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?

@Jourdain11 I so loved Puddleglum. After that BBC serial of the Silver Chair in 1991, where he was brilliantly played by Tom Baker, his lines became catchphrases in our house. "Ooooooh... I shouldn't wonder... put a bold face on it."

YANBU
When everyone was reading I tried but couldn't get beyond the first few paragraphs.
Only read it later when DC was 7 and the only way I could get him to learn to read was to read that with him before he could se he film.

[quote Clymene]@distantsky people are ignorant of fairy tale tropes and the cho chan thing has been dismissed here extensively on previous threads.

I think the endless putting of Harry Potter through a woke filter is beyond tiresome. [/quote]
100% agree. Goblins are described in HP as large nosed and eager for money BECAUSE THOSE ARE THE GOBLIN STEREOTYPES. It's like vampires are known for being pale and having pointy teeth but that isn't some coded dig at white people or people with albinism.
Seamus Finnegan doesn't even blow stuff up in the books ffs.

I find it amusing how people always harken back to an earlier age of fantastic literature. Lots of people mentioned Tolkien but when his books were first released a lot of the same criticism directed at JKR was directed at him news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3935561.stm.
People say "Oh it's hardly Dickens," whereas as creaturecomforts pointed out during his time Dickens was seen as lowest denominator sensationalist trash who really needed some editing down (he was literally paid per word!).
Even Shakespeare would have had contemporaries rolling their eyes at all the dirty puns and fart jokes aimed at the plebs in the stalls, would have pointed out that Marlowe did blank verse first and better, and would have said sniffily that Venus and Adonis (and A Midsummer's night's dream) were poor man's versions of the far superior Ovid's Metamorphoses or that King Lear was obviously copied from the version in Historia Regum Britanniae.

In fifty years time people will be on MN complaining that the current book de jour is terrible compared to the standards of classic literature like Harry Potter.....

find it amusing how people always harken back to an earlier age of fantastic literature. Lots of people mentioned Tolkien but when his books were first released a lot of the same criticism directed at JKR was directed at him news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3935561.stm.
People say "Oh it's hardly Dickens," whereas as creaturecomforts pointed out during his time Dickens was seen as lowest denominator sensationalist trash who really needed some editing down (he was literally paid per word!).
Even Shakespeare would have had contemporaries rolling their eyes at all the dirty puns and fart jokes aimed at the plebs in the stalls, would have pointed out that Marlowe did blank verse first and better, and would have said sniffily that Venus and Adonis (and A Midsummer's night's dream) were poor man's versions of the far superior Ovid's Metamorphoses or that King Lear was obviously copied from the version in Historia Regum Britanniae.

couldn't agree more

I'm always extremely impressed by her plotting: There is set-up in the very first book, which doesn't come to fruition until the last book. To have plotted not only one book, but arcs that span the entire series, is amazing.

Most people write 1 book and it does well and they write some sequels, drawing on some unfinished business in the original. However in HP, as a writer, I can see that many of the arcs were set up from the start. Admittedly, when writing your subconscious often does the work for you, putting things in earlier for no reason, that turn out to be absolutely essential later, but there are so many long-term payoffs from early set-ups in the HP series, that she must have had most of the long term arcs in her mind already.

She did - she said she knew from the outset what the last line would be.

@EBearhug

She did - she said she knew from the outset what the last line would be.

Yes, but then she changed it!

She said for ages the last word was going to be scar, and then it wasn't!

End of Harry Potter

but she did very well to bang out 75k words' worth of mostly [occasionally very] enjoyable, compelling storyline within the space of a decade & a bit, & fully deserves her success.

The total word count for all 7 Harry Potter books is
1,084,170 words.

@SionnachRua

It's all snobbery, jealousy and envy. HP met its purpose and gave enjoyment to millions and inspired a generation to actually read a book. Don't believe the hype of the literary critics, or they might start believing their own hype.

I really hate this kind of take on it. It's ok if people just don't like the book. It's only a book, not the second coming of Christ and however many millions of copies she's sold won't make non-Potterheads enjoy the books any more.

Starbucks is also very popular, yet many people don't like it. Let people like what they like and dislike what they don't.

But it wasn't about if you disliked the book, it was about if it was badly written. Completely different.

Why is there such a negative opinion towards Harry Potter and J.K.Rowling? These books have been hugely successful since years . The PP who complained about Daniel Radcliffe should learn to differentiate between the written word and the film producer/director who puts on the screen.

She may have changed it, but it still shows there was an overall plan from the outset for the entire series.

I love the books and detest the films.

Didn’t J.K. Rowling suffer with writers block with the fourth or fifth book? I seem to remember reading about that at the time. Took quite a while to be released if I remember rightly?

YANBU

Her books are badly written and boring just like Dan Brown's IMO

It’s always failed writers who think they know better and throw criticism. Or maybe just avid readers who don't mind acknowledging an authors weaknesses whilst enjoying a book?

@Pollaidh

I'm always extremely impressed by her plotting: There is set-up in the very first book, which doesn't come to fruition until the last book. To have plotted not only one book, but arcs that span the entire series, is amazing.

Most people write 1 book and it does well and they write some sequels, drawing on some unfinished business in the original. However in HP, as a writer, I can see that many of the arcs were set up from the start. Admittedly, when writing your subconscious often does the work for you, putting things in earlier for no reason, that turn out to be absolutely essential later, but there are so many long-term payoffs from early set-ups in the HP series, that she must have had most of the long term arcs in her mind already.

Haha, I get what you mean.

