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?

I think the reading age did increase with the books. I'm not sure I'd want a 9yo reading the Deathly Hallows.

Just because the topics get more adult doesn't mean the writing gets more complex. Put HP next to e.g. The Secret Garden and it doesn't compare.

I enjoyed them the same way I enjoyed most boarding school stories - Malory Towers, The Chalet School etc.

None of them are well-written.

I love JK Loved reading potter as a child.

@sunglassesonthetable

*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

Or there has been a decline in standards, and Tolkien and Dickens - unlike Rowling - were being compared to the very best in English literature - more easily done when there was a more recognised canon.

Or there has been a decline in standards, and Tolkien and Dickens - unlike Rowling - were being compared to the very best in English literature - more easily done when there was a more recognised canon.

Perhaps these 'standards' are just not a good yardstick anymore. I'm seeing the "very best of English Literature " as being some far-away, erudite peak only understood and recognised by scholars and thinkers and " literature " in gradations descending down past Dickens and Tolkien ( as standards decline) to Rowling et al.

Each one only compared with 'better' literature above.

Or as @thevassal put it so well, people have always been "a bit sniffy" about popular works that have wide appeal.

Twas ever thus.

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!).

Only someone with no knowledge of Dickens would claim that. Yes, some critics regarded him as populist trash, and compared him unfavourably to Thackeray, but he was also being compared in his lifetime to 'literary' canonical predecessors, novelists like Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy were huge admirers, and even his detractors regarded him as someone whose work confronted important social issues. He was uneven, obviously, as anyone that prolific is bound to be.

He was uneven, obviously, as anyone that prolific is bound to be.

"Uneven"

Perhaps a useful word to describe HP.

I read that Dickens was paid by the word. Anyone know anything on this No wonder his stuff was so dense.

He wasn't paid by the word, or not beyond his first forays into print journalism as a very young man. He did publish all his novels in serialised form, though meaning they appeared over a period of months or years at regular intervals before they appeared in book form. The standard format was one installment a month for 20 issues (sometimes the last one was a double issue), retailing at a shilling to the public per installment. So he was paid per installment ( which gave him a living income as he wrote, rather than writing a whole novel, then trying to sell it, and living off advances against royalties).

And

Sorry, hit 'post' too soon -- but serialisation does explain to an extent the features of some of his novels, their length and somewhat cartoonish characterisation etc. If your reader reads an installment of a few thousand words, and needs to have his/her interest kept sharp for a month until the next installment appears, it would be pretty risky to write very quiet, plotless, subtle novels. You need big characters, plottiness, cliffhangers, drama etc. You need the 19thc novel equivalent of Who Shot JR? and Bobby Ewing Getting Out of the Shower and How Did Sherlock Survive the Fall From the Roof? etc.

I think the plot development is really weak. So Harry gets himself into a scrape... oh look here's a spell that I've never mentioned before that will get him out of it... Harry gets himself into another scrape.. oh look here's something else that we've never mentioned before to get him out of it... and so on.

Its very one dimensional.

There hasn't been a decline in standards. We just don't remember the crap Victorian and twentieth century stuff. Blyton and Rowling and others may not be perfect, but they sold massively at publication and continue to sell well. There are plenty of other authors who may have written better plots or used fewer adverbs or whatever, but didn't have the same powers of storytelling or whatever the x-factor in publishing is. Plenty of books get remaindered each year, and no one publishes stuff (except HMSO or whatever it is these days) they think people won't buy.

but didn't have the same powers of storytelling or whatever the x-factor in publishing is. Plenty of books get remaindered each year, and no one publishes stuff (except HMSO or whatever it is these days) they think people won't buy.

As someone who's worked in fiction publishing, let me point out there is no objective 'x-factor' when an agent chooses to represent an author, or an editor buys a novel. People buy/represent stuff that interests them and that they think will sell, but what they think is interesting and/or will sell varies hugely from person to person.

People snark about the fact that the HP series was turned down by multiple publishers before it was bought, but the fact is that this is true for an awful lot of novels. I couldn't begin to count the number of novels that crossed my desk and weren't bought, which were then bought by another editor who rated the book as more salable, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. Or a big nine-way auction emerges because a lot of editors think it's saleable, but the book doesn't sell well in the end.

Timing and luck matter too. I know someone who'd been peddling the same novel around for years with no success, and then Sally Rooney happened, and an editor decided this novel could be marketed to SR readers, and bought it for a big advance, and it was optioned for a film/series. But it's exactly the same novel as it was three years earlier, when no one would touch it.

I find the HP story quite boring in general, I loved Louise Rennison growing up and still reread the Georgia Nicholson books at least every 5 years.

But I do agree Rowling is a brilliant author. She is clearly excellent at inspiring and entertaining both children and adults.

If your reader reads an installment of a few thousand words, and needs to have his/her interest kept sharp for a month until the next installment appears, it would be pretty risky to write very quiet, plotless, subtle novels.

It is a change in taste as well. The Victorians weren't keen on Jane Austen (preferred Dickens and George Eliot) and it was really only towards the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century that she began to be studied more seriously. And quiet plotless subtle novels really only became popular in the 20th century. And of course the status of novels have increased over the last 200 years, when Jane Austen was writing they were all considered light entertainment for women rather than worthy of serious study.