Harry Potter was badly written

[Stackys]

I’ve seen this said on here a few times, that the books are badly written and she’s a terrible author who just got lucky.

Why do people say this? The world she created was amazing, what’s wrong with the books?

[quote Notredamn ]They're fine for kids. Children aren't too bothered about too many adverbs, repetition or annoying alliterations, they just appreciate the story. [/quote]
Parents need something that is a pleasure to read out loud though and children would benefit from a series that has increasingly complex language. There are plenty of children's books that are much better written and still have a gripping story (e.g. Tom's Midnight Garden).

I think there are some parts of book that are not as well written as they could be, however the storytelling and universe are fantastic. These are books aimed at children; they will not be critiquing the writing skills but instead getting lost in an exciting new world. I love reading but it is the story I am interested in.

That said how well written, or even how good a story, does not necessarily have any impact on how well a book will sell or else fifty shades grey never would have gone anywhere.

@ilikebooksandplants the reason that Harry doesn’t fight Voldemort during the summer is because he returns home. Where he is protected and can’t be touched by Voldemort... the start of the final book highlights how now he’s come of age Voldemort will come for him at his home straight away once the spell breaks so I’m afraid that is not a plot hole.

Totally agree @CreatureComfy

I read a lot of literary fiction. The HP books are brilliantly plotted with great imagination. The writing is clever and complex and my DD is obsessed with them. Not sure what else people want? Also many ideas for stories are borrowed from other books. So what? Though I personally couldn't bear LOTR

It would be the end of book groups everywhere if everyone observed the rules for criticism on this thread:

• No criticism allowed unless you can sell more copies than the author.
• No criticism unless you're a writer or English teacher.
• The more a book sells, the better it is.
• If you don't like it, this must be because you're a snob/jealous/opposed to jkr's political views.

Just polite acknowledgment that the author writes better than you could.

If you care about books it can actually be fun to analyse and debate their strengths and weakness.

I do think that the majority of the worst criticism just comes from the fact it's popular, and people like to feel superior to others who like popular things.

yep*

Or look at this way - she's the kids' equivalent of Dan Brown or John Grisham. Bestsellers don't set the literary bar too high.

🙄 Too popular for you obvs. *
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It's a huge achievement and takes a lot of skill/talent to get millions of children (and adults) engrossed in reading and to create characters and setting that are now part of our culture.*

Huge achievement to get my son to read a book at all ( and he read the series )
Well done JK. You're good!

Whilst the text can be picked apart in the name of critique - adverbs galore etc Much literature that would fall at this hurdle. It's totally disingenuous given the range and scope and impact of the books.

It's like looking at a painting and saying "oh but the hand on that person over there is not in proportion " or " flowers don't really come in that colour". The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

As for being derivative or influenced by others most art is. In literature most of the themes of good and evil have been recycled endlessly. No one author owns them.

@JoysOfString I get that they are an extra layer but I think it would be good if more was made of them to spark kids’ interests to go and find out more. I also think it adds much more to the story.

Re the Dursley’s, from my reading all their characteristics are meant to fully encapsulate the 7deadly sins, greed, envy, sloth, wrath, pride etc to draw a clear distinction between them and Harry. It’s not about jk having a pop at fat people.

Completed disagree @DrManhattan

Also find it odd people are saying she ‘copied’ from any books about magic/magical schools..

I’ve read hundreds of books as a child/teenager That were set in schools or during the summer holidays. I haven’t heard anyone saying those authors are copying from someone who wrote about a school earlier on.

If anything, the worst witch seems to have copied from the naughtiest girl series Enid blyton but just added in the magic

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll “ She had a character called Vlabatsky“ there is no character called this....

@Exilecardigan Cassandra Vablatsky isn't a character that we ever meet, but she is mentioned. Much like Newt!

I like the films and the books. They are easy read and demand little as you read them. I find tge writting though slightly tedious, the books are saved by a good plot so you read on. I can't read them aloud as tvey read incorrectly, for me. I also cringe at how much is taken from my other childhood books.
But she has captured a large audience, and at the end of the day i am no writer or critic. Perhaps the mark of good books is the popularity and longevity of them more so than the literacy skills of the author, after all stories are to entertain and transport us to another time or place and this she fully achieves.