Some of the things that crop up again in my fifth book, I'm like... "so that's why that character did that back in book two. I did wonder."

It's a funny one with HP - there's some real long-game plotting in there and Easter Eggs like Snape's regret for Lily coded in flower names.

Then there's 'one book plot device magic' that appears, creates a massive plot inconsistency for the other six books and disappears again.

I'll say it again, it's a credit to her story telling that they aren't books that have been relegated to childhood reminiscing. It's adults returning to the books who can go, 'wait a minute, wtf didn't they use Veritaserum during the Death Eater trials?'.

The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (1949) speaks about the basic formula that many successful stories follow

1 Ordinary World. This is where the Hero's exists before his present story begins, oblivious of the adventures to come. ...
2 Call To Adventure. ...
3 Refusal Of The Call. ...
4 Meeting The Mentor. ...
5 Crossing The Threshold. ...
6 Tests, Allies, Enemies. ...

1. Approach To The Inmost Cave

8 Ordeal 9 Reward (Seizing The Sword) 10 The Road Back 11 Resurrection 12 Return With The Elixir

Obviously there will be variants within this basic formula and they above might not always be as obvious as described.

John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progess (1679) essentially follows this pattern as does Jane Eyre.

Harry Potter/ Star Wars/ The Lord of the Rings obviously all do too.

Yes you can compare Dumbledore to Gandalf but the archetype of the wise old man/wizard was absolutely not created by Tolkien.

More info here for anyone interested www.movieoutline.com/articles/the-hero-journey-mythic-structure-of-joseph-campbell-monomyth.html

@Pollaidh I'm sure she came up with the idea and then spent 5 years working on the plot before The Philospher's Stone was released, so she knew how it was all going to end way before The Deathly Hallows was written.

She was "lucky" in the sense that she got published and became a huge phenomenon - as in all branches of the arts there are equally talented people that just don't get the break or don't get the same buzz that HP produced. I loved reading the How to Train your Dragon books to my son. I thought they had a fantastic plot arc, (doing the something small and insignificant in early books becoming vital later on that JKR is being praised for). I love that the hero is totally unheroic and found the books to be touching and at times funny. They hooked my son in a way HP hasn't. While they are successful and CC has become famous (children's laureate etc) and sort of had films made of them (because the film's have only the vaguest nod to the books and don't really pick up the the over arching "quest" narrative of the books). They have not had the same traction as the HP books, no adult covers, no media coverage of midnight bookshop openings etc so I would argue the JKR has been lucky but I would say the same of Ed Sheeran and anyone else that has talent and skill and "makes" it because plenty of brilliantly talent people don't get published/ get a recording contact and others do make that first step but don't make the step on to mega stardom.

I would argue the JKR has been lucky but I would say the same of Ed Sheeran and anyone else that has talent and skill and "makes" it because plenty of brilliantly talent people don't get published/ get a recording contact and others do make that first step but don't make the step on to mega stardom.

Yep. Publishing is a huge game of luck and skill. I can't think of many jobs where you have to do 95% of the work just to get the chance to write an application where only about 10% of your work MIGHT get considered subjectively by someone who might toss it in the reject pile because they like it but their marketing department have told them they've hit the quota for male-led adventures etc.

And unless you're rich, you have to do it whilst maintaining your actual, paying job.

So yeah, she's lucky. Luck isn't not doing the hard work or using skills, luck is that hard work and skill paying off.

@thecatsthecats yes to become the kind of sensation that JKR has become luck is one of the elements to you need you can have all the talent in the world but in order for that talent to get you somewhere you need hard work, resilience and for the stars to align. One the publishers that rejected HP could have decided to publish and it could have been a minor success read by a generation or two of kids without ever generating the hype it has or the publisher that did go with it could have picked up a different manuscript first that day and thought are yes I'll give this one a go and then rejected HP because that first manuscript was vaguely similar and it could never had seen the light of day. But there is the old quote from a golfer "the harder I work the luckier I get".

This thread actually got me thinking how cool it would be to create a cabal of writers who are paid to write full time, without the promise of a pay off.

Splitting their time between writing, checking and refining their own works and the rest of the group. They'd be recruited for being decent writers with decent ideas, but the overall premise would be to treat it as a professional and collaborative process instead of a winner takes all gamble.

Writers, IMO, can get worse with success, because we're egotistical creatures. So if you get to a certain level of success you can say 'fuck you' to the editors and the critics and do your own thing.

I like Ed Sheeran and Multiply is a great album but Newton Faulkner did it all first and there was another girl singer ( can't think of her name) who used a effects pedal long before he did to achieve the same sort of sounds : both were not as successful as he is but those are the breaks and Ed had his fair share of rejections and difficult gigs before he hit the ' big time' , same as J K Rowling.
It's just a mixture of luck and good marketing I suppose. The arts is never easy to predict who will make it and who won't.

I haven't finished reading the thread, but ..... significantly, the first three books won the Smarties Gold prize for 9 - 11 year olds. According to Wikipedia 'It was one of the most respected and prestigious prizes for children's literature', and was the reason I bought the first book for my oldest son to encourage him to broaden his reading beyond the Famous Five. He loved them and so did my other children when they read them. My oldest is now 30 and the others mid to late 20's and still love HP.

I wonder if the other books weren't considered suitable for 9 - 11 year olds, or, were they less well written?

I think the reading age did increase with the books. I'm not sure I'd want a 9yo reading the Deathly Hallows. But maybe I'm wrong, I haven't read them in a while.