her fellow seventh-years a “graduation.” At the time of original writing, I had no idea this was an American Thing, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So, while there is still a small Hogwarts celebration for the leavers, it isn’t a “graduation” per se.)
While I think this revision makes Epithalamium a better, more immersive story (though still not perfect, alas), I hope that the few readers who have kindly informed me that they enjoyed the original enough to reread it on the regular aren’t too discombobulated by the revisions.
(If you are one of these readers, please feel free to let me know. I’ve kept a copy of the original and would be glad to send it to anyone who is, for whatever reason, simply dying to have it.)
The story is updated on AO3, FFN, as are the ebooks and PDF.
Cheers, and thank you for your support!
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