Sorry, I got the 'l' in the wrong place:

"Cassandra Vablatsky (1894 - 1997) was a witch, celebrated Seer and author of Unfogging the Future, a Divination textbook required at Hogwarts"

Not strictly a character, I suppose, but a name alluded to.

*Harry must have been on a bursery as I can't imagine the Dursley's paying anything for poor old H!8

I think he had loadsamoney in Gringott's inherited from his parents.

Bit of a leap there honing in on the name of the author of one of the school books in one book out of the series and saying it’s a character.

The characters are crap, two dimensional and have no growth (in fact, many regress from being strong characters to whiney, self involved prats).

To be fair, regressing into whiney, self-involved prats is a fair description of what happens when most people are teenagers.

I’m a writer and I don’t have an issue with Harry Potter. It’s fairly easy to read I would say. And the world she’s created makes it quite easy just to sort of gloss over troublesome paragraphs.

I tried reading 50 shades of grey however and the writing in that is absolutely hideous. No one talks like that. Total shite.

DH adored reading the books, he was in his forties when he read them.

I tried reading the first one but, to me, it was a kid's book. Content and style. Honestly don't get why so many adults read them.

That said, I LOVE her Cormoran Strike novels and The Casual Vacancy.

I always find the adult criticism of the books interesting given they were never aimed at that audience. As a young adult, the excitement of buying the newer books was brilliant and they were books that couldn’t be put down. The fact that so many people were glued to them suggests that they can’t have been that badly written. I enjoyed them much more than many other worthy texts which really were a slog to get through.

The later books have an older feel to them than books one and two @BaconAndAvocado. I read them when I was in my 40s. I started reading them just so I would know what my children were talking about, but by book 4 I was hooked of my own accord.

People belittling the style of writing are missing the point. Enid Blyton books were strongly looked down upon when I was a child in the 70s, but look how often people now mention her books when listing their favourite children's books. If children enjoy reading them, that is worthy in itself.

Agree with others who compliment the storytelling and the Universe she created but find her use of English somewhat mediocre. In one of the books (can't remember which one) she uses the name "Voldemort" 26 times in one page. Considering he's supposed to be "he who must not be named" he sure got named a lot.

It's telling that JK hasn't really had literary success beyond HP and I think that's because she's limited as a writer.

I liked Harry Potter well enough and have read the series more than once as my sister was into them when they came out and then my son has got into them recently. I hate analysing books and films, if I'm not enjoying it I will stop. It is escapism for me and I just want to read/watch, I don't want to be thinking about characters' motivation or the use of pronouns. I would be no good in a book club!

It's telling that JK hasn't really had literary success beyond HP and I think that's because she's limited as a writer.

Sorry but you write 7 books that become monuments of children's literature and you "are limited as a writer".

i just can't take that seriously.

So Emily Brontë, JD Salinger, Sylvia Plath, Arundhati Roy, Harper Lee - all known for a single book . Limited?

@BaconAndAvocado I agree, I read them during maternity leave in my mid-thirties and really couldn’t understand the hype. Then DD read them and was drawn into a world which I never was as a child. This alone is a credit to the author, she managed to catch children’s imagination and regardless how you feel about the money making machine attached to it, these books brought a lot to children. They are not for adults, especially the first 1-3, they are children books. The latter ones. I loathe due to waffling but they are def darker and more for older teens or people liking fantasy.

@Kittytheteapot -I loved Famous Five and Find-Outers as a child but really shook my head when DD started reading them, so antique and stereotypes but DD took the fun and mystery and companionship from them. She did see that girls were put down or left behind. She wasn’t too into these but when she read them she loved the story without thinking about the not so political correct bits.

Many people have issues with the negative stereotypes that jkr wrote into harry potter, like the goblins with large noses that work at the bank and are stingy with money or Seamus Finnegan, the Irish kid prone to blowing things up. There's also the character Cho Chang who plays into the 'smart asian' stereotype, nevermind the fact that Cho and Chang are both Asian surnames. Some people have compared it to naming your kid something like Johnson Smith. I love the concept of harry potter and most of the universe but there are some things like that that I find very hard to overlook.