Awesome Alchemy

First, I want to welcome anyone making their way here from the A to Z challenge! Thanks so much to all the great bloggers hosting, and especially originator, Lee, at Tossing it Out. Today is the first day, so if you don't know about this, there is still time to check it out.

Alchemy and Me

I first really thought about the process of Alchemy when a group of avid Harry Potter fans was discussing what we thought would happen in the 6th and 7th books of the series. Alchemy, is of course the process by which the Sorcerer's Stone is made in the first book: a stone said to be able to turn any metal to gold, and produce the elixir of life which can make the drinker immortal.


Alchemy, in brief

Disclaimer: If you want the LONG version, Wikipedia has quite the page. My version is FAR simpler and stems out of how we talked about it in those Harry Potter discussions... My memory stinks, so surely I will get some of this wrong and skip giant chunks--in fact most of it, really, but it still fits what I'm trying to say.

The ideal man through the process of alchemy

The Harry Potter version is of course a little different than the alchemical process discussed in history (legend?)--alchemy, being the PROCESS of turning base metal to gold. This process has three tiers, black, white and red and involves all four elements, each representing a season. It happens in seven tiers—and you might see in just that line how the other Harry Potter themes come up—4 elements also go with the four houses, and in fact, until we learned Ravenclaw's artifact, many of us were sure it was a WAND, because the artifacts for the other houses fit the tarot symbols for the elements: Cups, swords, and pentacle (stone of the ring).

Alchemy as a 'science' really petered out in the 16th century (probably as real science gained a little ground) but as a spiritual journey, the idea lasted longer, and it makes sense—it is about being fully rounded and in balance.

Alchemy in writing

So if the stone that starts black, has to go through white and red to reach gold, the STORY may very well have a similar process to achieve gold.

The black first draft: This has the basic ingredients—you know where it goes and and have hammered out the main thing of it.

The first step is to go through and CLARIFY—turn it white by streamlining the plot, removing the big extras, fill in plot holes, remove any confusion. Do you have the STORY JUST RIGHT?

The next step is to light it on fire (red) (not literally) by pushing at the pacing, rewording for power and sparkle... have you SAID IT ALL in the RIGHT WORDS?

And finally POLISH it to shiny gold—typos, spelling, grammar, punctuation... all those pesky details.


Now I wish I could tell you this makes a tale ACTUALLY done, but honestly, what this makes a tale is ready for feedback—you are probably going to have to do all these steps again... and again... but I love looking at each round of editing this way.