Albus looked at her, his face as expressionless as Severus’s, now; and she remembered, with a shock, that Albus’s **own** - “It is the best reason I can possibly imagine for removing Bellatrix from Azkaban,”
Hmm. That makes sense, and I can understand why you might leave the sentence truncated like that… but honestly it doesn’t come across to me as clever writing, it just looks like a mistake. If there’s a way to write it so that it’s clearly a truncated thought instead of a writing error, that’d be better.
Possibly wording it ‘Albus’ own fa- “It is the best...”
Cutting it off in mid-word makes it a little more clear what is happening, and “fa” has the benefit of looking a bit like “face” so that it still takes some effort to process what the actual thought is.
Honestly I don’t think this is a case where making the audience work for it is really useful. The actual answer is revealed in the next chapter, so it’s not like you’re keeping it a secret for any length of time, but most people probably won’t connect Albus’ “my own father was in Azkaban statement” with Minerva’s truncated though. The people wanting to solve the mystery don’t have much payoff, the people who assume it’s writer-error will just be confused.
Honestly I think “Albus’ own father—” would works better. There are places for clever, mysterious writing but this isn’t it.
FWIW, I like the more elliptical version. I thought it was fairly transparent iff you read the chapters relatively quickly (much more so than the release schedule) -- there are references to his father in earlier chapters.
It wasn’t a matter of I forgot about his father (although no, I wasn’t thinking about it at that particular time). It was that I didn’t even perceive it as a sentence that needed completing.
Chapter 61: Proofreading (I think)
Albus looked at her, his face as expressionless as Severus’s, now; and she remembered, with a shock, that Albus’s **own** - “It is the best reason I can possibly imagine for removing Bellatrix from Azkaban,”
Albus’s own what, exactly?
I’m guessing it’s that Albus’s own father was committed to and died in Azkaban.
Hmm. That makes sense, and I can understand why you might leave the sentence truncated like that… but honestly it doesn’t come across to me as clever writing, it just looks like a mistake. If there’s a way to write it so that it’s clearly a truncated thought instead of a writing error, that’d be better.
Possibly wording it ‘Albus’ own fa- “It is the best...”
Cutting it off in mid-word makes it a little more clear what is happening, and “fa” has the benefit of looking a bit like “face” so that it still takes some effort to process what the actual thought is.
It should be done with no space and an em-dash:
If em dashes aren’t possible on ff.net, then use two hyphens in a row.
Honestly I don’t think this is a case where making the audience work for it is really useful. The actual answer is revealed in the next chapter, so it’s not like you’re keeping it a secret for any length of time, but most people probably won’t connect Albus’ “my own father was in Azkaban statement” with Minerva’s truncated though. The people wanting to solve the mystery don’t have much payoff, the people who assume it’s writer-error will just be confused.
Honestly I think “Albus’ own father—” would works better. There are places for clever, mysterious writing but this isn’t it.
FWIW, I like the more elliptical version. I thought it was fairly transparent iff you read the chapters relatively quickly (much more so than the release schedule) -- there are references to his father in earlier chapters.
It wasn’t a matter of I forgot about his father (although no, I wasn’t thinking about it at that particular time). It was that I didn’t even perceive it as a sentence that needed completing.
Yes, you’re probably right. I wanted to comment only on what could be done with the grammar while keeping the same basic text.
If he did want to preserve that, yeah, I think your take on it’s the best bet.